Monday, September 22, 2008 | by nathan

Equinox

This, the first day of autumn, seems to foretell something amazing in the coming few months. Today I was asked to fill out a bit of paperwork that effectively finalizes my employment status at a job that, I’m shocked to say, I really, really like. I’ve been here for over two years, on a contract, benefits-free basis, and my boss and I have been advocating for me to be made full-time ever since he arrived in January. Sure, it’s taken ten months, but it’s happened, and I couldn’t be more grateful.

My favorite time of year is here. This summer has been absolutely incredible, probably one of the best of my life, and I confess I’m a little sad to see it go. Not since my long-since-vanished youth have I heralded the end of summer. When I was a kid summers were perfect, active, exciting, and free, and the summer of 2008 recaptured that magic in a way that I haven’t experienced since that time I was fired from a horrible job in April, then spent most of the subsequent summer whiling away my unemployment with McCormack’s vodka and afternoons spent working on a horrible, horrible novel that has since been finished, then burned.

This summer, though - this summer showed me possibilities and dreams. I feel younger than 28, and excited to see what the future holds. I’ve recently experienced a flood of creativity; in one week earlier this month I wrote over 7,500 words of my current novel, a book and a story I believe in and love. I think I can have it written and the editing process begun before 2009 begins, and I honest to God believe I can sell it. It’s thrilling.

This summer the Great Oklahoma Road Trip took us all over this amazing state, getting us sick at one point, yes, but also offering some amazing new adventures and moments of grace, like at the top of Black Mesa when I was overcome by silence and beauty. I hope we can repeat the trip next summer with all new destinations; I’ve already got a few in mind.

This summer the garden took me completely by surprise, both how well it has done and how much I’ve enjoyed caring for it and seeing it grow. We haven’t had as much wonderful food from it as I’d expected and hoped, which is due mostly to the fact that I didn’t think carefully enough about what to plant, what we’d eat. It turns out that tiny little tomatoes are only good for so much, and it’s really, really easy to get sick of cucumbers. Still, I’ve got even higher hopes and bigger plans for next year, and I look forward to putting those into action.

Usually August stands like this brick wall in between summer and fall, this awful hot swamp that you have to pass through to get from one good time to another; this year, for whatever reason, this August was absolutely fantastic - the weather was temperate, the garden went nuts, and I was in unbelievably high spirits almost the entire time. We had a wonderful time with my family in Colorado, a great time at my ten-year reunion, and dude, how great were the Olympics and the Democratic National Convention? Come on, August 2009: Try to top this.

This fall is shaping up to be great, as well. University of Oklahoma football is going full-steam-ahead and we’ve been having a blast at the games. I’m excited to see the presidential debates and while I’ve become unhealthfully obsessed with the election, in the meantime the SNL sketches, the debates, the general electricity in the air, it’s all kind of fun. Next week my mom and I are headed up to Kansas City to catch the opening show of Tina Turner’s tour, and toward the end of October Brian and I will be celebrating his 30th birthday at the Paris Las Vegas, where we’ve already decided we’ll spend plenty of time by the rooftop pool, get massages in the spa, play penny Price Is Right slots, drink for free and party our asses off at Krave.

The week after that is the opening game of the Thunder’s inaugural season, and then Halloween. Laurie and Jaye joined us this weekend at Super Target to check out Halloween decorations, and while we were there, getting giddy and excited like 8-year-olds, Laurie and I came up with the brilliant idea of turning mine & Brian’s back porch into a "haunted bar" and having a Halloween party. Planning is underway.

I love the autumn; the possibilities always seem endless. What’s on tap for you this fall?

Tuesday, July 22, 2008 | by nathan

“Jim Never Vomits At Home.”

Brian and I woke up yesterday in the worst kind of funk. Before I left for work we’d both had pretty disgusting symptoms, and he’d been vomiting for at least half an hour. I was able to hold everything down - by pure force of will and not having breakfast, mostly - and so, it being a Monday and all, I decided I’d venture in to work. I was there for about an hour when I decided that, nope, I needed to go home.

Then the phone rang.

