THE ENDLESS SKYWAY

territory ahead A land where the fields of golden grain, Like waves on a sunlit sea, Bend low to the breezes that sweep the plain With a welcome to you and me.

Where the corn grows high ’neath the smiling sky, Where the quail whistles low in the grass.

And the fruit trees greet with a burden sweet And perfume the winds that pass.

— Oklahoma — A Toast Oklahoma’s original state song

Autumn, Blaine County

32

405 MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2017

There’s a bright, golden haze on the meadow There’s a bright, golden haze on the meadow.

The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye And it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky.

— Oh, What a Beautiful Morning Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”

Winter corral, Osage County

THE ENDLESS SKYWAY

But the sun in California Don’t shine one half as bright As the one in Oklahoma, So I’m startin’ back tonight.

A visual ode to Oklahoma’s skies

— Merl Lindsay Lonesome Okie Goin’ Home

BY M.J. ALEX ANDER

How long has it taken me to find you?

Five hundred years, five hundred thousand miles It don’t matter now, love’s always on time Meet me underneath the Oklahoma sky …

– Miranda Lambert, Oklahoma Sky

Rain, Cimarron County

In Oklahoma, the sky is our ocean.

Its mood may be placid for day upon day, then in an hour’s time awaken to morph from cloudless cobalt to a roiling sea of copper, from inscrutable pewter minimalism to monstrous iron thunderheads, pregnant with rain and strobing with the lightning within.

It calls pilots and astronauts such as Wiley Post and Gordon Cooper and James Stafford and Shannon Lucid to explore its mysteries. Beckons storm chasers from around the globe to witness its ferocity. Inspires artists and songwriters, as well the nomenclature of the state’s largest city – after all, OKC is home NOVEMBER 2017 405 MAGAZINE

33

territory ahead I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free, and there was nothing to break the light of the sun.

I was born where there were not enclosures and everything drew a free breath ‌ I want to die there and not within walls. — Para-Wa-Samen (Ten Bears), of the Tamparika Comanches

Sunflowers, Ellis County

34

405 MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 2017

Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam Where the deer and the antelope play; Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not cloudy all day.

— Dr. Brewster Higley, Shawnee

Farmhouse’s final summer, Kiowa County

I’m in a world so wide It makes me feel small sometimes I miss the big, blue skies The Oklahoma kind.

— Carrie Underwood I Ain’t in Checotah Anymore

Red earth, white windmill, blue sky, Dewey County

to the Skydance Bridge, Stonecloud Brewing, Painted Sky Opera and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Every morning, Oklahomans wake and look up as one to scan its expanse. Dozens or hundreds or thousands of times each day, our upturned eyes glance again and again, in a collective tic born of self-preservation and fed by curiosity.

We watch for storms, it is true. But also to witness the cinematic cloudscapes and wind currents and gradations in color; for the ebb and flow of a molten dawn and inky dusk; and for stars that emerge as the sun fades and the tide of darkness rises.

In Oklahoma, the sky is our ocean.

NOVEMBER 2017 405 MAGAZINE

35