But growing up in Oklahoma also taught me a secret, something that only people from plains states can fully comprehend: the sky is not blue.
This was not a lesson learned in science class. This was a lesson learned on summer evenings, when the big, open sky would stretch its arms out over the plains and take off its facade, revealing its brilliance in pink, purple, orange, and red as the sun dipped below the horizon. The opposites of blue were displayed gloriously. This, I thought, was the sky's truest form, and as the sun disappears it reveals itself, intimately, to the world below.
I remember one time flying with my private-pilot dad in a little 2-seater Cessna airplane at dusk, watching the sky light on fire as the sun gave its brilliant finale, breathless at its beauty and wishing the airplane was fast enough to keep up with the turn of the earth, to make it last forever. My dad took a photo with his SLR camera, the bright orange of the sky reflecting on the wing of the plane, and had it framed. It's a beautiful photograph, but no camera can truly capture that moment. Or any like it. And I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere else.
It's an amazing thing to behold, and when people ask me what I miss the most about Oklahoma, I have no hesitation.
Sunsets.
P.S. Do a Google image search for "Oklahoma sunset" and this is some of what you see:
