Now Playing: (One of my favorites) Andrew Peterson, "Love and Thunder", Track 3. 


Today my mother, grandmother, Stephen, and I went to the Great Salt Plains. This was a very different experience than traveling in the clunky Buick with two other college girls. Stephen and I sat in the back seat, he studying Calculus, me reading over notes for the Literature GRE and vocabulary for the general GRE. My mother and grandmother discussed all sorts of small bits and pieces of news, and every time they saw a bird in the fields along the road, they would both exclaim as though it were an earth-shattering event.

The two-hour drive seemed much shorter than I remembered it, probably because I wasn't driving. We went north instead of south and drove along the auto trail first. The nature reserve was deserted. The early autumn morning hung like a flame in the trees, catalpas and cottonwoods turning yellow, elms already shedding their leaves, Virginia creeper and poison ivy neon red, clinging to trunks and branches. The gravel road wound between marshy areas. We saw a couple of deer grazing in beds of cattails, only their heads showing, looking like the heads of sea monsters gazing gravely at us from the thick mats of plants. 


Stephen also spotted a raccoon that vanished in a twinkle almost as soon as he pointed it out. Red-tailed hawks perched ponderously on treetops and vultures circled overhead.


At the head of the nature trail, we stopped, and Stephen and I were bundled off to walk the trail and bring back a thorough report of whatever wildlife we saw, while my mother and grandmother sat in the shade and waited. 


The woods were cool and beautiful. Huge withered catalpa leaves on the ground like discarded terrapin shells. We went out on the overlook to see the birds on the lake. Through the telescope we saw several pelicans with their ungainly heads tucked under their wings, a lineup of great white egrets and great blue herons fishing, and flocks and flocks of ducks and avocets skimming the water. 


Later, I sneezed, and a big brown bird, probably an owl, swooped down the tunnel under the trees above the path. Stephen spotted a doe and her fawn further along. We stopped and stared at them, and they raised their long necks and stared at us. They watched us unblinkingly as we stalked over the bed of silver cottonwood leaves. We were fairly close when the doe flicked her tail, and they galloped away into the trees.


We walked down to the grove of catalpa trees, which was eerie and beautiful. Catalpas can be such odd looking trees--they look as though they belong somewhere tropical because their leaves are so big. Along the path were huge fallen trunks like dinosaur bones. Overhead, cottonwoods going yellow were swathed in crimson creeper.


We ate lunch at the picnic shelter where mother dear and Grammy had been waiting for us. It was quite pleasant. Then we drove over to the dam. Of course we had to stop to explore a couple of the camp sites along the way. At the dam, Grammy stayed in the car, but the rest of us got out and climbed around. A great blue heron was fishing on one of the spillways. The air was full of seagulls, weaving around each other, wings flashing. At the top of the dam there was a flat barren space looking out toward the lake. Desolate, the salt flats a white stripe far away on the horizon.


Down on the red water of the river, three pelicans were fishing. They swam up the river, then turned and let it carry them downstream, dipping their beaks in sync into the water. 


Eventually, we drove through Jet over to the salt flats. Grammy had never seen them before and was absolutely amazed. They are an eerie sight: bare, white as snow, stretching away at water level so that you can't tell what is mirage and what is lakeshore in the distance. 


She stayed in the car, and again the rest of us got out and, armed with shovel and bucket, essayed the salt flats. By scooping just under the surface, we found crystals. The wind wasn't as strong today as it had been last time. We squatted in silence, speaking softly, the great open plain stretching terrifying away around us under a fierce blue sky. Crystals shone like glass in the sand. 


After about half-an-hour, we drove back to Stillwater. The car was very quiet. I read, and we listened to Bach. Stark contrast to the little battered towns through which we passed--nothing grand or Baroque about them, their stiff misery, empty storefronts and deserted houses. 


We were home by about half four.