One Hike In Oklahoma

I did not like Oklahoma at first. I moved here for my girlfriend's job - from Ohio - though before that I had always imagined that I might find my way back to Portland someday. Moving to Oklahoma felt like saying goodbye to that dream, committing fully to something new and uncertain. The first few months I was enmeshed in a kind of mourning: for my old city, for the other futures I thought I might have had.

I didn't feel like I clicked with the city. Everything was too spread out. The bars seemed more run-down, cobbled together, and attracting the kind of people I usually went to the bar to avoid. I was getting older, too, and questioning what kind of life I should be building for myself. Did it even matter that I didn't like the bars as much, when I thought I should probably be cutting down on my drinking anyway? By March of that year, questions about bars became somewhat hypothetical anyway, as the entire world went into its COVID induced shutdown, and my world shrank to the confines of two apartments.

Here's a list of other things I didn't like about Oklahoma:

too many strip malls

you had to drive everywhere

too flat (though so was Ohio)

noisy bugs

weird colors

tornadoes

too windy

too muggy

shrubby looking trees

I worked too damn much

What I got in return for these things was the sky. The sky in Oklahoma is vast. It conveys a sense of depth akin to an ocean, and staring at it can induce a sense of stillness that feels like meditation. Your own minusculeness becomes readily apparent, like looking up at a giant building or a mountain, something so large that it can only inspire a feeling like bewilderment . You can see strange colors at sunset, vivid and alien, and clouds will drift by like whales passing under a ship. But it didn't feel like an even trade.

During COVID, many people introduced new hobbies into their lives. I know people that started baking bread, or skateboarding. I decided to get into hiking.

I'd always hiked a little bit. In Oregon and Ohio, hiking was a fairly casual activity - there were plenty of forests, and it was pretty easy to wander into one, dick around on a trail for an hour or two, and then wander back out. Doing this though, I never really felt like I knew where I was. If I ended up on top of a peak or came to a valley, I didn't usually know what it was called. I wanted to take a more conscientious approach. I wanted to be able to say things like, "I hiked the Crookback trail and ended up on Mulligan's peak, then took Martin's Ridge back out."

In Oklahoma, good hikes are few and far between. You have to make preparations, make a real trip out of it. In a way though, this was perfect for what I wanted to do.

I made a little hiking kit for myself, including a compass, maps, some snacks, a pocket knife, a water canteen, a first aid kit, a foldable poncho, a guidebook of hikes in Oklahoma, and a whistle, so I could blow on it in case I fell in a big hole.

The first hike I went on was at a park called "Roman Nose" and it was relatively easy, about two hours southeast of Oklahoma City, 3 or so miles up to a modest bluff and back. The path was varied, going through woods, past creeks, with a nice view at the high point, and I felt like it gave me a good sense of what Oklahoma looked like outside of the city, something I was still trying to wrap my head around.

Next, I tackled "Charon's Garden," which was a bit more intense. This was in the Wichita Mountains, a small mountain range in southwest Oklahoma, and not to be confused with Wichita, Kansas, or the much larger Ouachita Mountains to the east. The "garden" consisted of a number of large boulders which had to be traversed over (there wasn't space to walk between them, though there was enough room to twist your ankle real fucking bad if you weren't careful). I observed several hikers, including a large Hispanic family, manage to carefully tread their way over the boulders staying upright, but when I got to them myself, I ended up scooting over a lot of them on my butt. Still, I completed the hike without major incident.

I wanted to tackle something a bit longer. I picked a 10 miler out of the guidebook at a place called Greenleaf State Park, to the east, where the state starts to converge with the Ozark Mountains. I was going to do the "Ankle Express Southern Loop" (If I had been feeling even more ambitious, I could have tacked on the Northern Loop for a total of 18 miles).

