Wednesday, September 27, 2006

OK in OK

Monday night we got a call that our son Craig was finally in the states, back from Iraq. He wanted us to come to his arrival ceremony in Lawton, Oklahoma the following day. We left very early on Tuesday and drove straight through. Unfortunately we overslept and left about an hour after we had planned to. We also forgot that we would lose an hour. We missed the ceremony by about an hour, but we did get to see our son. He looks great. We also met the girl he is seeing, though we don't know how serious it is. How serious could it be when he's been in Iraq for the past year?

Anyway, we went out to dinner, took him to get a cell phone, went bowling, went to bed, got up at 4:45 and drove home.

I wish I was a painter to capture the fields in northern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle. The fields were so beautiful. I would have to paint them in watercolors to represent the subtle shades of russet, ambers, browns, greys, yellows, silvers and even blues found in the autumn fields. The grasses along the roadside were a bluish-grey usually only seen by the light of a winter moon. It took my breath away, all under the light of azure skies. One set of shades on the way there gave way to a different set on the return. What trick of light took all the orange and reds from the same fields? Interesting too how the ground went from pale and grey to dark volcanic soil to tans and even reds in Texas.

The return trip today revealed pronghorns singly and in groups by the dozen. Cattle of every shade ignored by pronghorns sometimes only noticed by their white rumps, so well do they blend into the hillsides.

It's absolutely insane to drive to Lawton one day and return the next. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

1 comment:

Beth said...

Glad he is home! Sorry you missed the ceremony. And I hope you get to sleep some.