Oklahoma/Kansas Road Trip: Day 1

Doing work as a Forest Service Tribal Liaison

Greetings everyone from a Hampton Inn in Woodward, Oklahoma, where I’ve arrived after a long day of travel.

I know most of you know me from talking about movies on Twitter or Blue Sky, but I thought that this would be a really good opportunity to talk to you a little bit about the work that I’m doing as a Tribal liaison for the United States Forest Service. My arrival in Oklahoma is the end of the first night of what will be a long trip and hopefully a really good one. Although my office is in Colorado, many of the Indigenous Nations I work with are located elsewhere, with several being in Oklahoma. As you can imagine, this presents a challenge to developing real working relationships with one another. Now, I’ve been really fortunate to get to learn from so many folks out here who have traveled to Colorado to help us at the Forest service learn what their respective tribes would like us to know. But relationships go two ways. And that means it was time to finally be able to get out here and do some visiting of my own. So for the next week or so, I’ll be visiting with a lot of the folks that I’ve had the privilege to get to know and hopefully get to meet some new folks as well.

There are some things that I can’t tell you about the job. Some information that gets shared is privileged. And I’m always wary of making sure that I’m not using my position as a way to platform myself. But I do think that it’s a good idea to be able to share broadly about the work that I’m doing and why. So for the next little while I’ll be reporting in as I can either on Blue Sky or here about my first trip to Kansas and Oklahoma as a Tribal Liaison. And since I really like having a job, let me go ahead and preface this by saying that none of my posts here or elsewhere or endorsed by anyone other than myself.

OK, now that I have a serious stuff out of the way let me tell you about my very first day. Today’s main priority was to make my very first trip to Cimarron National Grassland, situated near Elkhart, Kansas. This particular grassland is important to many tribes so it was important for me to be able to see it for myself and start to understand this landscape.

However, it’s a really long drive to get out there from Pueblo, Colorado (about four and a half hours with no stops). So once I grabbed a Forest service vehicle, I left for destinations eastward.

My first stop was actually in a town called Lamar, Colorado where are my buddy Eric suggested a local burger joint that I absolutely loved. It’s called BJ’s. It’s one of those diner type places where they have phones on the wall to make your order. See below.

After refueling both myself and the Subaru (yes of course I drive a Subaru for work. I live in Colorado), it was time for more driving. After about two hours I arrived at Cimarron National Grasslands. Sometimes the grasslands don’t get their credit, because I think that all the mountains in Colorado can sometimes overwhelm them in the public eye. But they are beautiful in their own right and have really rich histories as well. And I was thrilled to be back in Kansas after a while. My younger boy was born in Wichita and I have wonderful friends in the state. So it was nice to see a landscape I was intimately familiar with.

I didn’t have a lot of time today, but I was able to see a couple of the scenic overlooks as well as a small cliff from which you could view the old Santa Fe Trail. It’s kind of amazing that after over 100 years, you can still see the ruts from the wagons. He says, though you could close your eyes and envision the wagon trains moving along their way.

After getting a chance to see the grasslands a little bit, I was able to go on to visit with our district ranger to learn about conditions on the grasslands and how I can be of help. And it was also able to visit with an old friend. Maybe you recognize him below.

But the sun was getting low and I still had a lot of driving to do if I’m going to make the most of my time. So I said my goodbyes and headed on to Woodward, Oklahoma where I grabbed some fajitas and checked into my room for the night.

More to come later.

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HATM Watch Party

Of course, Historians At The Movies must continue, even if I’m on the road. So follow HATM Executive Officer Rachel Gunter (she’s the Riker to my Picard) on Blue Sky. And she’ll lead the show tonight as we watch The Family Man on Netflix.

I hope wherever you are you’re having a great Sunday.

Jason