Wings and Water

Myra went to work at her office at the Arnold Air Base where she works with a 20 person team in Air Force contract placement.  Dave went to work on the new barn he is building at he and Myra’s new 10 acre property about 6 miles away. Mona washed two loads of laundry and I washed Toad and Frog.  Oh how they like being clean! 

Well, its their first bath since Hygiene, Colorado back in June. We’ve learned there is no point in washing the vehicles any more often than we must.  After all, all four of us live on the road!  Mona says I still have to bathe daily though.

After lunch Mona and I drove over to Arnold for a tour of the air base with Myra.  I think this may be the only US air base without an air field. This is the location where America and her allies do all sorts of specialized lab testing in aerodynamics.  Some of the world’s largest or most precise wind tunnels are here. I wasn’t to take any pictures inside the base but I did get one of Myra in her office.  She told me later I really shouldn’t have.  Oops!

The three of us next headed over to the Coffee County Fairgrounds where Myra has won a couple of ribbons for children’s dresses she made.  Go Myra!  She says less and less entrants place their items at the fair every year.  Times change. Less sewing, canning, and growing?  Maybe we need a really big sunspot to turn off the 

                                                electricity for awhile.

Then Mona, Myra and Dave met at the house and they decided to go see the new property the Klines have purchased.  They own their current lovely house and outbuildings on about 3 acres of land but bought the new 10 acres to build a completely new home, and to raise horses.  Not thoroughbreds.  Myra says Dave wants to have a few miniature horses, and she’d like a couple of riders.

She does own Candy, her Tennessee Walker, but poor Candy is all alone.  I’m not so sure Candy doesn’t mind the quiet, or the attention she gets 100% of, but I guess she’ll find out.  Myra also told us they plan to raise about 100 bales of hay a year on the place, with a local farmer and his equipment, to help feed the herd.

I left the fair in TOAD and toured nearby Old Stone Fort State Park.  No, there is no fort, at least so far as any historian can make out. But over 200 years ago, when pioneers discovered the 45 acres of high plateau at the confluence of two beautiful streams ringed by a high manmade wall of stones that’s what they thought it must have been and the name stuck.

Built by ‘Woodland’ prehistoric Indians archeologists believe that about 2,000 years ago, and for a total of about 500 years, this was a ceremonial and seasonal gathering site, not a town, for mound builders of the Mississippian Indians who would gather at certain times of the year to worship here.

The stone wall is 1 ½ miles long and is easily discernible through the thick woods, where it hasn’t been cut through by a road, or a paper mill that was built here in the late 19^th century.  The stone mill looks more like a ruin than the wall does now.

I only had time to visit a small section of wall, and one of the several gorgeous waterfalls at the park. The falls themselves are very unique and historians believe they alone, without the lovely joining of two such creeks at one place, would have brought the Indians here to mark this obviously sacred site.

A question occurred to me as I watched the water tumble lightly over the shale and slate, chert and clay creek bed from one level down to the next: What places have I been that would bring me back to feel the presence of God over and over again?  The woods of Camp Gretna Glen, where I attended church camp every summer of my adolescence.

The Grand Canyon- I could sit down anywhere on the south rim all sunny day and just be mesmerized by the flow of colors as the sun passes overhead and colors the walls opposite differently each minute.

Here.  Yes, I would like to come back here.  And Mona missed it today so I just may have to come back with her before we leave Manchester.  And Myra says we MUST come back to visit her and Dave again. So there.

Tomorrow its off to a 2 year olds birthday party. One of Myra’s grand-baby’s, daughter Mary’s. They live about an hour and a half away. Dave has to stay and work on the barn. I’m taking my camera to the party.

-Ken