Greenleaf State Park itself was a fairly standard looking camping park, with a giant lake as the central feature. It had a big boat ramp and plenty of space for RVs; you know the kind of place. I parked near the boat ramp and used a printed out map of the park to find the trailhead. I signed in on a paper guest log that was posted to a wooden pole. There was a sign at the start that warned of wasps, but they seemed to be in a part of the park that I wasn't planning on going to anyway. I set off into the woods. Oklahoma woods are different than Oregon woods because they don't have all those big coniferous pines and firs, and the trees are a bit smaller than the ones in Ohio. There were a few other hikers, a family with kids and a couple, but I lost them before too long, and then it was just me and the woods. I followed the trail alongside a creek, then out to a section that went along the road for a little ways (Highway 10, to Braggs). Crossed a hanging bridge that swung back and forth as I crossed it, heading back away from the road and further into the wilderness area.

So far the trail was fairly well marked; there were a few signs with arrows on them here and there, ribbons of various colors, and splotches of blue paint marked on the sides of trees. I was back walking along the lake. It was a nice day in April, so I took my sweatshirt off and tied it around my waist. The bridge had marked the start of the Southern Loop; I started moving clockwise, following the blue paint markings on the trees and on rocks. The trail was a little overgrown but mostly clear; I've noticed on my hikes in Oklahoma that the terrain can be a little rougher than what I've found in Oregon. I imagine this is because there are less people using the trails. In Oregon, most hikes I've gone on you'll run into someone every few minutes or so, but on the hikes in Oklahoma you can sometimes go for a long time without seeing anybody.

I passed a few mile markers that told me I was about 4 miles in. I passed two burly looking men heading the other way with backpacking packs. They were talking about what to do if you see a rattle snake. "It'll probably just leave you alone," one said to the other. They could have been father and son, or just two friends.

I was looking for a place called Mary's Cove, where I would need to turn right and start following white markings instead of blue to stay on the Southern Loop. According to my trail book, if I missed the turn and went straight, that would put me on the rougher Northern Loop, adding at least another 8 miles to the route. I was determined not to do this, trying to resist my frequent temptation when going on long walks, which is to start spacing out entirely.

I reached a clear inlet in the water and a little bit farther in was a campsite, so I figured this must be the place. There was a fire pit with a smoldering campfire which I thought most have been lit by the two dudes earlier. I sat on a wooden bench and had a few granola bars, and watched the smoke rise up from the firepit. There really seemed to be a lot of smoke coming up. I started to get concerned, so I poked the coals with my foot, seeing if I could smush them out. This had the opposite effect than I wanted, however, as it stirred the fire enough to get it going again. Orange flames began crawling up one of the logs. I got nervous then. I was alone out here in the woods, with an unattended fire. Surely Smokey the Bear had told me something about this. So I dumped my water canteen on it to put it out.

This got rid of the flames, though there was still smoke coming up. I was worried if I kept fucking with it I'd make it worse again, so feeling a little uneasy, I headed out. Now I was trying to find the turn off for the Southern Loop. The markings on the trees were now white splotches instead of blue, but the trail still just seemed to be going straight ahead. I really didn't want to get on the wrong trail and end up stuck in the woods after dark. I decided to follow it for a half hour, and if I still didn't know where I was, I'd just turn and head back the way I'd come. After a few minutes, I reached a place with a fork in two directions. There was a sign pointing back the way I'd come that said "Mary's Cove," and a 15 mile marker, which I couldn't figure out though I now realize must have been counting miles heading in the opposite direction. I checked my compass, and the new trail was heading south, so I figured it must be the right one.

Still, I couldn't shake the paranoia that I was headed on the wrong trail, so a few minutes in, I stopped again to recheck the compass and the map. While I was doing this, I heard a loud rustling in the tree just above me. It sounded like something big. I looked up, and my first thought was that there was a person in the tree, and that they were jumping out of it toward my head. Instead, a bald eagle swooped past me. It was probably about 10 feet away, and level with me, less than the distance between the computer desk that I'm working at right now and the other side of the room. I'd never seen such a thing that close. My awe quickly turned into visions of it attacking me, clawing at my face for being too close to its nest. So I started jogging down the trail for a bit to get away from the tree. When I was far enough away, I checked the compass again. I was still heading south.

