Memphis, Cotton Fields and Jim Croce

Passing over the Mississippi River just north of Memphis the weather got decidedly warmer. From 40 degrees the night before to seventy degrees that first full day. The land reminded me of Paul Simon's song Graceland, "The Mississippi Delta, Shining like a National Guitar", was stretching all the way to Memphis.... So cool, very different then the upper
Midwest. Here the land appeared so fertile, and even with November coming on summer seemed to linger. Here I got to see my first cotton fields, at least the first I could remember.

Most of the fields had already been harvested with big boxcar like bins lying at the end of the fields. Other fields with plants with loose cotton in the upper stems looked to be just waiting. A naive northerner, I know very little about an industry that has defined the south for so long.

Cottons fields in late October in Tennessee. 

I Didn't see much of Memphis, the freeway heads west to Little Rock before ever going into town. Knowing the Mississippi defines everything around it, I imagined Memphis too must be defined by it's might running right thru it.. I wanted to go into town and try some delicacy of southern cooking, but it would have to wait, again time was not on my side.

Patty Ann's in southern Tennessee

Interstate 40 took me towards Little Rock, cutting across the center of the state of Arkansas and to Interstate 30, and onward to Dallas. Never having been somewhere before all you can do is imagine what it is like when you look at a map. Living in the upper Midwest sometimes I feel we have a corner on the market when it comes to wildlife and wild places, especially the farther north you go. Of course this is true in ways, but I forget how many wild and beautiful places there are everywhere in the United States.

Driving down highways of beautiful tall pine trees with eagles hunting the ravines, with the pine scent and warm sun on me, Jim Croce's song about pine trees lining a winding road in Georgia came to mind. Its funny to travel and visit  places I have only visited in songs. Arkansas's beauty was another reminder that no place has the corner on beauty.......it can be found anywhere.

After having gone thru Arkansas and into Dallas at rush hour (just what I didn't want, a big city at rush hour), I traveled through skyscrapers in packed traffic looking for my freeway heading south to Waco. Here then would be the final push to the Mexican border. So I had come about 1500 miles and was north of Brownsville TX, my crossing point into Mexico.

The reservoir just before entering Dallas from the east. I believe its called the Hubbard reservoir (maybe after the astronomer?) In  the distant is the Dallas skyline.

Next Post: Texas, Oil Rigs, Palm Trees and a child of God.