Someone needed to meet with me and would be there in 45 minutes. Unfortunately it wasn’t the sort of thing I could put off, and so I patiently waited, trying to hold back my impulse to run into the nearby (women’s) bathroom and throw up. I managed to get through two meetings before packing my stuff up at 11 a.m. and running for the car. I stopped by our local grocery on the way home and loaded my arms up with 2-liter bottles of 7-Up, Campbell’s Chicken Soup, and People magazine. I got home, let the dog out, and crawled into bed with Brian, where we both lay, groaning in displeasure, catching patches of sleep here and there.

It was awful, but by evening I felt well enough to have a bowl of soup. I drank almost an entire 2 liters of 7-Up by myself, which stopped me throwing up. We decided we’d watch my favorite movie Airplane and see if it made us feel better, but by the time the movie ended we were both passed out on the sofa.

At about 7:45 that evening I got a phone call from our friend Jayson, who knew that we’d been sick without us even telling him.

See, Saturday night we’d staged a sort of impromptu leg of the Great Oklahoma Road Trip, to a well-known rib joint in south-central Oklahoma, not too far from home. I’d taken a few photos and planned to blog it this week, fully recommending that everyone try it out. Then, we got sick, and I found out that two of the friends who went along with us were sick with the exact same thing, the symptoms of which closely mirrored when I got food poisoning last month.

Now; I won’t un-recommend it, exactly, though I’m not going to name the place here; usually when a place gets hold of some bad vegetables it’s not their fault, exactly. It doesn’t mirror unsanitary conditions within the restaurant. But seeing as how I’ve never been that big a fan of ribs to begin with, I will just say that it’s going to be awhile before I head back to this particular rib joint.

Everybody’s feeling better and back at work today. Tomorrow’s my birthday and I’m trying to decide if/where to have a small dinner, all while gearing up for our eleven-hour drive to Colorado on Saturday. Getting sick is never convenient, but this one’s been kind of a bitch.

Friday, July 11, 2008 | by nathan

Sam Fridays: Sam Hits The Road

So the other big thing that happened this weekend was that Sam got a test. We’re headed up to Colorado for a week later this month, where we’re renting a cabin that is pet friendly. I had really, really wanted to bring Sam along for this vacation, but he’d never spent any prolonged period of time in the car, and given how excited he usually gets when going for a ride, and the fact that our old, stupid vet had told us not to let him get too excited, I was leary.

But, last week, Sam had a checkup, and the doc said that his heart was fine, go ahead, get him excited, let him run and exercise. He’ll love it. That Friday, we were planning to head out to the Panhandle, and we were taking two cars, the Flynns and us, and they were bringing Hera along.* So I figured it was as good a time as any to test Sam out - if things didn’t work, if he didn’t do well on the long trip, at least it was a short one, comparatively. If he did fine, then at least we’d know.

Sam likes the car:

He was very excited to get to go on the trip. He did really well on the drive up. We kept the windows open a crack so that he could stick his nose out and sniff things as we went by them, and he loved this. After awhile, though, it got too hot for anyone in the car to have the windows cracked, and Sam, like a good boy, laid down in the backseat and just rode along.

He did really, really well the whole way up, as did Hera. Both dogs were so excited every time we let them out to go pee that they actually forgot, for quite some time, that they had to go at all. Particularly funny was when we let them out in Boise City, and Hera decided she NEEDED TO SMELL EVERY INCH OF THAT TOWN OMG.

No less hilarious was Sam pulling me and Brian all over creation. When we stopped in Woodward to let the dogs do their business, Hera and Sam dragged us almost a block away before finally going, and even then, they only did it reluctantly, like ,"if I pee, I have to go back in the car! OMG THE CAR!"

