The Ozarks we know and love is not the dark and sordid region portrayed in the new Netflix series, Ozark. For our first foray into publishing, Leland wrote and designed a photo essay, THE BEAUTIFUL AND ENDURING OZARKS. As Leland has told me many times, the Ozarks is an uplifted plateau where the meandering streams are wearing deep, winding trenches into that long-ago plain. Look out on a distant vista and notice the concurrent summits of the surrounding hills–evidence of that once level plain.
The word “glade” evokes Old English. Visiting one through the year is a poetic experience. In spring, the glades are strewn with wildflowers. Collared lizards dash for cracks in the rocks in summer. Blazing star and purple coneflower color the slopes in fall. Winter reveals the structure of the hills the best. The largest and purest complex of glades is in the Hercules Glades Wilderness in southwest Missouri.
This semi-mountainous region covers southern Missouri, most of northern Arkansas and small pieces of Kansas and Oklahoma touching Missouri.
Map by Tosborn at English Wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons