lomaLinda: beautiful earth

This weblog will be a place where I post pictures taken on and around our property in the Ouchita National Forest.

I wish I'd taken more pictures back when we first got the place. The grounds were heavily overgrown with scrub brush and the buildings in need of much repair. It is ours though. Thanks to Eva Lou and her sister.

Eva Lou felt the place needed us as much as we needed it. They could have gotten more money for it. Even from kin-folk. This is the kind of area that kin close ranks around. Outsiders don't move in easily. In her lucid days Eva let me know that she not only welcomed me as a neighbor, but appreciated having us here.

Later when Roslyn was born, Eva Lou would sit on the porch of her house up the hill and just watch Roslyn playing in the same fields and woods that she'd played in herself as a young girl.

Eva told us tales of when this valley was called Cougar Run by the old timers. And how Freedom Road got it's name because when the outlaws got this far the Hanging Judges Marshalls had little chance of cornering them or cutting them off.

These East and West running Washboard ridges, thick wood laced with creeks and caves, with two cuts through the Poteau Mountain chain with the Oklahoma Territories close by made a posse's job tough. This is the area where Belle Star brought what was left of the gang after Frank and Jesse disappeared. Several of the local caves claim to be their hide-out and stash although the best accounts say the money was hidden in a cave on the Oklahoma side.

Eventually, I hope to make the property pay off by using it as a showcase for watergardens, fountains, and cultivated native growing plants and trees that I'll use for landscaping jobs.

I also hope to rent sites for motor homes, travel trailers, and campers without using asphalt, concrete, and clutter. Maybe put together some outdoors activities to take advantage of natural local resources for folks that feel crowded and commercialized in the Ozark Mountain Region.

Rivers and lakes within an easy radius have something to offer everyone from Pro's to lazy drifters, and fishermen. The hiking and camping don't get much better. Local hunting, in season, has already made it's own reputation.