Do you enjoy traveling? I enjoy people and hearing their stories, so traveling just expands more opportunities for stories and people to love. Our cottage is surrounded by ranches in Oklahoma and farms, My morning drives are much more likely to see cows than commerce.
We live near Fayetteville, Arkansas. It’s only about an hour and a half away from home…yet it’s a whole world away from where our home is in Delaware Couunty.
The first time I experienced Fayetteville my brothers’ were coming to college here. A five-hour drive, big buildings and so many students with backpacks it felt like a big city for a girl who hailed from a town of less than 3,000. The University had many more students than our town had people. The buildings were beautiful and there were so many places to eat out is what I remembered as a child.
Fayetteville is the mecca in Arkansas. The place where dreams come true, artists flourish, and college is attended. It’s a sophisticated place and cutting edge in many of the fields of study worldwide.
Today I was on campus for a media shoot for a client and I was reminded of just how much energy Fayetteville brings to those who live here. It’s a vibrant, expectant pace and you cannot help but know that something is happening all around you. The sky was perfectly blue and the students were in their first week back to campus. Everyone seemed to be excited. It was fun to see.
Fayetteville has a vibe of change. Of holding onto things that matter yet innovating things that are ready to be improved. The landscape of Fayetteville is ever-changing, building and renovating and that was fun to see too.
In my twenties, I taught at the University, and at a local school district. I loved my time at a now-defunct elementary school and I miss the professors I worked with, most of who have passed on. We did program creations and innovations for students with learning disabilities and developed the MAT of Education, a 5-year program for educators that was groundbreaking in the way it trained teachers in that era. It was exciting work that lives today.
It’s now thirty years later than those days and yet coming to the Square for Famers Market feels much the same. It’s a transporting place where years feel like days away.
Today I am still in the city and will be part of a culinary photo shoot for an award-winning cookbook. I’ll be hearing the stories of an inn’s kitchen staff and how it all came together. It’ll be a day I can begin with a favorite bakery’s sausage roll, buy “store-bought” coffee Mountain Bird Coffee (my favorite) and see an old friend or two at the end of the day. Autumn is beginning to show in a cooler morning this morning on the mountain, and that again reminds me that this is Fayetteville, our Ozark’s mecca of all things the University of Arkansas.
What are you doing today?
