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I just got back from a markedly nice overnight trip to Hiwasse, Arkansas, to visit my father-in-law and the step-family (which accounts for the timing of this post; I was not in a position to write until now).  It was a good experience, one which fed me abundantly in terms of actual food and in terms of more...ephemeral nourishment; I know that I am prone to falling into ruts of routine, digging myself deeper with each rotation, until all I can see are the walls of the trench into which I have worked myself.  Having the chance to pull myself out of the trench and get to see hills and trees instead was certainly welcome, and I feel refreshed because of it.

That I do is perhaps odd; I am not outdoorsman, to glory overly much in the natural world away from my books and the many flows of human information upon which I feed in earnest.  I am very much a man of the city or of the suburbs, valuing what concentrations of people allow, and I am hardly suited by temperament or skill to life away from grocery stores and Internet connections.  I thrive on being at ease and surrounded by my things, as I have discussed, and the agricultural world of tilled earth, braying ass, and lowing cattle does not promote ease--the lives of the farmer and rancher are filled with toil, as I am aware from my family and personal histories.  Nor yet does the wild world of forest and fenland, and Hiwasse straddles the two.

Even so, I do have an appreciation for the splendors of the rural world.  I have written of nocturnal beauties.  In another place, I have written of the glory of the Texas Hill Country in wildflower season.  Even with as citified as I am, I am aware of and grateful for the labors of field hand and range-rider on my behalf; I know that my food must be gotten from the soil and raised on the land, and I do not scorn those whose labors conduce to those ends.  Too, my family history lies in the unending farmlands of the American Midwest, and my personal history in the Texas Hill Country saw me raised among the sons and daughters of the cowboys' legacy.  A person can hardly help having some...love of the land who has had such circumstances.

Being reminded of that foundation from time to time is a good thing, and the recent trip to Arkansas served as such a reminder.  Having had it will help me to return to my other work, to The Work, with renewed vigor and a clearer mind (or so I hope), my strength restored through contact, even tangential (for it is not from the Ozarks that those of my people whom I have known have come), with the kind of life that my biological and cultural forebears lived.  I am thankful for it, and I look forward to putting that renewal to good use in the days and weeks to come.