I love the woods. Always have. I remember as a kid "cutting across" from our house on Chestnut Ridge Road to Christine's house on Sand Creek Road through the woods and hoping like hell I was right about which way the sun came up. (Those who know me will understand my lack of navigational ability and the importance of which way I was going.) And thinking it cool finding planks someone else had nailed to a tree chasing the lofty goal of building a tree house. And stopping for a couple of minutes to swing on the grapevine. Really... I love the woods.
One of my very favorite features of these Ozark "woods" are the flat-ish granite "outcroppings" with a surrounding cleared area. Those are the best places to cop a squat, build a little twig fire with the lighter you snuck out of the house and roast a marshmallow that you snagged when you grabbed the lighter. They're also good places to practice your clarinet when Mom and Dad are past the point of squeak overload. The clarinet case, handily enough, was a great place to secret the lighter and marshmallows - but don't tell my Mom. :)
The woods here is no less awe inspiring and peace bringing than the woods I grew up in. They're actually very similar, except our homestead is a bit hillier. Right down to those granite campsites! I've posted this picture before, but here's Craig on my favorite outcropping:
Behind me in the picture above (I'm taking the picture) is an awesome "Bent Tree". The stories I've always heard about bent trees are that the native Americans bent saplings to point to water. I have no idea if that's true, or if there's some other explanation - maybe neighboring trees dying and falling on the sapling, then rotting away. There's more magic in the native American version, so that's the one I'm sticking with. I did some research and found that the Osage tribe was pretty active in this area - I fully expect to find arrowheads and other artifacts this spring. Here's the bent tree:
Maddy and I followed the direction the tree was pointing and found a creek, but it was just a normal spring/fall creek like all the others in these hills. I wish there was a way to tweak these copious wet-weather creeks to better serve drainage and irrigation needs - that's a research topic for another time. If you were to stand by the bent tree and look in the direction it's pointing, it does look very path-like... see below:
There are a couple other features in this particular spot that make me think folk have lived and played here.
One of the features that puzzles me is the marring of the granite on some of the big rocks. There are grooves that look like they've been scratched into the rock. Now - granite's pretty darn hard, so this could be nothing man or animal caused. I'll be experimenting to see if I can scratch up some granite to match the markings shown below, or see if I can find other stones with these grooves in them. For now I think I'll pretend that someone sat here and ground acorns, hickory nuts and black walnuts into meal with another stone. :)
The other thing that makes me go "hmmm" about this area is the rock cairn below. I have no idea if it's anything at all, or a natural deposit of stones, someone more modern playing around in the area, or a Sidhe castle, but it's pretty honkin' cool! All the granite stones around the area are just beautiful. It would seem that there should be a market for all this granite, opening up another revenue stream. But, by the time you could transport them anywhere that didn't cost the moon any customer you speak to would say, "Buy those boulders? Hell, no! But while you have your truck here, could you pick up all those rockpiles in my field?"
Just for fun, here's a satellite photo of the area. The outcropping is the red square and the bent tree points the direction of the white arrow. (Terraserver rocks for doing fun and cool things with satellite maps of your homestead!)
We do want to do a good bit of development of the farm, but you can bet that I'll be leaving a good portion of the woods intact for my own peace.
