Bird Creek School

Wow!  It’s been quite some time since my last post and I apologize.  I have changed the name of this blog to reflect the types of photos I love to take, but the content will remain the same. I’m back and ready to tell you about my latest adventures!  I’ve already got a few short road trips under the 2015 belt that I have been meaning to tell about.  Here is one of them.

The old Bird Creek School is in Osage County, way back in the middle of nowhere, behind Bluestem Lake, near Pawhuska.  It is old, abandoned, decrepit and full of mystery.  Just what this back roads photographer is always looking for.  This one room schoolhouse was built in the early 1900’s for Native American children.  It is rumored to be haunted.  It has been said if you enter and write your name on the blackboard then leave that when you come back, your name will have been scratched off the board.

The day I was there, was warm and sunny.  I saw no one around and it was obvious that others had gone inside so I climbed over the bent wire fence and cautiously entered the building.  I will admit, it was creepy.  The wind rustled through the broken windows sending the dirty, torn curtains a flutter.  The only sound I heard was the steady buzz of a hundred million wasps flying around the ceiling where they had made their nests.  No laughter of children playing, no scraping of chairs against the hardwood and no voice of a teacher lecturing her class.  Just that constant buzz.

I didn’t leave my name on the blackboard this day.  It seemed to me that the rumor was just that, a rumor.  There were tons of names on that board and I doubted that any of them were very fresh.  But, it was fun thinking that the possibility of ghosts erasing the present to preserve the past was swirling around that board.  Maybe next time.

Before I stepped back out into the warm Oklahoma sunshine, I took one last look around.  It saddened me that some of the graffiti on the walls was so graphic that I had to watch my composition so as not to include it in my final image.  Why can’t people just let things be?  I shook my head and carefully made my way back to my car, where I started it up and drove off down the dirt road and up onto the wide open prairie where another photographic adventure awaited me.

Happy and safe travels!