Harvest Moon (6x3)

[Mike Handley]

The ground in southwestern Oklahoma is so thirsty, pissing on the dirt doesn’t even leave a wet spot.

 

Less than six inches of rain this year and blistering heat have drained small ponds and creeks. Larger ones are ringed by a hard gray crust that resembles the elbows of old men.

 

To add injury to insult, the devil came last month to reap what the drought sowed.

 

Flames cooked rattlesnakes in their dens, transformed oaks to charcoal, grass to ash, and they turned cedars into Roman candles, fueled by their own juices.

 

Even before the scorching, cattlemen were either selling cheap or stubbornly importing bad hay from neighboring states.

 

My friend Jay told me of the night he and the ranch’s owner strode a rocky pasture, breathing smoke and watching the flames advance. They walked without flashlights beneath a moonless, yet eerie amber sky.

 

The firefighters had arrived from out of state and at night, and they didn’t listen to the man who knew his land’s topography and the wind’s proclivities. More was lost than saved.

 

Jay and the rancher, helpless to save a single tree on their own, watched the fire burn. Ahead of it, shapes on four legs fled, while a sea of embers winked menacingly for days in its wake.

 

The rancher, who dealt in feeder calves, sold every head, and he’ll have to wait two or three years to start fresh, if he wants his land to recover properly. He also had to lease ground for his sheep, his living and eager weed killers.

 

But at least his residence and barns were spared. In nearby Medicine Park, some weren’t so lucky.

 

The fire burned for four days, the crews eventually concentrating on saving homes in their paths. Nearly 40,000 acres are now fit for only Tim Burton’s imagination.

 

 

[Travis Smith]

Great piece Mike - I love the Tim Burton reference at the end - I have done some work in burn areas directly after a fire (still burning, just not where we were) and I think that line sums it up as well as any I have ever heard.

[Angela]

I think your reference to Tim Burton was perfect.  The whole place seems rendered otherworldly.  It would be a rewrite to list all the fine lines you have wrought here, Sir.  Excellent, and not at all what I expected from the title.

[Cita]

There are so many good lines in this....

old men's elbows, cooked rattlesnakes, importing bad hay....

damn.  I've been on the prairie before it burnt, while it burnt, after it burnt.  You captured it in poetry.

[Gita]

It's one thing to hear you talk about your travels but it's so much more when you have written them in your excellent prose and illustrated the page with your photos. I think the newspaper editor in you must be enjoying doing these page layouts, no?   What makes these all the more powerful is that they're nonfiction, but told with an artist's sensibilities.

[Teresa]

"...Tim Burton's imagination..."  What imagery.  Too many great lines to mention here without retyping most of this trio.  Sad and beautifully told.

[Michael Brown]

God, this is sere. And I let your terrific writing influence me too much.
Haven't been around so much because your last series has me reading Cry, the Beloved Country and I hesitate in putting it down to write.
Now your work will have me re-reading Fahrenheit 451 or something just as hot and dry.

[Robert Crisman]

Wow. You left me speechless with this piece. A land like old men's elbows... "Flames cooked rattlesnakes in their dens, transformed oaks to charcoal, grass to ash, and they turned cedars into Roman candles, fueled by their own juices." That one will stay with me. I think you should send this one out; someone is sure to snatch it right up.