The First Time I Saw Angel Creek
What it’s like driving down my dirt trail to my Ozarks land. It’s terrifying actually. When I first bought it online sight inseen in 2018 I was the only one on the road. I stop at the driveway of the man who bought adjoining land to mine the year later. I look on down the road first towards my own land and go , “Nope,” too scary and pull into Ed’s. He didn’t come out with his dog running and barking like normal which told me he had died. I was correct. So I stay in his safer driveway for a minute to catch my breath and then bravely drive on down to my land. I am surprised mine looks so open and easy to turn Swan around in the road. That’s because I’ve hired local people online since 2018 one at a time, they never last long, to go out there and weedeat, clear it a few hours at a time, usually 3-6 hours for $50 3 hrs., $100 6 hrs.
The very first time I ever went there I didn’t really know where mine was, just sortof guessed, and drove past it. There were zero houses at that time, you see the road. I knew I was going too far but was exploring to see what was out there. I wound up about a mile past it and got Swan stuck, all alone. Talk about terrifying. The road had slanted down and then was badly washed out with big ravines Swan couldn’t get over, too deep. When I tried to back up the tires slipped on the gravel. Stuck. There are times in life you think, “Well, now I’m going to die.” I felt that.
The road as you can see is very close to the treeline. I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t back up. I almost decided to walk out but caught myself in time and stopped myself. “You planned to sleep in Swan anyway. Swan is packed with absolutely everything you need. Do NOT leave Swan.” So I turned off the engine. I opened the door and got out to see my situation better. No way to keep going forward. The ravines were three feet deep in places. I had a few inches to work with. So inch by inch I turned Swan around to go back the way I had come, impossible to go the other way. I was praying, praying, praying. Finally, I DID get her completely turned around. She still couldn’t make it back up the sloped road, still slipped on the gravel. But at least I was headed back towards my land. It was so quiet all around me. It was such a terrifying feeling of helplessness and fear. Prayed, prayed, prayed. Just set there. “This is how and where you die.”
All of a sudden a fancy, blue, new, $30,000. Side-by-side with music blaring came around a corner and stopped dead when it saw me. “Thank you, Father.” A 30s year old driver and a pretty blonde older than him but girlfriend appearing lady sat beside him. I got out of Swan. They were astounded.
“HOW did you even GET HERE???!!!” the man exclaimed, not able to believe his eyes. They wanted to know my reason for being there so I told them the story about how I bought my land online sight-unseen from Texas and how this was the very first time I’d ever visited.
“A tow truck WON’T come out here,” the man confirmed. “What do you want us to do for you?”
I thought. This man was an Ozarks man. This man knew how to drive. Trust. I held up my van keys to him. “Get me out of here, I said.”
He took my keys, the woman scooted over to drive the blue side-by-side. I got in Swan’s passenger seat. He got in Swan’s driver’s seat. I put on my seatbelt. Trust. “Thank you, Father.”
The man looked at the situation and made his choices, Ozarks style. He gassed it, he drove BACKWARDS. He hit the deep 3’ deep but not all that wide gullys and ravines that had stopped me, did I say FAST? Did I say BACKWARDS? We sortof bounced at top speed all the way down till the road flattened out again and he spun Swan around.
In front of us was a new sight I hadn’t been able to see before and that took my breath away. It was a literal WALL of tires STACKED. I’m guessing it was 10 feet high and 60’ long, a big, WALL of tires. I’m guessing someone built it there to keep anyone away from where I now was on the opposite side. I’m guessing it was a KEEP OUT barracade. I’m guessing the Ozarks man knew it was there because NEXT he sped full speed to one end of that wall, it looked like we were headed straight into trees. That’s because we were headed straight into trees. The tree branches broke Swan’s side windows out as he hit them full speed and swung Swan through a narrow unseen opening on the end. We were now through the barricade. He drove another 50 feet. The road was now wide and clear. He stopped and got out. I got out. I reached for my wallet which had $70 in cash in it thinking, “They can just take your wallet.”Helpless. Alone. I reached in it and pulled out ALL the cash and held it out saying, “Thank you.”
The pretty blonde woman looked at me with scorn. The man did not reach for the money. “He won’t take your money,” she said, proudly. So I put it back in my wallet and the wallet back into my back jeans pocket. I gently went to her twenty feet saying, “Thank you, thank you.” I nodded thank you at the man, not reaching for him, but reaching for the woman with a hug, smiles, and gratitude. She hugged me.
The man said, and pointed, turn right, up there. Follow the road. Turn right at the split. DO NOT go ANY other way. Just do exactly what I’m telling you. That will get you to the river. Go back over the river it will lead you to town.”
I said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” to both of them over and over. I did NOT mention he had broken out my windows. Somehow I was alive and so was Swan. I did exactly what he had told me.
I reached the river. I reached the scariest one lane cement 100+ year old bridge without sides you’ve ever imagined and I drove Swan across it thinking I would die if I didn’t get the inches to spare just right on each side of me, the deep river on each side of me.
I made it. I found a hotel. I didn’t go back, I went back to Texas. That was my first time I ever went to my Angel Creek land. I didn’t go back for two years. The next year I stopped, knowing not to drive another mile. The trees were too close to the road for me to park on my land. That was before I hired my first locals to begin slowly clearing it. I parked where this video ends, in a driveway with a hand built offgrid tiny shed house, Ed’s. Ed let me park in his driveway. God had sent a guardian for me.
I’d sit on Ed’s front porch every time I visited my land after that, with Swan parked in his driveway. Ed lived alone. Ed had bought his adjoining land to mine the year after me. We’d sit with a bottle of water he’d offer me, with his dog all excited to have company. We’d talk about God. Ed was the kind of man who would put a full size wooden cross on his back and walk across the entire United States to demonstrate Jesus to strangers. Ed was ostracized, always alone, always home each sparsely separated four? maybe five trips I made from Texas between 2018 and now.
This trip, 2026, the dog didn’t rush out barking but the big red “Beware of Dogs” signs were still posted. Gypsy had now been to my land 4 times for me. My stories are on my website. Gypsy’s 4th visit to Angel Creek had been this same month. He’d told me, we texted on Facebook, had never met, (God had placed Gypsy in my newstream last October with one of his Outlaw songs about Jesus that had caused me to stop and text him, “Hello…”,) “Ed has a sign on his tree, “For Sale.”
That had roused my suspicions. I had only stayed at Angel Creek this visit for thirty minutes. It’s just too scary, although it felt like home to me, although it was so, so beautiful, now with an actual almost cleared front yard around my blue cabin. You see what I saw in my photos and videos, look in my photos, scroll my page back to September 3rd, read my Angel Creek stories.
On the way back out a man had been sitting in his exremely dirty, dusty car with his window rolled down as if waiting on me, his three dogs happily playing around his car. I had rolled my window down, having never seen this man before. I had acted country because this was country.
“Is Ed dead?” I’d asked him.
“I thought you must be visiting him.”
“I own the land next to him with the blue cabin.”
“Yes, Ed’s dead. About a month ago. He died two days after he went to so-and-so hospital, cancer. He told them he was ready to go home to Heaven, not to try to save him.”
“Thanks,” and I’d driven Swan away from the stranger, gone back to Texas.
Copyright 2026 Angel Isaacs All Rights Reserved
Written September 19, 2026 at 10:14 am
