Homey Oklahoma

In the crossroads of America, where semitrucks thunder past likes sports cars to the radio's twang of Country music, I paused for a break. My mom's California college buddy David had lived in LA, tried it out, said the hell with Hollywood superficiality and headed home to Tulsa, OK where the streets are tidy, the people polite, and life is comfy. The Finers opened their home to me and I eagerly took shelter from the summer monsoons behind me in their comfy abode.

David treated me to some nice Southern barbeque (funnily familiar to my Polish Grandma's brisket), and we wound between the heavily forested city just enjoying the general calm. For my city thrills I stopped by the memorial of the federal building terrorist bombing, artfully presented, and an art gallery of Native American works from across the continent which was assembled to educate the ignorant Italians and other Europeans about the immense diversity of this land. 

After a good day's rest we hit the lake, a massive man-made string of freshwater fingers. I put my surfing skills to the test and started wakeboarding, jumped off a massive cliff with a hideously girlish scream, and realized this wasn't anything near the dry prairie I'd imagined. Even though I'd always thought the ocean was what made me feel centered, it was easy to feel at home in the middle of the middle of things.

 

David and I dig into a Southern barbeque feast! Pickled chiles a must.  

NEWS FLASH! DUST BOWL FLOODS!

July 17, 2013

CHEYENNE, OK - Rapid flooding swept over the plains of western Oklahoma this morning, as the United States' historic "Dust Bowl" transformed into a mucky claybed. Foolish Californians bore the brunt of the trauma, as one bleary-eyed San Diegan explains.

"Man I was like sleeping and then I woke up and then it was like, whoa my tent is squishy man. And then like I got out and the whole tent it like, went up and started floating. Dude, I've never slept on a water bed until like, last night!" Joel Kramer stammered.

Local residents were also on the scene, such as rancher Dale Pierce, whose neighbor had lost a cow to the nearby woods in the precipitous confusion. According to Mr. Pierce:

"Climate change." 

And more elaborately, "It hasn't rained here in 100 days, and now, in the middle of summer? Sho is strange. Creek's been dry e'ry summa since 2010 now. Fact is, last time we got storms like this was back in '88. Boy, you musta been a young thing then."

Black Kettle National Grassland in Western Oklahoma was the site of historic massacres by the U.S. Army of native plains Indian families. White settlers later took the fall when intense droughts turned their grassland farms and open skies into a snowglobe of black powder. Today, cattlemen like Pierce struggle with national entities like the Forest Service which claim access to waterways for ecological conservation. Wild hogs in the area mowed the forest to stubs, and a series of fires and droughts have ferried in the invasion of dryland mesquite shrubs.

With pots and plates on his car roof to catch washing water, the oblivious Kramer shares his wisdom, "Like - don't camp on clay where's it's all flat when you're like, next to a swamp. Yeah!"

 

Drenched marshland campsite pitched by none other than this foolish Californian

Heartland

The lungs of the country stir with the whirring of windmills. Rainy roads glisten with the setting sun. Dusk settles like dust on the prairie.

Spurting through the muddy tracks, my messy tires slide into the campground. A half moon lights the dusky sky. Fireflies scatter between the trees. Grasshoppers spring staccato from the switchgrass. Soil glows as vermilion as a summer sunset.

On my humble stove, rice, beans, a shiny jalapeno. I eat on a damp bench, my nostrils steam with the chile's Mexican heat. For so long I have clung to other cultures, Mexican, South African, Israeli, Canadian, English, clinging to anything that made me feel more significant than the estranging America around me.

I sip black tea. I smoke my cigar. Animals call in the night, darkness surrounds my small tent, and I relax. I am home in my camp. In my America.

