Most distances are counted in miles but the trip I took yesterday was not in miles but it was backward in years; well over a hundred of them. Richard and Linda asked me to accompany them to a scenic spot over in the great state of Oklahoma. I’d like to tell you a little about it. The house sits on a knoll, a white, two-storied wood structure, which figured prominently in early day Indian Territory and Cherokee history. Grassy grounds slope gently to a spring house whose icy, clear stream splashes through the woods. And the trees! It is easy to think that many of them gazed down on riders on horses and ladies and gentlemen in buggies, people of the nineteenth century for whom this dignified house was the hub of their community.
A split rail fence zig zags around part of the property and a small cemetery lies near-by, testimony of how precarious life was in those early days. The house’s history may not have been a peaceful one but that’s the feeling that surrounds it today: peace and stillness, the richness of nature. Birds of varied colors make their nests in the ancient trees, a striped lizard hides quickly when he hears us coming, a brilliant blue dragonfly lights briefly on a limb by the spring, and a frog takes a flying leap into water. Bees find as much pollen as they can carry in the blossoms of wildflowers and I can only hope this lovely page from the past remains as it is, quiet, clean, unspoiled by human hands, a legacy of yesterday.
Murrell Home?
Nope.