Oklahoma - where the corn is as high as an elephants eye...

Here you will notice the theme for the post headings. We 'did' Oklahoma the musical when I was at school, my sister played Aunt Ella. So since I knew I was going to Tulsa I've been singing Oh-Oklahoma quietly in my head every so often. Today we visited the tall grass prairie so I switched theme song to "Oh what a beautiful morning" and this line; "The corn is as high as an elephants eye and it looks like it's climbing right up to the sky"...

We were headed for the tall grass prairie 'owned' by the nature conservancy. These people maintain this large area of grass land where buffalo (technically bison, but I like buffalo) are allowed to roam. They keep it in it's 'natural' state by controlled burning and the grazing for the buffalo. The grassland began two hours drive from Tulsa, there were a surprising number of trees; apparently pecans (or 'pecons' as they pronounce it) are one of the products Oklahoma is known for.

They say of the prairie that 'the sky is half the world', it's hard to get a sense of natural openness and magnitude when surrounded by 70 people and two coaches but it was still beautiful. The 'grass' is about hip height because the buffalo browsing keep it from getting really tall.

 

'open' space 

Pandas live in the prairie too - as you can see!

There are a few bits of the area that are still owned by private
individuals like the are these long horned cattle are grazing on.

This is the actual long grass when the Bison aren't grazing an area

Bison or as I have re-christened them 'Fluffalos' - not that we could touch them,
they are 'wild' except for a little bit of treat association training which means they
respond to a sound alarm when the ranchers have to gather them in. 

I call this video 'run buffalo run'
Apparently they didn't appreciate us standing there staring at them and instead of giving them some space people kept getting closer, and closer!

After scaring all the Buffalo away from their water source we debunked to the bunk house. We had fajitas out of a food van (an all america experience) and whilst we ate had a talk about music in the west. Probably my all time most memorable moment from the trip was learning that in some of the earlier Christian congregations they had songs that encompassed the three cultures that made them up. The verses were Anglo hymns, the choruses were from African American spirituals and they were sung in some of the American Indian languages. Some of the churches still use these songs today. The church signs are also in Indian languages the literal translation for Baptist was something like 'man half in water'. We heard a lot about the tensions between these three cultures in our time in Tulsa, but what a wonderful image (or sound bite) of how we can integrate cultures whilst keeping them distinct.

The bunk house

 They have ranchers on site all the time to look after the bison but they also have this facility for day visitors and visiting scientist to stay and study the prairie.

Sculpture!