It was a great Halloween week in Oklahoma with temperatures in the 70's and 80's. Knowing I was leaving soon to Argentina to work left me restless and I took to the fields and the roads. With the OKC Audubon group we glassed birds at Bluff Creek and the Bridgestone Preserve -- fall was just arriving and both places were breathtaking in their autumnal splendor. I went to Tulsa to visit old college friends and following spent a day at the Nature Conservancy's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in beautiful Osage County hiking, reading and having a totally Garbo day (I vant to be alone). With looming thoughts of the 13 hour flight in coach class, the dogs certainly got a few extra long hikes at the park in Edgemere and Lake Hefner all week.
Fall finally comes to Edgemere Park
A flock of FOS Cedar Waxwings worked a dead oak tree near the park headquarters. Cedar Waxwings, although beautiful, are also the melancholy-inducing harbingers of winter just ahead.
Meandering along Sand Creek in the preserve was an almost out-of-place beautiful mixed forest of oak, hackberry, and walnut. The slanted November light produced a surreal effect to my own meandering. The forest floor was flush full of berries - virginia creeper, poison ivy, possum grape, greenbrier, coralberry, snailberry, soapberry - lots of food for everyone.
A red-headed woodpecker kept me company as I read from Ellen Meloy's beautifully written, but sadly posthumous, book: Eating Stone.
No comments:
Post a Comment