When we finally arrived at the Bed and Breakfast, we found it populated with some other dogs for Sam and Hera to befriend. One of them, Angel, was a dalmation who was mostly averse to Sam’s amorous advances, if you know what I mean, and who snapped at him every time he got close. Another, however, was Star, who was just really friendly and sweet:

Aside from their new friends, Hera and Sam were in Dog Heaven at the farm. Not only were there all kinds of new things to smell, it seems that Sam’s dads didn’t feel the need to keep him constantly on the leash while he was there. He had plenty to occupy himself, and spent a lot of time exploring:

We did leave them in our rooms when we went out to the Three-State Marker at night, and anytime we were away from the ranch, so as not to bother our hosts with their care. But Sam seemed to like it all right in our room, too:

The afternoon after our hike to the top of Black Mesa was mostly spent lazing around in the air conditioning. Once the sun started to go down, however, and the heat waned some, Brian and I took Sam for a walk on the nature trail directly behind the B&B. I kept the leash in my pocket, just in case, but Sam was having such a good time and mostly staying close to us, and so I decided we’d let him walk freely. Which is what he did. He mostly stayed close to us at first:

But after awhile he started getting braver:

When he’d get too far away we’d call to him, and he’d come running back, sorta reluctantly, only to whip around and take off in a different direction:

Boy, he sure did like it out there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sam happier than those two days we spent at Black Mesa. He was into everything:

When it was time to head back up to the Bunkhouse, we called Sam to come, and he ran ahead of us, where we figured he’d wait patiently while we opened the gate and let him through, like he had before. Something had come over him, though, his indominable dog spirit, I suppose, and my sweet, timid dog went squeezing through the barbed-wire fence. Brian and I shouted, and watched with horror as he made his way through that barbed wire, emerging safe and sound on the other side. We checked him for scratches or injuries, but there were none. He had, however, left a present on the fence:

At some point on the walk, Sam did slow down enough that I could capture this photo, which is going to be framed somewhere in our house in the coming week. I love it so much; how awesome is our little family?

Or perhaps the black and white version?

*I’ve been told to say that, for months, I’ve been misspelling Hera’s name; I’ve been calling her Harrah, which is wrong. It’s Hera, like the wife of Zeus. For that, I apologize, and I offer the following: I’ve searched this site for misspellings and corrected them, and here’s photo of lovely Hera’s lovely face. She, like Sam, was crazy happy the whole time we were in the Panhandle. She and her parents went on to Colorado from there, where I also imagine she had a wonderful time:

Thursday, July 10, 2008 | by nathan

Dinosaur Print

There wasn’t a sign or literature anywhere saying what specific kind of dinosaur left these prints. But because my inner six-year-old is basically Calvin (see above and at right re: "Currently Reading"), I spent the whole time imagining it was a one of these:

Wednesday, July 9, 2008 | by nathan

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip #2: The Panhandle (Part Three)

When Jayson spoke to his family the week before we left, they informed him that they were planning a trip to Durango this week. They decided that, since Durango is only six hours’ drive from Black Mesa, they’d go ahead and meet his family in Colorado. Brian and I, having to be back at work on Monday, prepared Sunday morning to leave the Black Mesa Bed & Breakfast and drive home. We packed up, readied the dogs, and Vicki fed us a wonderful breakfast. I promised her to tell everyone I know to come stay at her place, so here goes:

YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULD STAY AT THE BLACK MESA BED AND BREAKFAST. IT’S WONDERFUL.

Okay - whoops, okay.

On our drive in to Kenton we’d passed a Dinosaur Quarry on the highway near the entrance to Black Mesa State Park. We’d been ready to arrive at our destination by then and so we hadn’t stopped; Brian and I decided we’d give the Quarry a quick look-see on our way out:

There’s a big, mounted dinosaur bone on a pedestal by the road there. The Oklahoma Panhandle has been a hotbed of paleontology for quite some time, as evidenced by our visit to the dinosaur tracks the previous evening. The Quarry is a place where a fairly-large dig had taken place in the past; unfortunately for fossil lovers and Panhandle guests, the large bone by the road was not labeled. From whence and what dinosaur had it come? THE CURIOSITY WAS KILLING ME.

Across the road from the Quarry was Black Mesa State Park, which was host to some incredible rock formations:

After checking out the Quarry, and becoming horribly distraught at the lack of information on the Large Giant Dinosaur Bone, we got back on the road:

I had asked Brian if he would mind changing our route. I’m writing a novel that’s set along the Kansas-Oklahoma border, and I wanted to see more of the countryside. So, we took this route home:

We got to see some very, very cool stuff on this drive, including the town of Hooker, where, as one might expect, all the signs sound dirty. Not kidding - you try driving past a sign labeled "Hooker Health Club," or "Hooker Horny Toads" (honest to God that’s their high school mascot), and not laughing like an idiot. Even something that normally would be innocuous, like "Dan’s Upholstery," in a town called Hooker, takes on a whole new level of funny. Still, a certain sense of decorum prevented me from stopping and snapping photos; it just seemed wrong somehow. Also, I was tired.

