Four times a day, we crawl at 35 mph through Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, staring out the truck windows at grazing buffalo, elk, deer and Texas longhorns, the latter stocked in 1927 to prevent the breed’s extinction.

As is often the case when my artist’s wiring is humming, I know my regular readers aren’t going to appreciate this, that cows not on a plate might be the least interesting animals on the…