I have lived here before, on this new prairie I now call my own. I’m not referring to another lifetime, though I do believe in past lives. Right now, I mean in this life.
I visited family here every summer in my childhood and then lived here during high school, graduating in Oklahoma City….
This Oklahoma prairie is different from the one I left behind… It often appears to me as a green ocean. The green goes on for miles and miles. I wonder if it is like the view sailors see when they approach land.
Most of the towns here, even tiny specks in the road, have grain elevators that stretch high into the sky looking like prairie skyscrapers.
In Hopeton, the little town we now call home, I can see the elevators from Sally’s house 7 miles to the south and from Alva, the town where the kids go to school, 7 miles to the north. They rise up like a lighthouse in this green prairie ocean showing me the way home.
I’m in the mustard yellow house with a green roof, by the way… In a town of only about 20 houses, you can’t miss it.
This land is a land of tracks…One of the first days here I went for a walk down the section roads surrounding Sally’s house. I found the red dirt a veritable Grand Central Station of wildlife passing…
Even the wind leaves its mark as it passes…
I was charmed until I realized that one set of tracks were cougar tracks…. I now swim at the pool at the college instead of walking..
Just last night Sally’s son called reporting that about 3 miles down the road on the highway a deer ran across the road with a cougar hot on his tail… He said it wasn’t looking good for the deer.
I mentioned that I believe in reincarnation… Just for the record I don’t believe we come back as animals, though If I did I’d like to be one of my BFF Jan’s dogs… Just throwin’ that out to the Universe.
I mention reincarnation because I have come to believe that this land not only keeps track of passings but it may also retains souls.
Many of my family, myself included, have come and gone from here living other places, but two of my cousins, Sally & Julie have never left. There is no other place on Earth that could feel like home to them.
See, they both have speculations on who they were in past lives. No, it’s no one famous or glamorous but instead previous family members….
Julie has from an early age become excited whenever shown belongings of our great grandmother’s sister, Aunt Ola. As a child she would exclaim, “that’s mine” and proceed to snatch the item away swearing that it really did belong to her… Ola lived and died just north of here in Kansas…
I find Sally’s theory of her past life most interesting… She thinks she was her great great grandma Molly Keffer who lived a few miles East of here, and was a widow with 12 children.. It’s rumored that a notorious Oklahoma outlaw by the name of Dick Yaeger (also known as Zip Wyatt) would stop by her homestead every now and then and spend the night leaving a tired horse and taking one of her fresh ones…
Molly was rumored to be a very religious woman so I doubt if she showed him a “good time” but Sally thinks she would have been reliant and resourceful enough to have figured out a way to keep herself and her children safe by other means..
I imagine they had some very insightful conversations over a fire on those prairie evenings…
Hmmmm…. I don’t know what it all means, but for some reason known only to the Universe, I have returned to this place to start the next chapter of my life… I am believing it’s going to be the best chapter yet…I want to believe that there is a purpose to my learning...
Today we unloaded my trailer and set up the quilting machine… I have a lot to do but we’re all settling in nicely…
The Spirit Guides love it and are doing well…
I have much more to tell you… Adventures in online dating… The Golf Pro dumping the other woman….Soon I promise… But I better go start unpacking boxes….
Angels on your bodies.
Prairie Girl…
