Southwestern Nature Writing Series

Organized as a series
of monthly journal entries, Morning Comes
to Elk Mountain is Lantz’s response to ten years of exploring the rough and
unexpected beauty of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in southwestern
Oklahoma.  A combination of memoir, natural
history, Native American history, and geology, this book is enriched by 20
color photos and a map to appeal to the seasoned visitor as well as the
newcomer to the refuge.

The national wildlife
refuge that’s the focus of the book was among the first established by
President Theodore Roosevelt.  He helped
save the Wichitas from miners and land speculators, and instead the harsh yet
scenic area became the nation’s first bison refuge, established to keep this
American icon from slipping into extinction. 
Today the refuge hosts more than a million visitors a year, most of them
coming to hike the trails, climb the rocks, photograph bison and prairie dogs,
or simply commune with a beautiful, wild area that remains a spiritual
landscape for the Kiowa and Comanche Indians who call it home.

“The manuscript is
incomparable in its depth and breadth of natural and human history of the Wichita
Mountains Wildlife Refuge and, by extension, of southwestern Oklahoma. Anyone
with even a passing interest in the refuge or western Oklahoma would absorb
abundant knowledge of the entire region nowhere else available in one volume.”—Gary Clark, author of Backroads of the Texas Hill Country: Your Guide
to the Most Scenic Adventures and columnist for the Houston Chronicle

“I enjoyed the
narrative and the intimacy of the story as well as the photography.”—George Maxey, geology professor