The Ouachita National Forest.

March 27, 2014, Mount Ida, Arkansas (fairgrounds, 53 miles.)

I could drive again this morning; the swelling is almost gone and my eye feels like it’s nearly back to normal.
I enjoyed crossing the Ouachita National Forest, although most show drivers surely didn’t as it is mountain roads, the infamous “hilly and curvy” of the circus route. The town we are playing today boasts 917 people. I enjoyed the drive, reconnected with my morning ritual of driving meditation and gazing. The forest was beautiful, of course, even under low stormy skies, even with the banal poverty, the crappy yards, the dirty junk, the dilapidated everything - and there go I but for the grace of our circus job and blind fate.
It started raining hard shortly after we made it to the lot, yet another fairgrounds lot, surrounded by pine forest, beautiful if you don’t have to live there.