The towns in northwestern Oklahoma are fantastic. Lots of small towns all over America, including many parts of Oklahoma, are falling apart, it seems, due to poverty and an aging population that’s not being replaced, as young people flee to the cities. This may be happening in northern Oklahoma, but for the most part the towns seemed really nice, very clean and in general were doing well. For instance, the town of Gate, Oklahoma ("The Gateway to the Panhandle"), featured a cafe named after our buddy Laurie:

And across the street was this little piece of Americana:

The plains in this part of the state were rolling and hilly, unlike the Panhandle. Calvin would struggle a little bit up a hill, and then we’d have an awesome rollercoaster ride down. Our eventual goal was the city of Alva, where I’ve set the story I’m working on, but where I’d never been. Kinda dumb, right? So, we stopped and I got some photos. They’re terrible, and awfully uninteresting really, though the whole thing did help me get a sense of what I’m writing. We only stopped in Alva for some lunch at McDonald’s and drove around the campus of Northwestern Oklahoma State University before getting back on the road, where we encountered a wildfire:

And got pulled over in the city of Hennessey before finally making our way back home. Boys and dog were very glad to arrive back at Casa Okay City, where the garden and flowers were in desperate need of some water, but where everything else was mostly in order.

Thanks for riding with me through this three-part debrief of this trip. It really was the best three-day weekend of my entire life, and I feel completely refreshed coming back from it. I haven’t worked through the whole thing spiritually, except that I know it was good, and I feel good about where I am right now. Thanks, Oklahoma Panhandle, Thanks, good friends and my wonderful husband, and Thank You, Jesus.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008 | by nathan

Dirt Road in Rearview

We took a lot of photos out the window of the car on this trip, but I think this one was my favorite. Snapped at sunset on our way out to the Three-State marker.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 | by nathan

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip #2: The Panhandle (Part Two)

At about 4 or 5 a.m. on Saturday, two animals were on the roof of the Bunkhouse playing, or fighting. It woke me up, and I slept the next hour or two restlessly, finally rising out of my bed just before dawn. I sat outside and watched the sun come up through the valley.

Vicki had asked us the night before what time we’d like breakfast. We told her we were planning on hiking to the top of Black Mesa the next day, and she urged us to get an early start, offering to feed us at 6:30 so we could be at the trailhead by 7. She laid a fantastic spread before us that morning: blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon and fresh fruit and coffee. More than ever, I felt as if we were staying with family, as I remembered so many early-morning breakfasts like this when visiting my dad’s sister’s house in Arkansas. We were full and happy by the time we left for the trailhead.

Laurie had opted to stay behind and have a relaxed morning, and as soon as we started off on our hike, I envied her. We were so full of food that we could barely walk. We packed Brian’s backpack full of water and snacks and took off up the trail, which goes first around the mountain for almost 3 miles before finally starting off to the top. Still, we saw some incredible stuff on that flat hike; nature really took us by surprise.

Do you see him?

The walk was easy and gentle, and even as we started up the slope to the top, it never got too bad. Once you reach the top of the mesa it’s still another half mile’s walk or so to reach the actual highest point in Oklahoma, which, as it turns out, rests only 1,300 feet from the New Mexico state line, and is marked by a large stone obelisk.

We had a snack of beef jerky and granola bars at the marker before making our way to the edge of the mesa to catch a view of the valley below:

I sat on those rocks for a long, long time, just staring off into the distance. It was the kind of quiet you almost never find anymore, and I felt suddenly that suddenly the veil was down a little bit between me and God. For the second time in as many days, I felt I was in the presence of something huge and holy and silent, and that it was time to just sit, and watch, and listen. So that was what I did, for at least half an hour. Finally I felt like I wanted to record the impression, and so I pulled my journal out of Brian’s bag and went to write. I’d just written the date down on the page when I looked at my hand and noticed it was covered in blue ink; my pen had broken.

