andthewindblowsacrosstheland

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

Backroads of home, Oklahoma

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

No Man’s Land, Black Mesa Country, The Oklahoma Panhandle, Comancheria, Outlaw Hideout. In early days, the New York Sun dubbed it “God’s Land but No Man’s”. Whatever its name, in frontier times or present day, it is a wild, open, lonely place. A landscape of extremes. It is also a country of breathtaking beauty and saturated in exciting and intriguing history. Coronado passed through here as did early French trappers. The fierce horsemen of the Comanche tribe roamed the hills and they and their families camped along the streams and rivers. Not far from the shale and rock hill in the photo, you can still see the faint remnants of the ruts made by travelers on the great commercial highway, The Santa Fe Trail.

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

I always feel well while I am among these friends of mine, the Witchitas, Wacoes, and affiliated bands, and I never feel afraid to go among the white men here, because I know them to be my friends also. … I come from a point on the Washita River, about one day's ride from Antelope Hills. Near me there are over one hundred lodges of my tribe, only a part of them are my followers.

I have always done my best to keep my young men quiet, but some of them will not listen.

When recently north of the Arkansas, some of them were fired upon, and then the war began. I have not since been able to keep my young men at home.

As quoted in "Notes Among the Indians", Putnam's Magazine (October 1869), p. 476

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

Orla, Reeves County, Texas Population 2 Orla is a ghost town that sits on the far western edge of the Great Plains. It was founded in 1890 as a section house for the Pecos Valley Railroad. El Paso lies 175 miles farther west of Orla and the Pecos River creates Red Bluff Reservoir 10 miles north. Traveling to Orla makes you feel you have wandered into the far reaches of Nowhere. A vast, arid, and empty country. You have to wonder at the tenacity of spirit that held settlers here. Dry creek beds carved with the 10 inches of annual rainfall, creosotebush, sparse grass, mesquite, and cacti make up the landscape and tumbleweeds catch in the barbed wire fences. A place of unique and lonesome beauty.

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

Oklahoma winter

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

So, what’s up?

[andthewindblowsacrosstheland]

“It is a country to breed mystical people, egocentric people, perhaps poetic people. But not humble ones…Puny you may feel there, and vulnerable, but not unnoticed. This is a land to mark the sparrow’s fall” ― Wallace Stegner, Wolf Willow