Change and the Melancholy of Impermanence...

Friday noontime, Texas County, Oklahoma. Lunch rush. Not a drive-through window as far as the eye can see, nor water. And out here you can see a damn long piece. Just the rattlesnakes and the racerunners and the horned lizards and the mule deer and the blues and the bobs and the mourning dove and the roadrunners and the wind and the sky and me. It's a little off the beaten path, and the menu's pretty basic, but the ambiance beats the hell out of McDonald's, I'd say. After eating my lunch I place a quarter on the tabletop, just for grins. I will come back in the fall with the dogs, chasing quail, and I will see if anyone has taken my quarter. I'm betting not. It's a lonely place, one of my favorite places, but why is there a gubment-issue picnic table high on this lonely, abandoned bluff overlooking a dry valley? Interesting story, that. But that's another blog post...


A little farther down the lonely road...

Eureka School, Texas County, Oklahoma. Only barn swallows and memory occupy these halls now. The last student walked out the doors in 1969. The plains are full of such ghost schools, abandoned and forgotten. They are sad, haunting places. I poke around in the ruins for a few minutes, then get in the car and drive off, pondering the impermanence of everything. I've been doing that a lot lately. It's something of a prerequisite for life on the plains. Or anywhere, really. And then, a few minutes later, another reminder of impermanence and change...

  
Round bales slowly being buried on the side of the highway, Texas County, Oklahoma. All that picture needs is a rusty Ford Model A and a gaunt farm wife leaning into the wind and you'd think it came from the shutter of some WPA photographer in the 1930s instead of May, 2014. The wheel of life spins round and round and round...

Change is all around us, I suppose. Some of it is subtle, and some of it is stark. However, for better or worse, it is the only true state of being. To think otherwise is arrogant folly. Change may quicken or it may slow to an eon crawl that fools us into believing that what we hold fervently dear will always be, but change always laughs last, whether it's a lake, a school, or maybe an entire region. Who the hell knows?