Breaking Bad on the Ground

Gabi and I would do anything for the best TV Show on earth. So we saddled up and rode through Indian Country and highland desert to Albuquerque, New Mexico in search of Breaking Bad. Luckily, we were rewarded with a nice milkshake at Los Pollos Hermanos, A.K.A. Twisters! We hit up a couple of other essential spots, like the Irish lawyer Saul Goodman's office (a bar), a massive warehouse (a massive broken down warehouse) and Jesse's Crossroads Motel (the Crossroads Motel). Yup, turned out Albuquerque was in fact a bit shady. Desert. Drugs. Immigration infighting. BUT, we had the idyllic Santa Fe, NM just down the road to help us enjoy the scenery.

Gabi lookin' tough next to her hefty sidekick at Walter & Gus's favorite rendezvous. (above)

Ancient Pueblo architecture lives on in the touristy "Spanish" style of Santa Fe, NM (below)

The cubic adobe architecture in Santa Fe was very unique. I liked the cool feeling inside the thick-walled buildings, the beams sticking out of the finely plastered stucco, and it made me wonder how the Spanish so cleverly adapted to the local climate. After all, it couldn't have been the natives who had devised such practical yet attractive engineering. However, we were enlightened from our trip to the dusty, barren and friendly Hopi Nation, where this architecture was the staple. Yes indeed, while the tourists walked the streets and enjoyed the supposedly Spanish style, it was in fact the indigenous pueblo-dwellers who engineered and mastered the craft. These original architects belonged to the same community who, when faced with the Spanish, lost their women to rape, their artifacts to bonfires, their lives to the gun barrel. 

The abuse and theft dealt by the Spanish was nothing unusual for the Hopi and other Pueblo tribes. These farming natives had defended their precious desert riverbeds for centuries against the onslaught of the warrior Navajo. The Hopi relied on the techniques of dryland farming, while the Navajo hunted wild game, and the two peoples fell into natural roles of hunter and hunted. The Navajo would attack the Hopi pueblos to steal from their granaries, forcing the Hopi to build their villages on flat-topped hilltops (mesas) and hire mercenaries to guard the entrances. In their ancient way, they continued to farm, and the feeling of their tightly-bound community contrasted greatly with the spacious and disjointed feeling on the Navajo Res.

Although the Navajo have the largest American Indian reservation in the mainland U.S., equipped with a multi-campus university system, the community there felt broken. Gabi and I drove through the flat valleys lined with buttes on our way to the Canyon de Chelly. We passed an old woman with a cane and couldn't miss the opportunity to give someone a lift. This seemingly sweet woman hopped in and soon enough, we found ourselves at a gas station buying beer for her "sick brother". We stopped at the university, the whole campus as quiet as the library, and by the time night fell we'd barely seen anyone. The natural beauty kept us afloat and before long we got lost on a spider web of deep sandy roads in a magnificent thunderstorm.

All this worked up an appetite.

Albuquerque's best chilli feast in the back of a florescently-lit pharmacy

The hectic history had my hot head aching, and moreso my stomach. We set off in search of satiating spice and lo and behold, ran into the bearded shark scientist Dovi Kacev. He was, of course, visiting the interior Southwest to lecture to freshwater fish researchers. His communication expertise was invaluable as we asked a couple of tattooed cholos where to get lunch. And of course the answer was in the back of a nearby pharmacy. While this sounded like the start to a drug deal, we were in Breaking Bad land so, what the hell, we followed the enchiladas.

By god that was chilli. We got to the pharmacy, walked in through the doors and, with florescent lights beaming down, sniffed our way to the back of the store where a full-fledged traditional Mexican restaurant was dishing out bunuelos and salsas like mañana had come early. We needed the fuel because I was about to drive Gabi to the airport for a sad goodbye. What a great journey together through our beautiful Southwest!

Shady parking lot in Gallup, NM; Chinese goods rumble across the tracks. Meth country.

With the sharp crack of a cowboy's whip, the thunderous wind spurred dust and alamo leaves across the riverbed. I hurriedly gathered firewood for the wet desert journey ahead. In the midst of it all, my friend Surprise (Simangele) called from distant California, asking where I might be. Scurrying into my car, I was enamored with the West, its winds, its untameable wildness.