Brian offered to walk back to the marker, where there had been a guest book in a metal box, and get me the pen from there so I could finish my entry. After he left I sat and silently thanked God over and over and over that I have Brian. The sun was warm and there was a breeze; I almost cried out with gratitude. Brian returned with the pen and I wrote a quick one-page missive:

I’m sitting on a cliff at Black Mesa, overlooking the New Mexico state line, thinking about spiritual mountaintops … Because out here I am absolutely engulfed in the hugeness of God. These skies are so big, so filled and so full. I’m filled with that terrified, sad elation one gets in the presence of the Holy.

We can parse my spiritual revelations later if you like; at the top of that mountain, my feet dangling off that cliff, I think I felt more at peace than at almost any other time in my life.

It was getting hot, so after I was done we turned around and headed back down. As we walked I was watching Brian, and this feeling, like a word, like a megaphone into my soul, went through me - "This is good. What you have with him is good." I took his hand as we walked across the top of the mesa and felt aligned, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

The hike down was harder; it was noon by this time, and I stripped off my shirt so I could feel the occasional breeze all over myself. This was a mistake, as I now I have a painful sunburn, but completely worth it at the time.

We were exhausted by the time we made it back to the car, and we had all agreed that the best way to spend the afternoon would be to completely relax at the Bed and Breakfast, and so this is what we did. We drove back to our air-conditioned rooms, the temperature outside now reaching the mid-90’s, and made some wraps with lunch meat and tortillas we’d brought along in our coolers. Laurie, Brian and I watched an episode of Weeds on his computer. We all took short naps.

As dusk began to fall Brian and I took Sam for a walk in the pasture behind the ranch house. More on that on Friday.

We had all agreed that we’d go back out to the three-state marker that evening to watch the sunset, and we had looked online to see *exactly* what time that would be happening. We packed up the coolers with stuff for dinner, a few beers and Cokes. We each had a camp chair, and we set off. A thunderstorm was blowing up in the west, obscuring the sun, but it looked like it would miss us.

Our first stop on the way out to the marker was something we’d seen the night before but for which we hadn’t stopped, as it had been too dark. Just off the road, only a few hundred feet past the Black Mesa trail head, was a sign marked "Dinosaur Tracks."

In the floor of a dry creek bed there are several sets of dinosaur footprints that have been essentially cemented into the rock over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

I was obsessed with dinosaurs as a child, and I’m sure my parents are very thankful that I did not know, then, that these footprints were there, as I’d have been begging us for weekly trips to the Panhandle to see them. From the base of the creek bed, we looked back up toward the car and got a laugh, as it seemed that Calvin was starring in his own commercial:

I can’t begin to tell you how much I love that car.

From here it was another few miles out to the marker, where the sunset was now putting on the full show:

So, we set up our camp chairs, made ourselves each a sandwich, and watched:

The thunderstorm had begun to come apart by this time, but its outflow provided our location with a constant breeze, which more or less kept the bugs off of us. We took turns putting our butts in three states at once:

It was quiet as the sun set and the stars began to come out, and we sipped beers, talked, and quietly observed the dying of the light. The moon set shortly after the sun did:

The stars came out one by one, as did the Milky Way. As we had the night before, we saw satellites moving across the sky, and shooting stars, and quick flashes of lightning in the fading thunderstorm. I was so sad that our time at Black Mesa had almost come to an end, but at the same time, as I watched the night sky, I once again felt compelled to whisper, or to keep quiet altogether, and just to allow myself to be. I felt the way people often feel at the edge of the ocean: small, insignificant, and yet, connected to something larger, holier.

Brian and I lay on the hood of my car for a long time, both of us just silently staring upward, holding hands, and being quiet. It was a perfect moment.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 | by nathan

Guaranty Abstract & Title Co.

