Exploration and Remembrance in Southwestern Oklahoma

Hears the Dawn
Identify of 1 Comanche elder who butted heads with Quannah Parker on issues of assimilation at Ft. Sill.

For ten days final October, I visited the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge close to Lawton, Oklahoma, the place my mom and her three siblings grew up. Her father, Alfred Wendell Fobes, had been a Captain within the U.S. Military throughout World Struggle II. Throughout his time within the service, Alfred noticed loads of preventing earlier than being captured by the Japanese within the Philippines.

For ten days final October, I visited the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge close to Lawton, Oklahoma, the place my mom and her three siblings grew up. Her father, Alfred Wendell Fobes, had been a Captain within the U.S. Military throughout World Struggle II.

He miraculously survived the notorious Bataan Dying March, in addition to an unimaginably arduous life as a POW in Okinawa. After the battle, Alfred was awarded a Purple Coronary heart and married my grandmother Mari Matsumoto. They settled and made a house in Lawton, proper subsequent to Ft. Sill, the place he had been stationed.

After I was a child, my household would usually go to Lawton for the vacations to spend time with my grandparents; sadly, our final trek from Tennessee was for my grandmother’s funeral about twenty-four years in the past. For a few years, I had cherished reminiscences of the childhood visits, enjoyable walks by way of my grandparents’ neighborhood to view Christmas lights, time spent with household, and enjoyable drives to see buffalo and odd-looking mountains. I longed to return and reconnect with the place and the various fond reminiscences I knew it might conjure.

Tiny Voices
Echoes of these lengthy forgotten who perished by the hands of the highly effective and egocentric. Requires humanity that also have to be confronted many years later. The soil doesn’t overlook.

Ghost of Quannah
A singular and infrequently controversial voice amongst a whole lot of previous and future native leaders.

Southwestern Oklahoma will not be thought-about a well-known vacationer vacation spot, however that’s another excuse I’ve at all times been drawn again to that a part of the U.S. The refuge itself has lengthy held a peculiar place in my reminiscence as a result of it’s so very completely different in comparison with my house in Appalachia.

Whereas close by Lawton can appear an expanse of “lifeless grass and concrete” (a joking description I distinctly bear in mind from one household dialog), the refuge is over 60,000 acres of rolling grass prairie spanned stunning between understated mountains of uncovered, rounded purple granite boulders. It’s nothing in any respect just like the densely forested mountains of Tennessee and Georgia that I’m accustomed to wandering.

On this setting, the solitude and isolation can really feel as immense because the Nice Plains themselves. It isn’t tough to search out small canyons to discover, properly out of earshot of hikers or extensive vistas with no seen individuals or human-made objects. The vastness is each stunning and mildly disconcerting, significantly for a customer extra at house amongst hillsides populated by innumerable timber.

On this setting, the solitude and isolation can really feel as immense because the Nice Plains themselves. It isn’t tough to search out small canyons to discover, properly out of earshot of hikers or extensive vistas with no seen individuals or human-made objects.

Piamempits
The legendary large cannibal owl who lived in caves among the many Wichitas and would hang-out the goals of Comanche kids.

The difficult, generally disorienting terrain is usually a check for navigational abilities if one is inclined to hike the world’s many trails. “Path” is a phrase used loosely on this context since most of the refuge’s footpaths turn out to be unclear or disappear altogether into labyrinths of scrub brush, grasses, and house-sized boulders. I managed to get rotated on multiple event as late afternoon hikes went longer than anticipated, permitting the solar to set and take each hint of ambient gentle with it. House to bison, longhorn, and elk, the historic protect provides quite a lot of alternatives to attach with the pure world.

There’s, after all, a wealth of Native American historical past to soak up. Whereas I used to be there, I learn Empire of the Summer time Moon by S.C. Gwynne, which chronicles the historical past of the masters of the Nice Plains, the Comanche, and their final chief, Quannah Parker. I grew intrigued by the area’s cultural and army historical past as a result of, by some means, the tragic specifics had eluded me for too lengthy. If we mentioned the topic in highschool historical past, it might have been inadvertently overshadowed by the Civil Struggle and North American slavery. There’s additionally an excellent probability I discovered the subjects worn and irrelevant as a distracted, angsty teen.

Enriching visits to the Comanche Nationwide Museum and Cultural Heart, the Fort Sill Nationwide Historic Landmark & Museum, and the Museum of the Nice Plains let me spend time with historic artifacts from the very period that had so totally captured my fascination. By preserving the refuge’s pure and human historical past in thoughts, a customer can simply join with many kinds of life, each previous and current, and by no means really feel actually alone. The Nice Plains have been the western frontier for a lot of the 1800s and with a lot settler and native blood spilled, there’s certainly a quiet somberness all through.

Nermernuh
“The individuals” in Comanche is the identify given to themselves.

Citrus Bowl
The introduction of one thing unfamiliar but irresistible to each delicacies and tradition.

For higher or worse, I’ve by no means allowed myself to be an off-the-cuff vacationer. I like digging in and studying all I can about a spot’s historical past, each pure and human, particularly if vital money and time are concerned. I did this throughout my and my companion’s go to to Mexico Metropolis a yr earlier than, and likewise throughout our honeymoon in France a few years in the past.

Add the household connection surrounding Ft. Sill and Lawton and my retracing of childhood footsteps (like a shock go to to my grandmother’s 93-year-old good friend Shirley, who was each bit as energetic and hilarious as I remembered), and it’s straightforward to know how Southwest Oklahoma remains to be particular to me regardless of a big span of time and miles. The go to was simply as exhilarating for its pure wonders because it was sentimental and at occasions bittersweet, for practically every thing else.

All Who Got here Earlier than

Reflecting somberly in reverence and appreciation.

So many photographers I like do wonderful written work by eloquently connecting reminiscences and feelings to the pictures they create.

The artist help scheme gave me the boldness to know the way to go about making work on an island which doesn’t have the identical amenities as I used to be used to in uni. The construction of it additionally helped with the transition out of uni.

Nevertheless, I consider I too usually enable new and thrilling locations to brush me off my toes to such a level that reaching for my pen or laptop computer or doing something that isn’t placing one foot down in entrance of the opposite or stuffing my face with a packed lunch, simply isn’t within the playing cards.

I do hope my small assortment of pictures and the corresponding notes connected to every convey not less than a small story of the sentiment I used to be gifted by the return journey after practically three many years. The refuge is certainly significant, in an apparent means, due to its intriguing political and pure historical past. It’s much more vital to me, on a deeply private stage, due to the various priceless recollections of heat, love, and household that I used to be grateful to each deliver with me and rediscover.