One night in the nation’s first big-game wildlife refuge

The horizon of southwestern Oklahoma regained a pulse as I approached the Wichita Mountains. For that matter, I did, too. For the past three days, I had been driving north up the 100th meridian, part of a grand summer road trip from the Texas borderlands to Fargo, N.D. — an admittedly indulgent exercise in my newfound freedom as a fully vaccinated plainsman. And yet, despite my love for this sorely neglected region, the miles began to blur. Beyond the hazy purple sensation of the Texas Hill Country, the land relaxed, and soon enough, it was just me and the sagebrush and so many wind turbines casting shadows across the highway.

God bless the ancient Wichitas, rising like bare knuckles from the dirt. Some 500 million years ago, lava rose from the Earth’s core through volcanic vents. Most of it cooled as granite before reaching the surface. The rest spilled across this ancient seabed and formed a fine-grained rhyolite. Both retained a reddish hue that now distinguishes the entire mountain range.

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