You’ll find hauntingly memorable things!
I was recently sent to Oklahoma for training so I revisited some places from my first trip here, and time seems to have stood still. It was as if nothing had changed, no global pandemic had transformed it, it was all exactly the same as when I last left.
Nestled against the Quartz Mountains, just outside of town. One right off the highway and a left down the road a bit. The fast food restaurants and vacancy signs quickly give way to cotton fields and tumbleweeds. The view is endlessly flat with the exception of a few stony protrusions that reach desperately towards the sky.
Time: the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.
As you turn on to Oklahoma Road 44 you find yourself paralleling some old railroad tracks, wondering if you’ll see the Quartz Mountain Flyer again, but those days have long gone. The impending mountains grow taller and taller with each passing mile. Abandoned structures litter the roadside, a constant reminder of a bygone era. I pulled to the roadside to see if there were any signs of life. Standing in the radiating heat I found myself alone, in absolute silence, with only the sound of leaves rustling in the wind reminding me life was not on pause. It was here that I took a few moments to absorb the scenery of what seemed to be a place that time forgot.
Winding up the road felt like I was peering through a phenakistiscope, with everything appearing as it did many years ago, even as time relentlessly moved on. Amusement rides that I had only seen in history books stood beside the road, luring your eyes in with their whimsy. To be a child again and look up at the tremendous heights they reached, standing in awe. Today rust has taken the place of that gleam, and the rides sit in wait, hoping time with set them free from this motionless existence.
Far from the fast paced rumble of today’s existence, beyond the screens we hold up to our faces, this world exists, absent the reminders that wear our souls down to the core. The sun beats down, toughening and browning your skin. The gentle breeze bounces off the mountains, weaves through the trees, and crosses your nose with a fresh deep breath. You close your eyes and think back on stories your grandparents and great grandparents told you, and in this setting they begin to make sense. Time was much simpler then, there were not a million little things pulling you to and fro, battling for your attention. It was about living, and living well.
It makes you wonder if this place lives on to be a reminder that life and existence are simple, we are just making it…overly complicated. What’s old is becoming new again and what is new is becoming old. The cycle continues as we refuse to acknowledge the repetitive nature of it all. Take pause and understand that life is meant to be lived. Not tomorrow. Not eventually. Life is meant to be lived as we encounter it. Absent of the joys we encounter along the way, life is perilous and untenable. Do the things that make you smile, no matter how simple.
As the rust colored mountains fill the rearview mirror, the highway meanders back towards the glow of life rushing by on the horizon. Tumbleweeds roll lazily across the highway as if time was waving goodbye yet again, inviting you back when you need a pause. There are many places like this around the world, waiting for you to find them. Waiting for you to take your moment. Waiting for you to pause. Waiting for you to reflect. Waiting for you to remember. They’ll always be there, unchanged in our memories, keeping alive their stories as long as we continue to share them.
Have you found your place where time stands still?
JetSetGOConnor 