Oct. 7, 2010

Yesterday morning I left Sallisaw, OK, at about 9:00 a.m., heading for The Ozark Medieval Fortress in Lead Hill, Arkansas.  The drive was about three hours including a couple of stops ... it wasn't enough miles to make it three hours, but about half of the drive was through hills with many twists.

My drive through the 60 some miles in Oklahoma were interesting.  The closer I got to the eastern border, the vegetation changed ... lots more trees, but the soil remained very red, as it had been all along the drive.  Driving on the highway, I passed in the opposing lanes, four trucks carrying four wind turbine blades.  I don't know if they were for a new turbine or if they might be replacement blades.  Wind energy is definitely a part of the western landscape!  The one thing that came to mind is that I hadn't seen a recognizable oil well in my drive across Oklahoma.  Today I saw a couple of the traditional wells in southern Illinois, but I didn't see any in OK ... surprise and wonder!  However, they may have changed the design of wells.  In Wyoming, where oil production may be taking over in the area of land wells, the wells were in sort of a large canister that looked like a small silo to me.  I did see similar structures in OK, but not a lot.  I crossed the Arkansas River and it was wide and blue ... it looked to be a great river for rowing!  Apparently the river is dammed up to make it navigable.

As I entered Arkansas and headed north, I started ascending into the Boston Mountains, which I'm pretty sure are part of the Ozark Mountain Range.  The soil in AK in the NW part of the state is also quite red, and the landscape reminds me of Maryland and West Virginia.

Farm land in the Ozarks

On my way north on I 540, I had passed a truck that was full of turkeys.  Thanksgiving is on the way!  These turkeys looked pretty scared; it was probably the wind, but they had another reason to be worried, I think.  Also, I saw a lot of poultry farms on the way to the Medieval Fortress and if you look near the horizon on the right side of the photo, you'll see a very large barn.  It's funny, whenever I saw a poultry farm, it seemed I would then pass a "Swift" truck.  That happened today, too.  I'd passed a free-range turkey farm in eastern Missouri, and then I saw a Swift truck on the road!   In the NW of Arkansas, the agriculture seemed to lean toward poultry, but I saw cattle, though the herds were much smaller than those in OK and TX.  I couldn't get a tell if they were beef or milk cattle.  For crop farming, hay and alfalfa seemed to be the plants.

Finally, at noon, I got to the Fortress, and it is cool! This project was started because of French citizens who retired in Branson, Missouri 20 years ago.  They had returned to France a few years ago and heard a man, Michel Guyot, talk about the castle he had restored.  He also stated that he wanted to build a castle, which he now has underway in France.  However, the U.S. retirees, Jean-Marc and Solange Mirat, offered him a piece of land in Arkansas where the Ozark castle/fortress is now under construction, using the building techniques of the 13th century.  They have several investors, and the rest is history ... for some reason that seems funny.  Anyway, I think I'll let my pictures tell this story.

A Motte (mound) and Bailey (yard) fortress ... used only for protection from enemies and surrounded by a moat.  The artisans built this as a model for comparison to the stone fortress.

All of the support artisans for the project are in residence.  They have carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, stonecutters, rope makers, potters, bakers, etc. The above picture is of the Goodwitch's farm ... she is responsible for the animals, making wool, and for gardening.  This is a great teaching center because every aspect of castle building is observable.

Branson students on a field trip, feeding the sheep.

Raised gardens with waddle borders.

This Belgium work horse pulls stones from the quarry to the castle site on a horse cart.  The woman feeding the horse grew up in Toledo, Ohio, she has a male relative from Ney, her husband is from Indiana, her daughter was in the Peace Corps in Romania and now teaches in a Montessori Charter School in Washington, D.C., and the woman and her husband live on a farm around Frederick, MD.  The world is so very small!

Bradley cuts each stone.  He was trained by a French stone-cutter who  comes and goes, but while I was there, Bradley was on his own.

Here Cody, the quarry cutter is teaching us how stone is cut along sedimentary lines. Stones are pulled to the site on a sled.

This water hole is inside the footprint of the castle.  The water is used to make mortar.

The sled used to pull stones. 

Look carefully to see the man inside the wheel.  He easily lifts stones this way.  The Romans developed this kind of wheel, and it allowed a single man to lift very heavy stones. 

An overall view of the progress that's been made in less than one year.

I took a tour with a very knowledgeable man, a retired university history teacher.  One of the most fascinating things he explained was the medieval measurement rope.  I had to buy one because it will remind me how they measured angles, lengths, widths, heights, even curves with the rope that was based on the "span" of the stone cutter's hand ... really amazing.  He also explained that the Middle Ages was different in different countries; that makes so much sense, but I'd never thought about it before ... it helps me to think of when the Renaissance began in different countries.  What an eye opener!  

This would be a great place to take children of all ages, and it's wonderful because it won't be finished for about 15 years.  So visits could happen every five years just to see the progress!

After leaving the fortress, I drove to Branson, Missouri, which is about 30 miles away.  Branson is an interesting place, but not really all that interesting to me.  I tried to find a show, but finally settled for watching the Dick Clark Show on a TV at the Dick Clark American Bandstand Grill where I ate the best New England Pot Roast dinner in the world.  Really, it was memorable!  Another memorable aspect of Branson is the hills.  They don't build switchbacks on their mountains, they just lay pavement on the steepest hill you can imagine.  Going into the parking lot of the motel where I stayed was almost frightening!  Fortunately, I found another entrance which was less intimidating.  In the early evening I went to the Old Town area of the city where they have built a huge shopping mall along the waterfront.  At dusk, and I imagine they do this every evening, they have a water/light/huge propane torch show set to music.  While I was there, they played the Star Spangled Banner and asked everyone to stand.  Then a recording of someone singing the anthem came on.  Soon the water geysers were shooting into the sky, and the large propane torches propelled fire into the air to mimic cannons; I thought it was kind of humorous, but people applauded at the end, and many had come to sit around the plaza for the express purpose of seeing this.

Tonight I am in Indiana, not far from where I spent the night of August 26th.  I feel again a bit like Lewis and Clark.  They returned to St. Louis ecstatically.  I went through the city today as well, and now I am once again in Lincoln country.  Emotionally, I am glad to touch base with these places again before I return home.  I hope my re-entry into normal life will progress more like Clark's did ... with a purpose ... and not like Lewis's, which ended terribly.  I think I will be fine, but boy has this been an exceptional journey!