Let’s start with two post scripts from my daily log.  

  P.S.  When I was a kid in Delaware, seemingly endless flocks of grackles flew over our house, by the thousands. At a Tulsa McDonald's near daybreak there must have been thousands on the power lines, the trees, and anywhere a bird could roost all on the McDonald’s lot.

The noise they made was like an amplified static that as a sci-fi soundtrack would warn that something bad was about to happen. A day later a tornado hit Tulsa, killed three people and darkened the city's power grid. I had moved east through the storm before the tornado arrived.

 P.P.S.:  In my van at night I heard train whistles, loud and regularly. There are still trains, a lot of trains, rolling every which way in OK. Twice in a week I sat at a crossing waiting for the freight to chug on by. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me in Maine.

 And wind? As the song goes, “whipping across the plain.”

The thunderstorms had put my wipers to a test. Hail, lightning, I might have been hit by a small meteor or two.  I was buffeted around in this box-like van, traveling home. 

So Oklahoma sounds different.

Eastern Oklahoma was rolling hills with short trees. Pleasant landscapes and a patchwork of Indian Tribal jurisdictions. This nation and that. It seemed like they’ve moved every native American to Oklahoma. Trump’s new Homeland Security bully is the former senator from the state. How ironic is that? Trump characterized him as a “MAGA warrior,” so watch out. We may find out none of us have the right credentials. Back to Cork County Ireland, if you’re lucky.

 West of OK City the terrain flattened out. Not the high plains yet, but getting close. There wasn’t much elevation; they had oil wells, most no longer pumping; fresh gas wells being drilled; lots of wind mills; cows, lots of cows, and even two camels. The night sound of trains was replaced by the bellowing of cattle at Dead Indian Lake in the Black Kettle National Grassland.  I was directed there by the friendly Cheyenne Sheriff as a comfortable and free place to camp for the night.

He was a little apologetic to a tourist about the name Dead Indian Lake. That was as close as I got to any sense of how the variety of native cultures integrate into the Sooner culture, not to mention the population of Spanish speakers. As far as I know they make it work and what I know is mostly from the movies.

Chief Black Kettle had survived one massacre and gave the land-hungry pioneers a second chance and signed a second peace treaty only to be hunted down by Custer under orders from Gen. Philip Sheridan. Custer was a blood-thirsty hero. After killing as many of the men that he found at their Washita River Camp, he burned their homes and destroyed anything that could keep them alive. He even burned their buffalo robes and this was in the dead of winter. Then he gave the surviving women to his men. For comfort. Custer might be an icon of the modern army. Or maybe his heroic status would have made him a cheerleader on Fox News. 

Not as in Sac and Fox Indian — the tribe that gave us the most amazing athlete of the 20th Century, Jim Thorpe.  He was one of three larger than life Oklahomans, along with Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers, who I learned a lot about while I was here. Check them out.

Will Rogers famously said, “he never met a man he didn’t like.” But, what about a woman? There is a very large bronze statue of a woman leading a child west in Ponca City. She’s shod in a pair of utilitarian bronze boots and wearing a bonnet. The Memorial To The Pioneer Woman is impressive if not quite as grand as the Statue of Liberty and we don’t know either woman’s name.  Patti Page, star of Oklahoma, has a street named after her in the seat of Rogers County, Claremore, OK. Rogers County was actually named after Will’s father, Clem.

 I did what I could to make my way west, visiting museums, eating Chili at Ike’s in Tulsa, admiring vintage cars which they seem as fond of as they are of Route 66, and drawing. By the time I reached the panhandle, No Man’s Land, the land was ironed out flat and featureless. Hardly a tree. I knew that when I reached the plains finding that perfect thing to draw was going to be more challenging. That always is the goal — to see something newly revealed to me. Something that maybe only I have noticed. Or at least feels that way.

While driving through this flat country, I thought about just a seven-inch square with a horizontal horizon line across it. Should the line be higher than midway or lower? Is the sky more important or the land? Big decisions like that. I thought about a lonely dust-bowlish shack - maybe blown a little off plumb. Or, maybe I could find the perfect constellation of a giant modern windmill in the background; an oil pump or two bobbing slowly like birds dipping for a drink; an old fashioned watering station windmill; and a single lonely bull looking me in the eye. These stars were everywhere, but they never aligned.

And then almost at the end of the panhandle, SW of Boise City I spied in the distance a giant horse. I really didn’t know what I was seeing, but it didn’t shift. It stayed a horse as a got closer so I eliminated the possibility of a cloud figure or smoke. Was it full of Greeks?

Finally I realized it was a grove of cottonwoods next to the road.  Trees were rare enough, but trees playing at being a horse, was special.  No pruning or topiary involved — just the wind and the age and arrangement of the trees. I found my final drawing for Oklahoma.