This is Guaranty Abstract & Title Co., in downtown Guymon, Oklahoma. There is a lot of this kind of mid-century signage in small-town western Oklahoma, as that was a time of major growth and change in that part of the country. When I see buildings like this that are no longer occupied, or businesses that seem to be suffering, in small towns, it makes me incredibly sad. Brian and I both grew up in small-town western Oklahoma and know the personal and communal tolls that the losses of small, locally-owned businesses have. This photo is going to be framed and hung on my bedroom wall.

Monday, July 7, 2008 | by nathan

The Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008 #2: The Panhandle (Part One)

We’re back. My mind’s all blown apart by the awesomeness of this past weekend, so much so that I may have difficulty putting the whole trip into words. I’ll at least be posting photos about it all week and probably into next. As to the story, so much happened this weekend that I’ve decided to write it one day at a time, effectively dividing the whole thing into three parts. Today’s installment concerns Friday, July 4, 2008, the first day of the trip. I’ll try to keep mostly with the basics, though also let me be sure, right off the bat, to point you to the photos of the entire journey over at Flickr. Just because, well, this is going to be a long one. So if you want to skip right to the photos, that’s fine.

We left Oklahoma City at about 9 a.m. on Friday morning, stopping only in Woodward for gas and to let the dogs pee (a full report on how Sam did on such a long trip is coming on Friday). I don’t think I need to belabor the point that I find no place on Earth more beautiful than western Oklahoma, an opinion that places me in a very small minority of human beings, I know, but just driving up through the plains was, to me, calming, and if we’d just spent the entire weekend in the car kicking around western Oklahoma, I’d have been perfectly happy. But, we had places to be. Still, we did get this photo of a wind farm outside Woodward:

Our first official stop, the first thing I’d been dying to see for quite some time, was Optima Lake, which, on any map of Oklahoma, looks something like how our Garmin showed it:

Looks like a very large lake, right? Here’s what Optima Lake *actually* looks like:

The lake has never reached more than 5% of its planned capacity. An Army Corps of Engineers project, the lake is one of the earliest examples of unintended environmental consequences - the dam and adjacent state park were built just as the aquifer was being tapped more and more to attend to local agricultural needs. It is one of the most eerie places I’ve ever been. A complete state park was built along with the dam, including at least two campgrounds, recreational and picnic areas, a boat ramp, and scenic drives. The problem is that since the lake never filled up, none of this was ever used, and now the entire place has a very post-apocalyptic kind of feel, like what America’s roadways would’ve looked like after a 1950’s-style nuclear holocaust:

I’m gathering thoughts, facts and notes for a story I’m going to pitch to either the Gazette or Oklahoma Today, because the whole thing is so fascinating to me, this monument to what America once tried to be. Also, since a great deal of my novel is set in northern Oklahoma and southern Kansas, I’m adding Optima Lake into my scenery; it’s too ripe a topic.

By the time we left Optima Lake, it was lunch time, and, while perusing a directory of Guymon businesses earlier in the week, I had learned that Guymon - has a Taco Tico. This was our next stop, for lunch:

So, after gorging ourselves on delicious Mexican food and choco-tacos that melted all over our faces in the midday heat, we fueled up and got back on the road. The Panhandle is, to me, an absolutely fascinating stretch of land, though I can see how someone might go crazy driving through it. It’s the flattest part of the state; probably one of the flattest parts of the world.

I find it oddly haunting, the huge skies, the fields. Also, we were having some weird music moments in our car - "Vein of Stars" by the Flaming Lips came on, and I was almost freaked out by how perfectly the song seemed to complement the landscape. Both are haunting and beautiful. Even though I never tired of seeing the plains flying past, I was excited, as was everyone else, when we finally reached our next stop, Boise City:

We only stayed a few minutes, long enough to check out the bombing memorial and the courthouse, and to let the dogs go pee, because our final destination, Kenton, was only 35 miles away. Along the stretch of road we watched the tabletop-flat landscape begin to roll and fall away into canyons and rise up into mesas. A high-plains thunderstorm blew up as we approached Kenton:

We arrived at about 4 p.m. Mountain Time. Kenton is the only town in Oklahoma that is not on Central Time (though, technically, it’s located within the Central Time Zone). We’d reserved a cabin at the Kenton Mercantile, but it had been cancelled at the last minute. Luckily Jayson had managed to reserve us two rooms at the Black Mesa Bed & Breakfast.

