I visited the Gilcrease Museum here in Tulsa earlier this week. They have a lot of nice exhibits going on but what really struck my eye was a great big cottonwood tree right outside a giant window that was shimmering in the wind so I made a brief video of it and posted it on social media.
Cottonwood in South Dakota
A cousin from South Dakota told me that she thought the Lakota Tribe called the cottonwood, the Tree of Talking Leaves. I have googled a lot and have not been able to confirm that that is true but have found a lot of references that the tribe holds the tree sacred and represents a magical time of hope, healing, and transformation.
Cottonwoods in Tulsa
I have always liked cottonwood trees but never much thought about them until my cousin’s remark and then I thought, you know I have lived all over the west, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico and they all have cottonwood trees. I think they may be a symbol of the west, where the west includes the midwest. I just love seeing and hearing their leaves when the wind is blowing.
Late in life, the Cottonwood is now the Talking Leaves Tree to me as well.
I went hiking the other day and found this tree with all the branches on one side. It looks a little ghostly to me actually. And of course I liked the blue sky.
This shot is from a few weeks ago during a family hike on Tulsa’s Turkey Mountain. I thought this pair of ragged but tough trees looked a like fighting sisters really going after it. Or maybe they are dancing? But they look too angry to be dancing. What do you think? And yep, there is a sky behind them.
True confessions, this isn’t the streetcar I rode out to Audubon park on.
I’m here in New Orleans at a convention but Monday morning is mainly convention business meetings so I got up and had me a parfait from Starbucks cuz I’m trying to be healthy at least for a few hours and then I walked up Poydras Street from the hotel to St. Charles and caught the streetcar from there to Audubon Park.
I have been to New Orleans several times now but have never set foot on a street car because I was unsure how one paid and where they went and so on and kind of worried about the safety of it all especially since former New Orleans Saint football player Will Smith was murdered in the Garden District just a day or so ago and Audubon Park is in the Garden District.
My first New Orleans geocache in several years. Boy did I take heat on facebook for this. Everybody is going “Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Hey, you take care of you, and I’ll take care of me! Deal.!?
I checked the world wide interwebs and it was kind of strange. People said that despite the New Orleans being the murder capital of the USA, they didn’t feel nervous about putting their garbage out late at night. Whoa, it had never occurred to me to worry about taking the garbage out anywhere I have lived. Should I startt?
Well, I was very brave. I headed out on the streetcar without a weapon, not even a knife or even pepper spray.
Well guess what, Audubon Park is pretty mellow, people walking their dogs, coeds from Loyola and Tulane jogging (how come lots more young women run than men???) old folks walking their dogs. It was a very chill scene (did I say that right? I’m an old guy and I know that I risk making a fool of myself when I pretend that I’m hip.) (Although at this point, I’m beyond caring what people think.)
Anyways I didn’t go to the Zoo. I walked the two miles around the golf course and it was nice. Huge old oak trees.
Lots of them, and I took lots of pics of them. The trees are alive!!
This looks like a former street to me. Trees and lights on both sides. What’s up.
They have paved trails with politically correct divisions between bikers and runners and dirt trails also.
And some dinosaur looking birds which I think are cormorants but I’ve come to find out that there are a gazillion different types of cormorants as well.
So I walked a little over two miles, took a trip out and a trip back on the Streetcar and started the convention in a very chill mood which I have maintained through the whole day.
And so I was able to visit the L.A. Turbines Voodoo Chapel and get rid of some bad ju ju and reinfore good ju ju. I love a vendor owned by a Belgian, don’t you? Especially one who is generous with Belgian Beer.
These trees are in the town of Clinton of Custer County in western Oklahoma. If you’ve ever been to Custer County you might think that trees are so few that might be illegal. The land is dominating by large expanses of wheat and grazing land and there are no forests. Trees are confined to draws and gullys and in parks along lakes and such. So sometimes fence rows. So when you find a big expansive tree like this you take notice.
Umpteen years ago, who knows how many, somebody tied these two trees together at two levels with a very stout and thick cable. Now the trees have grown and the cable is part of the tree. Who knows why? Turkey Mountain is now a popular park in Tulsa but formally it had lots of oil wells, and hardscrabble rocky farms, and by legend alcohol stills. Many relics of its past are still on the mountain, foundations for oil well pump jacks, farmhouse cisterns and foundations, old flow lines and such.
I just love finding clues to its past and wondering what in the world happened.
Son and I went on a walk around a local park in Tulsa last weekend. I liked the look of many of the trees that lost their leaves. You can see their arms now and their arms look like they are dancing.
I used Topaz Lab’s “Glow” software to emphasize the “arms” on this tree.
