St. Francois State Park in Bonne Terre, MO has a clean creek, shallow river, and great trails full of decaying trees and lead mine holes.

He showed me his latest works in progress that already looked stunning.  We talked for a few hours about his start in music, his Welsh and Dutch heritage, the value of helping new musicians, his apprentices, how cool he thinks his wife is, and so many other things. He had great stories, and was also interested in hearing mine. When occasion arises to talk about the visit I made to Ozark, it gives me joy to tell other people about Mr. Wynn. He is truly one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I have ever had the pleasure to sit down with.

His shop was dusty, filled with years upon years of pictures, books, inlay scraps, instruments, knick knacks, tools, bluegrass DVDs, festival fliers and American flags. Here’s a video of Mr. Wynn playing “The World is Waiting for the Sunrise” with video pans around his workspace:

His talent really floored me, and he admitted it wasn’t easy. But, my goodness, the man made it seem so fluid. My grandmother nearly melted when I showed her the video, and she asked if I would put it on a CD.

I bought a mandolin last week, and my hope was, honestly, to get good enough to justify purchasing a nice one made by Mr. Wynn. I’m so sad to hear about his death, but maybe I can honor him by following through with learning how to play.  I hope to upload more videos of him as soon as I get time.

• John Wynn’s website
• News-Leader life story about John Wynn
• Tribute letter at the Bluegrass Blog

Every time I went into a restaurant in Mound City, the workers would stand up from a dining table and hop to taking my order and making my food. In Quacker’s, the waitress was smoking, but she knew everyone by name. They set the television to the Weather Channel and decorated with stuffed waterfowl, some deer, and a bobcat. I think there was a picture of Jesus holding a gun tacked next to the door, but I forgot to check on my way out.

Worth a second look. If I’m ever that far northeast again.

MENU + 7 + 5 = ALARM CLOCK
Alarm: On
Time: 6:15 AM

At least these plants sat still for me.

So I dutifully woke up early, arrived at the park just after 7 a.m. and . . . got rejected by visitor after visitor. Some were default rejections, since most everyone bikes/runs/rollerblades/Trikkes the 2-mile loop. Others were resistant, several were avoidant, and one woman taught me to use a Trikke but wouldn’t be on camera, so made her five-year-old son do the interview instead.

Similar story at the Visitor’s Center.  Not even the travelers from Holland would talk to me.

Later in the day, five minutes before the VC closed, I asked a straggling couple if they would help and got one of the most detailed, energetic interviews I’ve done in three weeks. I then went to the park part of the park (MODOT closed the old 66 bridge, so now the park’s split in half . . .  that’s a whole other story), where only 2 cars were parked, and thought about calling my boss to warn her I’d have sub-par footage.

Then lo, I spotted a couple in the picnic area. They turned out to be huge fans of Route 66 State Park and were happy to help promote it. Whenever the wife isn’t working, she said they go there to grill, swim and ride their bikes—about four times a week. Even the sad past of Times Beach had a silver lining, as they could pick out where old houses once sat by the way plants grew. Way cool.

In addition to being incredibly nice, this couple owned sweet bikes.

They felt like they owned the park, and that’s what I fell in love with at Route 66. People use it. And if it weren’t a park, it would no doubt give way to suburban development. No, thank you.

And the place is pretty, in a quirky way, with its big sky, ornamental bushes and huge herds of deer. It’s like the high school counselor who got into psychology after he had a bad run-in with drugs but is now clean, excited, and full of rad personality. Everyone liked that guy.

This is a gem of a park, and I needed more than two days to capture it — a week, maybe, with morning hikes, cool afternoons inside Fisher Cave, night time s’mores at a campfire’s edge . . . and somewhere in there a float trip, because the water carries you and the people act friendly and I have nothing to lose except time.

The North Shelter is a gem in itself — designed after old CCC plans, it’s won an award for something (I’ll look into that). I can attest to its watertightness, as I spent an evening transferring files there as a huge thunderstorm pounded around me. So, that’s cool, but if you head toward the picnic tables, keep walking. Behind each table is a short path to a blufftop, where you can get a fantastic view of Stockton Lake. Perfect for sunrises, sunsets and stargazing, as long as the sky stays clear.

