The Wind That is All Things

The Wind That is All Things

In the wind that is all things
Everything you can taste
And touch
And hear
And smell,
The salt sweeps horizontally
Across the lunar landscape
Of western Oklahoma.

And there is beauty here,
Where selenite crystals jut from sand,
Exposed by the ceaseless wind
And the ceaseless search
For treasure that brought me
To you and us to this place.

–Shaun Perkins

In Alfalfa County, just north of Jet, is the Great Salt Plains Lake and the Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge.  If you have never visited here it is almost eerie.  Traditional northwestern Oklahoma pasture land stops and abruptly merges into a truly lunar feeling salt flat.  It is strange.  A drastic landscape transition.  It is quiet and white.  Just another reason why Oklahoma is my favorite place.  We have so many ecological regions and diversity.  The Great Salt Plains have gypsum concentrations high enough to grow selenite crystals.  These crystals have an hourglass-shaped sand inclusion that is not known to occur in selenite crystals found anywhere else in the world.  Because of this, many people travel here to dig for them. The wind does certainly blow here and as you stand out on the sand, for just a moment, it does become all things.