"I was able to go back and serve as a volunteer ranger because the land needs care whether the government will pay for it or not." The last place I expected to find one of the oldest mountain ranges in the United States, or its first national wildlife refuge , was in Southwestern Oklahoma. Rising out of the prairie like spines on an alligator cresting the still surface of a backwater bayou, the Wichita Mountains are an oasis of craggy peaks and shimmering lakes harboring some of America’s most