Driving South Journal

5:30 pm: 140 words for my intended Twitter entry telling the story of a drive from Kansas City, Missouri to Eureka Springs, Arkansas--can't do it. There are too many words in my head. Noon: 71 S from Kansas City's 85th Street, a comfortable drive along white/gray pavement. Subaru and I drove between huge trucks for about for about 20 miles out of town when traffic abruptly dwindled to slight. Some road construction but mostly I drove on a clean smooth highway with flat green fields through west central toward southern Missouri and into northern Arkansas. The car easily rolled along the Ozark Hills reaching valleys up ahead toward Bella Vista (which is really south ahead). Colors were fantastic. Burnt orange grasses--orange with yellow with red presenting lovely ribbons around hill and valley. Between green grasses and gray road rock, a hill was vertically cut making room for new stretches of highway 71 S. Rather than protest this cutting of the land (my usual behavior) I fell into an uncensored appreciation for the marvelous coral stripes, gray stripes and the blinding white crumbly stone--a sight so beautiful my heart could not hold back a cry of awe while all words walked out of my head. As I quite literally drove through the golf courses of Bella Vista the sky seemed to be stroked into a color of light blue giving a temperature of 71 degrees with a gentle breeze. Woods in Arkansas are evergreen with dogwoods, red buds and white buds peeking out from under the skirts of deep green cedars. Kansas City's NPR traveled with me for about 11/2 hours into the drive after which I found a classical station from the University of Pittsburgh (KS)--nice selections kept me traveling forward (south) to Rogers where I switched to iPod and Autumn Leaves, a New Age ensemble and a perfect sound for the up and down, zig and zag through the hills surrounding  Eureka Springs where all roads are up, unless they are down. So tired to be here at last my dinner consisted of dark cherry iced tea and warm coconut pudding leaving me deeply grateful for Cindy, the chef at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow.