Springtime in the Wichitas

Okay, readers. If there are any of you out there who haven't abandoned me or keeled over dead from the impossibly long wait, here's the deal: I am going to blog now. I was putting off blogging non-sequentially, since I still (and this is pathetic) have yet to finish my narrative on winter break in the neotropics. So here goes. I am blogging non-sequentially, and I don't care who knows it. My hope is that by writing about spring happenings, life will return to this blog. If only the weather would cooperate, this idea of renewal would feel complete.

Jacob and I have been tossing around this idea of camping for a while now. Springtime inspires me to be outside. I really can't remember camping often, if ever, as a child. I presume this is probably because my brother and father went camping regularly with their Boy Scout troop and were probably pretty bored of it. Anyway, one weekend at Devil's Den, Arkansas last spring is the only conscious memory I have of camping.

Additionally, I'd never been to the Wichita Mountains. Or, really, anywhere in Oklahoma much west of Oklahoma City, except when passing through to California one time. Every day, while I work meticulously on a de novo catalog in a cold, dark, fireproof room in the museum, I look at insects collected in the Wichitas. And so going seemed like a pretty great idea.

And it was. I-44 seems to dissolve into generic small-town America. A few miles later, the people disappear, and are replaced with more prairie than I've ever seen outside of a textbook, dotted with grazing bison and longhorns in this amazing afternoon light that I'm kicking myself for not getting on film. And hey, who knew Oklahoma had such incredible un-flatness?

We stopped at the visitor's center, just to see what was up, and were surprised to find a mini natural history exhibit about the ecosystem, particularly the bison and their extirpation and re-colonization. I often wonder who they hire to write such things, which always come across as lacking in quality of language and content, both.

We got into Doris Campground and I tried not to be too terrified about the pollen growing on the cross timbers. We set up camp, having filled the truck bed with dry wood from the visitor center parking lot for later use in the campfire. Within minutes of our arrival, a ranger came by to make sure we knew about the burn ban. Shit. No, we didn't know about the burn ban. She allowed that yes, we could make a fire in the barbecue grill, but under no circumstances in the fire ring. This didn't bother me in a real way until the next day, when the temperature dropped severely. For the moment, we had sunshine and dinner to make. We grilled brats and asparagus and spent quite a lot of time exclaiming about how ridiculously many stars were visible.


Early morning was dark and cold. We cowered in the tent until it got to be a reasonable temperature, and then we went hiking on a trail that might have been called Dog Run Hollow. The parking area was surrounded by cross timbers and I wasn't sure what to expect. The trail opened onto a river, and immediately became rocky in a way I didn't expect.

We followed Cache Creek, whose bed deepened into a canyon as we walked upstream.

I took fewer pictures than one might have expected of me. Really, they don't do it justice, so I won't try very hard. There were a lot of hikers out, and several groups of rock climbers repelling down one cliff and climbing up the other. I enjoyed watching them.

I stopped to look at all the little cactuses and flowers and ferns. There wasn't much in the way of fauna. It was a pretty inhospitable environment on the rocks. Cold, and windswept. Not to mention dry. Hence the burn ban that plagued us.

Eventually, after wandering around looking for something called (probably descriptively) "40 Foot Hole" and failing, we crossed the creek to find a place out of the wind to eat the sandwiches we'd packed. And we stumbled upon this excellent skeleton of what we surmised was a young longhorn. It wasn't large enough to have been an adult and showed no evidence of horns, but if there are any mammologists reading this that want to comment, let me know what it is. All I know is that it's ungulate and chose to die and be eaten at a really excellently dramatic location.

We meandered back toward the truck eventually, never having found the 40 Foot Hole, or anyone who did find it.

We drove to Mount Scott, the second tallest (by a negligible number of feet) of the Wichitas, the top of which has been turned into a parking lot for our touristy pleasure. Looked around, got sad about all the plastic bags and cigarette butts, and drove back down the mountain.

There was a prairie dog town to visit. And visit we did, though without a much better zoom there's really not much I can show you from that encounter. Well, there's the fence, I guess. And the prairie dogs living to the left of it.

Eventually we found ourselves back at Doris, windswept. We cooked kabobs on the grill, struggling somewhat to have enough heat last long enough to get the meat cooked using only small pieces of wood we were finding at the campsite. Eventually we did manage to feed ourselves and, lacking light and clocks, probably went to bed exceedingly early.

It was kind of liberating not to have a clock. Or a phone. Though I felt somewhat bad, on re-entering civilization, to have several frantic missed calls/texts from people who wondered if I was dead. I guess not being near my phone is even less characteristic of me than I imagined it. Perhaps it's more important, then, that I spend some time away from it. It's nice to not be able to be reached, I guess. That's never really happened to me as an adult.

Sunday dawned even colder than Saturday, though thankfully, not nearly as windy. We struck camp and headed into Meers to eat at what used to be a mining town, and is now the only restaurant for miles around. They serve a legendary burger made out of Texas longhorn that people come from far and wide to eat. The walls are covered in old license plates and business cars. I found a Guestroom Records sticker and a Sooner Aviation card, so I know there are Norman folks venturing out there. The line was probably 25 people long when we arrived. While we waited in line we read the various signs, some of which are offensive, like "I don't dial 911...I dial .357." I was staring at a bumper sticker that said "Texas: It's bigger than France" (which, incidentally, is true, but a classic case of Texans misunderstanding "bigger" as "better") when I became aware of something very strange happening. There were three young people behind us conversing in French. I didn't get the opportunity to ask them what they were doing in Meers, Oklahoma, because they were too busy inquiring about the line and the cash-only policy and where one might find and ATM in a place like Meers. But I was definitely curious. And wondered what they might say about the sticker.

The burgers are ridiculously large -- served quartered, and each piece is probably a day's serving of protein in itself. They come with lettuce, tomato, red onion, pickle, mustard and American cheese, but they'll make it to order, provided you admit to being flawed first -- for instance, to order mayonnaise instead of mustard one must ask for the "sissy burger". I wished for a chance to ask the French kids what they thought of such ridiculous portions. In such a place, decorated with the kind of Americana that the French seemed to think we kept everywhere. Alas, the opportunity did not present itself.

We shared an enormous bowl of cobbler and homemade ice cream for dessert. It was kind of wonderful.

We drove home so I could go to the lab, and I thought about how laughably short the driving time felt, compared to my spring break adventures. In my next post: a pilgrimage and a family gathering.