Oklahoma
Silo
#littlefieldworkthings
Forgetting you tucked your pants in your socks to avoid ticks and walking into CVS like that.
Visiting Lowes 4 days running, making a total of 5 trips for a week long service run.
Playing a game called “Sunburn, Dirt, or Bruise?” at the end of the day.
Pickup truck rides! My favorite people are the ones with big fields with seismometers at the bottom who give me rides in their trucks/golf carts/Arctic Cats. My least favorite people are the ones with big fields with seismometers at the bottom who don’t give me rides. On the other hand, my step count on my phone is quite high this week.
Stopping on the highway for 10 minutes because a Very Large Farm Vehicle (combine? crop sprayer? It was two stories tall and took up two lanes) had parked in the center of the road and seemed unwilling to move.
A church sign that said “Your name may be on a bottle of Coke, but is it in the Book of Life?”
A laundromat sign that said “Suds Yer Duds”
Too many “Jesus/Christ is Lord/The Answer” signs to count, but in spatial terms probably not as many as the Elmira/Southern Tier area has in terms of religious imagery per mile. If I am ever here in winter, I will have to compare numbers of monumental glowing Christmas emblems blazoned on the countryside. Oklahoma may be at a disadvantage as there are no proper hills for a two-story Christmas wreath to hang on like we have. Maybe they can decorate one of the Very Large Farm Vehicles or a wind turbine.
Sharing the roads and fields with rabbits, deer, pheasants, and hordes of large yellow grasshoppers which leap from the grass ahead of you like a wave before a ship as you walk through a field – A+, would nature-gaze again. Sharing the field with an early morning skunk heading your direction – Do not want.
AN ACTUAL ROADRUNNER JUMPED OUT THE BUSHES AND RAN ALONG IN FRONT OF MY CAR. TURNS OUT THEY RUN ABOUT 15 MPH.
(hot damn)
Where the Winds Come Spinning Down the Plain
Field Notes: Oklahoma
Oklahoma might not seem like a first choice for a spring break getaway, but sun, warmth, and the outdoors make for a good spring break, even if you have to spend it working. If you’re a seismologist in upstate NY you have to follow where the earthquakes go. I’m thinking of saving up for a tricked out pickup and painting “Earthquake Chasers” on the side, like the tornado hunters we kept running into at gas stations, somewhat unnervingly.
If you’re hearing earthquakes and Oklahoma in the same sentence and getting confused, welcome to the strange new future where OK was the most earthquake-prone state in 2014, more than California. Since 2009 the number of quakes has gone from 1 or 2 felt events a year to 1 or 2 a day; in an animation from the USGS, you can see earthquakes blossom across the entire central portion of the state: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/states/oklahoma/OKeqanimation.php Continue reading
quakeandquiver.com 