Oklahoma and Red Dirt

 

My daughter came to me after a being asked by a new student from New York why there was so much red dirt here.  She didn’t know the answer and brought the question to me.  Telling her that I guess we were just luck didn’t seem to be enough.  Having done additional research on the subject I can now explain with a little more certainty why there’s so much red dirt around here.

One day God was busy making the world.  It wasn’t that he needed help or anything, but he had Gabriel there just to keep him busy; everyone needs something to do just to stay out of trouble so he had Gabriel running errands.  He had just finished the cornfields of the Midwest and had used more of the rich loam soil than he had originally planned.  He was working his way west of the Mississippi River, laying out the soil like a sweet little child spreading the dirt smooth so he could write his name.  He would smooth it down and then decide to put a little hill here and a little valley there.  He would drag his finger down through some of the valleys, meandering down to another, larger groove in the dirt he had drawn earlier using his full hand.  He would plant the large deciduous forests wherever he wanted them and the pine forests where he thought they were needed.  He had fun making some swamp grasslands down in a peninsula he had stuck on the land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean.  He had had some left over weird animals, hard armor shelled animals with long tails and a long mouth full of wicked teeth and he thought that would be just the place for them.

He worked his way on further west and got all the way to Western Oklahoma when he ran out of dirt.  “Gabriel!” he called.

“Yes, Lord.”

“Do we have any more dirt I can use?”

“We only have some of this red dirt and you know that’s not all that good,” Gabriel replied.  “We’ve run out of the good stuff.  Can it wait until tomorrow when I can get some more loam made?”

“No,” said God.  “I’ll just go ahead and use what we have on hand.  I’m going to make my just a little further west and then I’m going to build me some mountains.  We need to spend our time tonight and tomorrow making some granite for the mountain base and you know how much work it is and how much time it takes to make a mountain.”

“Yes, Lord, I surely do.”

So God took the red dirt and spread it out from here to there, as far as the eye could see.  After it was through it was late at night and he and Gabriel decided they were too tired to build any hills or trench hardly any rivers.  Gabriel had prevailed on him not to make a lot of rivers as the red dirt would just make them muddy anyway.  But, God had felt they need a few of them because he was sure some of the animals might wander into that area and would need to take a drink now and then.

Before turning in for the night, God had decided to plant grass over the dirt he had spread out so smoothly.  He spoke the word and before Gabriel could turn his head there appeared a lush carpet of green reaching all the way from the hills of Texas to the Canadian border and even a little further.  It spread from the forests back east to the edge of the world on the west where he planned on making a great Rocky Mountain range.  God admired the sea of grass and thought it was good and told Gabriel so.  Gabriel, though, was particularly fond of hills, mountains and valleys, running rivers and lakes.  He asked God what kind of people would ever make that kind of place their home.

God said, “Gabriel, there’ll be some people who like this land just for what it is.  They’ll be as strong as a wild animal, so strong in fact that the buffalo and the bear will look at them in awe.  Deep down they’ll have a sweet spirit and when they look at this land where you see nothing they’ll see paradise and they’ll make it their home.”

God and Gabriel walked back to their line shack for the remainder of the night.  They were staying in a line shack as they were not finished with their work and wouldn’t be going home to Heaven before the work was through.  They still needed to prepare some granite for the mountains before they could shut it down for the night and get some sleep.

The grass was a short grass, not requiring a great deal of nutrients and certainly not requiring much water.  The plains had been made so hastily that there were no plans made for the weather system that would provide the amount of rain which would be needed to sustain large, towering trees.  The short grass grew and flourished.  Soon there were small animals, mice and other rodents and even rabbits that came into the grass lands, finding food among the tender leaves and homes deep within the roots.  They were blissfully growing their families.  And when the coyotes and the bobcats heard of those little thriving communities, they made their stealthy march into the grasslands looking for dinner among the mice and the rabbits.

Deer, elk and other large animals found the grass was satisfying and abundant.  They came there, grazing all day and resting during the night.  They were happy and prosperous.  They were grateful for the little rain that did fall and found there was just enough for them to find a little stream, a creek and a small river, here and there where they could quench their thirst.  They ate, they grew and their families grew.  And the wolves and the bears and even the cougars followed them onto the plains. 

Eventually large herds of buffalo came to the plains.  There were no animals so well suited for this short grass.  They ate well, eating their fill, resting up and moving on to another area where the grass is greener.  They roved from place to place eating whatever they could find and they never complained.  There was enough grass to support millions of them in the great herds.  Now and then a wolf would take one of them down, but hardly ever.  They lived without any danger; they had no enemies to speak of as there were just so many of them and they were so large and could be such a formidable enemy.  And then the Indian came along, going where they were, following them where they went.  And the buffalo provided the Indians their food, clothing and shelter.  It was a partnership that worked and the short grass was the base for it all.

Then, one day a box with wheels came onto the plains pulled by two large horses.  The wagon had a sheet of white cloth stretched over hoops attached to the box.  Tied behind the box were a milk cow and a young bull.  That box was stuffed with stuff, homemaking stuff, farming stuff, feed stuff and everything else people needed to survive.  There was a man and a woman sitting on a seat at the front of the box.  They were weathered, their skin was hardened by the sun, and their hair was dry and tangled.  They looked as hard as the buffalo but it appeared they had a tender heart.  They looked to be about in their 60s while in reality they could not have been any more than their mid to late 20s.  They had five children with them.  Two of the children were riding in the back of the box, two were walking along behind while driving four pigs along with the procession, and one was a little thing being held by the woman nursing at her breast.

They stopped their box as if to rest the weary horses and the weary people.  Sitting there, they looked around at the grass; grass as far as the eye could see to the north and the south, to the east and the west.  They sat there just south of one of the few rivers they had seen, the North Fork of the Red, and looked at it all.  They couldn’t see any buffalo that day, but they could see buffalo trails and buffalo wallows.  They saw a deer in the distance.  Mainly they saw the short grass, the green grass from which life seems to spring.  They knew if the mice and the rabbits, the deer and the elk, and the buffalo could live there, so could they.

She asked, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“I’m seeing a paradise,” he replied.

“But, I’ve never seen so much red dirt,” she said.

“I’m seeing a paradise,” he said again.