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After we finished up at the 15th-annual Woody Guthrie Festival in Okemah this weekend, the husband and I headed southeast. There are mountains down there, he told me—one of the oldest mountain ranges in the entire U.S. "Oh, yeah?" I said. "Bull. Prove it."

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So he did.

<a href="http://www.tashadoestulsa.com/?attachment_id=11689" rel="attachment wp-att-11689"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-11689" title="Talimena Drive LeFlore County Oklahoma" src="http://www.tashadoestulsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DSC_0644-500x332.jpg" alt="Talimena Drive LeFlore County Oklahoma" width="500" height="332" /></a>

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You guys. There are MOUNTAINS in southeastern Oklahoma.

They're the Ouachita Mountains. They're not exactly the Rockies, or even the Ozarks, but still. They're gorgeous.

This guy lives there, along the Talimena Scenic Drive.

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This place has made him a fearless thing. He would have let me snap photos of him at close range all day long.

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Before long, we got caught in a summer storm.

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In the mountains. <em>Alone</em>. It was like The Notebook...meets Jurassic Park...meets Napoleon Dynamite.

Romance.

<a href="http://www.tashadoestulsa.com/?attachment_id=11688" rel="attachment wp-att-11688"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-11688" title="Talimena Drive LeFlore County Oklahoma" src="http://www.tashadoestulsa.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/DSC_0639-500x332.jpg" alt="Talimena Drive LeFlore County Oklahoma" width="500" height="332" /></a>

We could hear the rain before we could feel it fall from overhead. It passed as quickly as it had come.

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Like magic.