Morning Comes to Elk Mountain: Dispatches from the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge

Foreword

Foreword by David Taylor In June 2012, I had the good fortune to meet Gary Lantz at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. When driving up from Dallas by way of Wichita Falls, the mountains slowly overwhelm the northwest horizon. In an area defined by flatness, these granite projections are the focal point going north on Hwy. 46 from Texas. It was a relatively mild, early summer day and though we’d been in a long-term drought, we had had some rain the last few weeks. The refuge was a mix of pink, rounded, granite boulders and knobs jutting up from green pastures with stipple brush dots of yellow, red, blue and pink wildflowers. Not far from the Visitors Center a few bison grazed, like huge black boulders slowly rolling across the fields. Gary was to be my guide for the day. I had read much of his writing about the Wichita Mountains, but he wanted to introduce me directly to this place, and I wanted to spend some time with an excellent naturalist in a place that he loved. What struck me that day are two things: one, what a dramatic landscape the Wichita Mountains are, and two, what a close relationship Gary has built with them. The Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge has a remarkable history. It is difficult to express just how unique, if not shocking, it is to see these mountains projecting up out of the plains. As Gary notes, viiiforeword Native Americans considered them sacred ground, explorers and pioneers liked to imagine the possibility of gold, Teddy Roosevelt saw in them a remnant landscape of the old west, and nowadays they are the alien landscape getaway from surrounding tabletop/ flatland geography. Bison roam somewhat freely, prairie dog towns pop up in places along the road, and somewhere up in the mountains , introduced Rocky Mountain elk make their way among the boulders. The surrounding settlement of Medicine Creek too has a kind of foreign flair to it given its past as an early 20th-century vacation retreat. I was struck by just how exotic it all felt to me, even though I was born less than 100 miles away as the crow flies. Maybe another way of saying this is that in order to get closer to understanding the Wichita Mountains, it helps to have a guide walk with you from the surrounding plains into this place. Walking with Gary Lantz isn’t really walking, it’s being taught to see. You could go no more than ten to fifteen feet down the trail and spend most of the day. Gary will show you the less obvious flowers you didn’t know; point to the grasses and forbs you didn’t see; identify animal signs you ignored; and describe the ecological relationship behind the scientific and common names for all that he’s just offered. After that he can tell you about the human history of some of the invasive species or the preservation efforts over the last hundred years to save some of the native ones. Gary can also add personal stories about his own forty-year relationship with the Wichita Mountains, but he’ll give you all of the above before offering the latter. Gary has about him a kindness and patience in his voice (he endured my endless, goofy questions about this flower, that geology, Fort Sill, and the nearby town of Medicine Creek). His writing style reminds me of the best in American natural history writing: solid, engaging naturalist description offered with a narrative voice of patience and curiosity. Such writers will use narrative, foreword ix but they are thoughtful enough to put their own story after what’s actually in front of them. In other words, there’s a maturity to his person that emanates in his writing. Gary is also a superb photographer . All the time he’s offering you these details and stories, he’s focusing and refocusing his camera, taking pictures—close-ups, landscapes and panoramas. It’s as though he finds combining the pictures he’s taking with his naturalist’s knowledge and his personal stories might begin to offer walking companions and readers a bit of the view he has. My day with Gary Lantz in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge is one of my prized outdoor experiences. I was in a marvelous place and was offered a view of it by someone who...