TheBanyanTree: The Arbuckles From the Distance

[B Drummond]

Between Texas and central Oklahoma lies a mountain range known as the 
Arbuckles.

I seldom get to go to this area now but the trips that I made in the recent 
past from Dallas to Oklahoma City would take me over part of the Arbuckle 
Mountains.  

If I had the time in the past I would always stop and read some of the signs 
at the outlook stops or scenic view stops, over the rolling hills and 
downhill toward the south and toward Texas.  From there one is able to see 
more of the Arbuckles in the distance and for more than a hundred miles to 
the south, across the Red River that separates Oklahoma from Texas and down 
into the plains north of Dallas and Ft Worth.

I've always felt a special affinity to the place and felt that there was 
something special about it, a connection to it, even though I have never 
lived in the region or had ever heard of it before crossing the Arbuckles the 
first time about 9 years ago.  From some reason, when I reach the area I feel 
the same connection to it that I do when I have been alone for an extended 
period in the forests of some of the areas in northwest Florida where I grew 
up.  It's a "I belong here, I'm comfortable here" feeling that I can't 
explain but is there nonetheless, powerful and poignant in my psyche.

When I did a small study after the first visit/stop/pass through the area I 
discovered some of what makes the area special.  There's good reason to 
consider it special (see this URL for some of them)

http://www.epinions.com/content_1868603524

But the feeling, so strong when I pass through there goes beyond mere 
intellectual gratification of the knowledge that the place has ancient haunts 
not exposed to the world in so many other places that I see, or visit, or 
have dwelt in in the past.

It's as if there is a call, a pull, a return to me, to your family's roots, 
urging in my heart there.  It's as if I have family, living and dead there, 
some of those buried, bones crushed into powder by the same forces that made 
a mountain range once higher than the Himalayas, now in many places so low 
that you don't know they are the remnants of such a mighty chain;  a fine 
powder of bones more ancient that the rocks now exposed and blown eons ago 
from those mountains by the four winds, down to Texas and settling in the 
murky waters of the Red River, drifting slowly toward the Gulf of Mexico.

It's like a calling in my deepest to a "Welcome, home".  Standing on a 
hill on the ancient mountains, when I look over the impressive vista around 
me I hear it again. "You are doing what your fathers and mothers once did. 
And you were made to be here.  For you see, you were not made to view the 
Arbuckles from the distance, but the distance from the Arbuckles."

This always comes with a chill down my spine and a resignation.  A resignation 
that coded below gene level they live, and they see their beloved home the 
Arbuckles again with joy, and they want me to know it and of their love . . .
for me and for their ancient home.


  bd
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  bd