Oklahoma Late Summer Life

This is what my part of Oklahoma looks like in the late summer when fall is hiding just around the bend along the gravel road. Trees grow along meandering creek beds, hazy low-lying hills surround us.

It is full of sights like grazing cows in pastures littered with yellow wildflowers, goldenrod, sneeze-weed, coreopsis, and sunflowers. There are cattle here, black Angus, black and white splotched Holstein, brown and white speckled longhorns, red and white Herefords, bison like shaggy brown ghosts of the past. There are Sicilian donkeys acting as herd guards, mules and donkeys, and the hump-backed Charolais and Brahmas. Horses race across the land tails flying, graze on the summer grasses, and lazily brush flies from their backs with those tails.

You can see a long way in this part of the world across fields of corn stubble and dried soybean pods. Huge rolls of cut hay dot fields waiting to become winter meals for the herds.

Though you may only see one cow in this photo there is life everywhere. Every inch is full of life.

Pastures are lined with barbed wire. Wild blackberry vines, honeysuckle vines and pink wild roses sprawl along the lengths. Thickets of wild plums grow in ungrazed spaces. Hawks and eagles soar overhead, watching for field mice, rats, rabbits, fish, birds, and snakes too. Owls sit still in the trees along the creek banks or on an abandoned barn’s rafters waiting to call in the night. Crows command the light of day strutting, cawing and stealing pecans. Turkey buzzards wheel in lazy circles looking for the dead or dying.

Windmills power pumps to fill water troughs for thirsty cattle. Many ranches are blessed with ponds for the animals to cool off in and drink from. Great Blue herons, white herons stalk there and fly robotic-like with legs stretched out behind them. Snowy egrets, meadowlarks, mourning doves, and mockingbirds, sparrows, cardinals, hummers and bluebirds all find homes here with hundreds of other birds. Swarms of honey bees, bumblebees, wasps, and mud-daubers, buzzing flies, cicadas, ants, beetles, and furry caterpillars, busy becoming butterflies and moths, are everywhere.

Turtles trundle across roads and through ditches. Snakes and lizards warm themselves on rocks. Guinea hens, quail, and chickens cackle and run here and there in their little coveys. Wild turkeys strut through woods and pastures. Rabbits, skunks, rodents, possums, and armadillos all have their places––their spaces in the landscape. Coyotes slink across fields like the creatures of stealth they are. When night comes, they will howl in the moonlight––a joyous, raucous, amazing sound.

It is not a lonely place––this land––it teems with life.

The sun, which baked it in the long hot summer and grew fine corn, beans, and wheat, sets earlier each day with a purple-pink glow above the humble hills.

It is enough to make you want to sing out loud to the wonderful Oklahoma sky.