And there are some more industrial curiosities. Asphalt by the marina looks like it terminates at the lot (because of an upward slope), but keep driving. This leads to more parking that exposes some docks and serves as a flood lot for whenever the lake level is high. But that’s not the cool part.

Did you ever think about where boat trailers go to die? I didn’t until I caught sight of an eerie clearing behind this second lot. It houses all the trailers that carried rental craft as well as some old boats and sailboats. Raised and naked, they look so out of place among the uncut grass and rabbit colonies. Keep this in mind if you want to shoot a suspense film; it’s definitely worth a scene.

More thoughts to come…for some reason I can’t preview posts, so I just have to publish them. Also, I should be writing an article right now.

I enjoyed the park’s Nyblad Trail. It connects the east and west campsites and has a few spurs to the camper cabins and some lakefront. Park staff seem excited to forge a new 1.25 mile trail with the help of the SPYC workers, and I’m excited as well. There’s a lot of unexplored territory there, and while the lake is pretty and all, I’d rather take a hike.

Here are my favorite pictures from the weekend:

Expect a few more thoughts about Stockton (I’m editing videos right now) and then some news from Meramec and Deutschheim.

There will be blood.

It began in 1882. “OIL IN MISSOURI,” the headline announced. “AN ALLEGED DISCOVERY OF PETROLEUM IN VERNON COUNTY.” The prospectors salivated.

But if Daniel Plainview was out for milkshakes, he probably knew to stick his straw elsewhere. Missouri’s crude runs thick and shallow — more like a plate of hot fudge than a glass of ice cream and milk.

The Columbia Missourian article “Tapping Missouri’s crude economy” examines the state’s oil prospects. Messy and complicated, they’re largely unpromising — until gas prices spike.

Our state’s western edge saw a brief oil rush in the 1980s. Then in 2008, Vernon County landowners decided $100 barrel prices were worth reinvesting in broken infrastructure, navigating complicated mineral rights, and taking chances on unexplored land for sub-par oil hundreds of miles from the nearest refinery. I’d like to research how it’s going now.

Lest we forget

In the wake of the BP disaster, old parables reemerge. One is more local than I could have imagined.

In 1988 in Vienna, Mo., Guy Wittler watched as a burst Shell pipeline “turned the Gasconade’s clear-green waters a sickly black.” A recent article recounts similarities between the current gulf spill and the Missouri debacle, including public anger, damaged ecosystems and corporate cover-ups:

“Shell downplayed the severity of the spill. At first, it said only 120,000 gallons of oil had escaped. Then it would comment only on how much oil it had recovered — about 300,000 gallons, estimating that accounted for 90 percent of the spill.

The state Department of Natural Resources threatened a subpoena before Shell admitted the oil spill was at least 840,000 gallons, a number that would rise again. Shell said it delayed reporting a figure only because it wanted to be accurate.”

That’s less than the 60,000 barrels leaking into the gulf each day, but it was still shocking at a river’s scale. It was still unnecessary.

If we’re to solve anything — which, clearly, we must — we have to reflect on the big picture. The answer isn’t to drill closer to home or to drive up regulation. It’s to stop using oil. To stop driving cars, to stop using plastic bags. To educate ourselves on what uses oil, and then to invent a better, cleaner way to produce it. Only then might the disasters cease.

(But in the Midwest, where we’re married to cars and living hundreds of miles from any inky gulfs, how can that culture change happen?)

Anyway, as I described my hike on Arkansas’s Ozark Highland Trail, a friend interjected — “the real Ozarks.”

Excuse me?

See? Higher elevation.

My hometown is in the northern Ozarks, and although the hills are shallow, they’re still hills, they’re still pretty, and they’re still part of the plateau. The range has to end somewhere, I’m glad to live on the receiving end of its northern stretch.

Aggravating Point #2 arose when the same person mentioned the “Great Plains.” I was confounded. “We’re not in the Great Plains!” garnered some tongue in cheek reply about being closer to them than to real mountains. Grumble. I guess.

Two things:

1. It’s awesome to live somewhere where so many geological elements come together, even if their convergence creates a topographic muddle.
2. If I can tease Taum Sauk, I need to be able to take a little mountain mockery.