The proprietor of the B&B, Vicki Roberts, met us outside and instantly I knew we were in for a great stay, that staying with Vicki would be less like renting a room and more like visiting beloved family. I was right on all counts. Vicki greeted us warmly and showed us to the Bunkhouse, where we were staying. Only the screen doors on the bunkhouse were closed, and as the rain began to move in, you could smell it richly in the air. The midday heat completely abated as the shower fell. Vicki just put a new front porch on the main house of the bed and breakfast - which also sits on a working cattle and horse ranch - and we, Vicki’s family and the other guests, sat on the porch and watched it rain.

Rains like those are a welcome sight; Cimarron County has been in a drought of late, which tends to set the people who live there on edge; this was, after all, the heart of the Dust Bowl in the early 20th century:

The rain lasted only half an hour or so, and it cooled everything down; suddenly the evening felt less like July and more like early April. Vicki and her husband, Monty Joe, had invited us into town for a Fourth of July celebration the town was having at the senior center. We arrived and were greeted with warm conversation and some of the best food you could imagine:

That’s a burger (does anyone else put chips on their burgers? I DO!), beans, a jalapeno pickle, deviled eggs, a bowl of fresh watermelon, and Country Time Pink Lemonade. And for dessert? I chose a piece of coconut cream pie, and some of Vicki’s homemade peach ice cream:

This is the kind of meal that I remember having growing up during the summer, and it made me feel so happy, so nostalgic and connected and, well, dammit, patriotic. I love this America, where people invite strangers along when their town has a cookout, and they go to lots of trouble but nothing is pretentious and everyone’s just so darn polite and genuine. It made me not want to ever leave Kenton.

After dinner the four of us walked around town for awhile. Kenton’s not a big town, so we were able to see most of it. The sun was back out by this time, and the rain had passed but the upflow was giving us a cool, rain-scented breeze. A perfect evening for a walk. We got to see the Merc, which was closed due to a family emergency (hence our cancellation):

After we walked around a bit we returned to the Bed and Breakfast, where we sat on the porch and watched the most amazing sunset:

Things got a little dicey when Vicki & Monty Joe returned from town and Vicki saw the Obama 2008 sticker on my car; she pulled me aside and urged me - begged me, even - to at least promise to pray about my choice of candidate. Someone else could’ve done this to me and I’d have been offended; I could tell, though, that Vicki was being genuine, and not really confrontational, and so I assured her that I do pray about my vote, every day, and that I felt good about Obama. It threw me for a loop a little bit but confirmed to me even more that this stay at the Bed and Breakfast had been a good choice; I really did feel like a part of the family at the Roberts’ place, even if I was a bit of a black sheep.

I’d brought along a brown grocery sack full of stuff I’d picked from my garden before the trip - about eight cucumbers, two dozen tomatoes and a half a bushel of fresh green beans. To show Vicki that there were no hard feelings, I gave her the entire bag.

The last item on our agenda that day was to drive out to the place where Oklahoma meets Colorado and New Mexico. There’s a marker there, and Jayson has been telling me since we met - ten years ago - that I need to see the night skies out there. On the drive out we came across a large racoon making his way across a cattle guard, and two large deer, including a many-point buck, that dashed over the fence beside the road.

Jaye’s right about the skies; I’ve never seen so many stars gathered in one place. As we sat, staring upward, I felt compelled to whisper, as a sense of holiness and wonder such as I’ve not felt in a long, long time went through me like a slow-moving bullet, rendering me speechless and humble. It had been a day full of miracles, happiness, love, and beauty; I said very little while we sat out there, choosing instead to send silent prayers into the skies that seemed at once so close you could touch them, and to go on forever.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Monday, July 7, 2008 | by nathan

The World’s Most Awesomest Hat

While Brian filled up the car with gas in Guymon, Oklahoma, on our way out to Black Mesa, I went inside to pick up a very important item that we’d forgotten to bring along: a beer opener. While inside the Shell station, I saw this hat and immediately bought it. Guymon is nowhere near Route 66, and I’m not a big wearer of caps, but this thing was just too awesome for me not to own.