Welcome to Oklahoma, the sign said. I was in the middle of nowhere a hundred miles north of Dallas, pushing the speed limit on Interstate 44. Around me lay desolate scrub bush and red rock as far as the eye could see… But I’d reached Oklahoma! This, this was the Midwest! This was the prairie! I switched off my NPR podcast and listened to my favorite Rich Mullins song, heavy on dulcimers and violins, which was written about these fields: “Well the moon moved past Nebraska and spilled laughter on them cold Dakota hills…”
Finally I reached Lawton, Oklahoma, which is about thirty miles north of the middle of nowhere. It’s a military town: all the signs say, “Lawton/Ft. Sill” as if just “Lawton” isn’t enough to justify the town’s existence. Entering the town, it’s immediately and glaringly obvious that Fort Sill doesn’t spend the right kind of money in this economy. The word bleak is barely enough to describe the one-story storefronts, the disintegrating real estate, the number of panhandlers, the signs of drug use and disease. Any vibrancy or vitality was drained from the town long ago; now no one wants to have to live here.
But I wasn’t in Lawton because it’s a great place. I was here to adventure into the Wichita Mountains: the cause of the literal dark clouds over the town. These are old, old peaks, worn down by time and exposure to the plains’ ceaseless wind. The Wichita people are native to the area; now their tribe is headquartered in Anadarko, forty-five minutes from Lawton. For ages they solely hunted buffalo on the plains: the logical way to exist in a climate so dry and so huge. They’re said to have tattooed their faces and bodies, calling themselves the “raccoon-eyed people.” They are the ones I can imagine dwelling peacefully under this sun. The rest of us? We’re living in a badly executed imposition of modernity that is Lawton/Ft. Sill.
I went to meet Isaac, my friend and fellow adventurer. He’s originally from New York and Los Angeles. He’s a fish out of water in Oklahoma. But now he’s at the behest of the Army, so he’s in Oklahoma.
At his apartment, when I knocked, Isaac pulled open the door and thrust his face outside. I jumped back a few feet. He has a military haircut grown thick and standing on end, very light startling blue eyes, and such severe cheekbones he looks like pictures of starving WWII POWs. It doesn’t help the resemblance when he forgets to smile.
When the initial, awkward hellos were over, he whirled back into the apartment he shares with two roommates and gave me the tour (“witness the squalor of my life,” he said despairingly). In the kitchen he lost interest in what he was saying and used the laundry-room door to propel himself from the countertop to the top of the refrigerator. For all he looks like he is literally starving, Isaac is surprisingly athletic. I tried to follow his example. No success, but it made me excited about climbing.
We put on underarmour, sweatpants and shoes for walking. Well, I put on my walking shoes. When I looked down, Isaac was wearing flip-flops. He stared at me witheringly when I questioned his choice of footwear.
“Ready to go?” he said. I was. He stood holding the door open, stared in all directions and shouted, “Okay! Phone! Wallet! Keys! Where’s my! Oh right! Don’t need it!”
We drove out in Isaac’s huge SUV. The mountain range, which is visible from the town, vanished briefly under the horizon but as we drove further and all signs of civilization faded, the rough red peaks re-emerged all around. There were deer, buffalo, longhorn cattle grazing, and trees. Several people were stopped beside the road to photograph the trees.
Way out among the rocks, we parked and started off. We were initially walking along the creek bed (“The Narrows”) which has steep ascents on both sides. But soon we got bored with the creek bed and climbed up, up, up. The boulders don’t make for pretty mountains, but they do make climbing easier than it might have otherwise been. Isaac went ahead, making comments like: “I should have worn underwear” and “I need to pee” and pointing out cactus: “There’s a cactus! … I got cactus in my shoe.”
At the peak of the mountain we stopped to take it all in. It was warm, sunny, beautiful view. Even Rodger enjoyed the view. (He wants me to point out that this picture proves he climbed higher than Isaac.)
We went back by way of the secret beach, a secluded spot with a heap of gravel-sized stones forming a sort of beach. The water was deep and blue. “Do not disturb the water,” intoned Isaac in his best impression of Aragorn, and then proceeded to skip stones for the next half-hour. He climbed up on the cliffside with an especially large one and heaved it – it fell with a satisfying crash into the water.
It was a beautiful day and reminded me how much I like getting outdoors now and then. Soon I’ll be back in Georgia and, weather permitting, I’m looking forward to going walking again.
– The Dauntless Princess –
P.S. Schnitzel for dinner… The real Polish recipe. Mmmmm perfection.
