Kelleyville, Oklahoma

I’m headed to Albuquerque with a load of beer and Bacardi based malt beverages. I picked them up at an Anheuser-Busch brewery in Baldwinsville, near Syracuse, New York. They are actually going to Anheuser-Busch in Ontario, California, east of L.A. Why on earth it would make sense to make beer in a brewery and then ship it to another brewery 2500 miles away while passing within sight of two other Anheuser-Busch breweries (Columbus and St. Louis) is a mystery to me.


Throughout southwestern Missouri and northeastern Oklahoma, where the Ozarks roll and rock outcroppings sprout stout trees, the woods looked not quite right. The trees had no grace. They looked black and burned. But not burned, everything around them was fine. And then it occurred to me that a few weeks ago a vicious ice storm had rolled through here coating everything with an (apparently) astonishing amount of ice. The trees were all broken off, mostly at the tops, sometimes larger lower branches. The damage was impressively widespread. If I recall correctly the ice storm was followed by high winds and I guess that did it.



A nice walk down a country road at sunset, the sky fading from orange yellow to deep blue and silhouetting powerlines, ranch gates and broken trees quite picturesquely.