I was walking through nondescript woods, out of sight of the lake. After awhile, I stopped seeing the markers as well. The trail itself was not clearly delineated from the rest of the terrain, so I couldn't really tell if I was on it or not. It was just an ocean of dirt and forest in all directions. I started to feel a slight panic then, and tried to push it down. When you panic is when you do something stupid, I thought. I walked a little bit faster. With the compass, I thought I could find my way back to the lake, and use that to get back to the park. Probably. If it didn't get dark.

Eventually I found a t-shirt with a skull and cross bones on it wrapped around a tree like a flag, a symbol that at least someone at been out here at some point. And just beyond it was one of the trail markers. Nothing to it, I thought. But I made goddamn sure I was paying close attention to the markers from here on out.

The lake was on my right again, which I found reassuring, an easy landmark to orient to.

A few yards ahead of me I saw another bald eagle on a tree branch start flapping its wings, and swoop out of the tree. I could hear the sound that its wings made as it flapped them to take off, kind of a deep "whuuf whuuf" as it pushed off from the tree. In fact, I realized, there were eagles all over the place; up in the trees, flying over the lake looking for fish. I began to get a strange feeling, like I was on the edge of the actual wilderness, a place where people rarely went. I hadn't seen anyone since the backpackers a few hours before, and the only signs of civilization were the faded trail markings and the skull and cross bones t-shirt. It was a heady, intoxicating feeling, though also a little bit unsettling. A few years earlier, I had been on a boat that had headed out to sea a little ways, leaving the shore out of view, and I had felt something similar as I had watched the land get smaller and smaller, with only the endless blue ahead.

I was thirsty as hell by this point. I remembered that I had packed an orange, so I had it next to a creek that I then crossed using stepping stones as a makeshift bridge. My leg muscles were screaming, my feet were blistered, and I somehow squirted some of the orange juice in my left eye. Still, I was very happy to be still on the trail. I passed one of the markers, and used the map to see I had about 3 or 4 miles left.

I kept going and saw a beer can under a tree, and knew that the spell was broken and I was headed back. And suddenly, I found myself back at the swinging bridge. It was about 5:30. I'd set off at just around 11 that morning.

As I retraced the beginning section of the trail, by the creek, I happened to feel a lump right around my waist. It felt a bit like a mole, but I plucked it off, and found a large tick. I threw it on the ground, and then decided to take a moment to inspect the rest of my body.

I was fucking crawling with them.

Most were closer to my feet, but a few had traversed my body all the way up to my armpits, making a steady ascent toward my shoulders. I quickly brushed off as many as I could, slapping all over my body and knocking them to the ground. There was one embedded in my ankle, its flat ass sticking up out of me like a zit. I used the tweezers from my pocket knife to yank it out, then cleaned the small wound it left with some antiseptic wipes from my first aid kit (they smelled like pineapples).

I walked the remaining mile, but now I had the full on heebie jeebies. Every few steps, I would compulsively brush my hands all over my body. Periodically, I'd feel a little tickling sensation on my bare skin, and find one crawling up my belly under my shirt, or on my back. I made it back to the parking lot, my feet ragged from the blisters (which had burst and reformed a few times over the course of the hike), and beelined for the bathroom so I could do a more thorough check. I found one on my leg, and flushed it down the toilet (it had started doing the backstroke). There were a few more on my boots; they looked like babies. I stomped them off as best as I could.

Back in Bragg, I drove to the first gas station I found, and polished off a big bag of Doritos and a bottle of Coke in the parking lot, the first thing I'd had to drink since I'd poured my water on the fire hours before. And called Cynthia, of course.

That night back in my apartment, I found another tick crawling on my shoulder. Another was embedded in my thigh the next day. Then when I was taking a shower, I thought to myself, "Man, wouldn't it suck if there was one on my balls?" Sure enough, found one of the fuckers gorging itself right on the underside of my scrotum. I yanked it out with the tweezers like all the rest.

Lyme disease isn't too common in Oklahoma, but you never know, and we also have Rocky Mountain, STARI, and God knows what else. The paranoia lasted for quite awhile, and I was examining my body for weeks after, feeling phantom crawling at odd times and jumping at specks of dirt. My feet formed into arrays of nice golden brown blisters.

It is a folly to think that we can enter into the spaces of the earth without the earth also entering into us.