Council Grove Letterbox, OK

A hundred and a half years ago, had you been herding cattle up from Texas
to the westward moving railhead in Kansas, you'd have likely stopped along
the way at one of Jesse Chisholm's trading posts to take on a few supplies,
ask about the conditions further north and whatnot. He'd been trading with
the inhabitants of Indian Territory for some time. At this particular
post, the oak/blackjack groves punctuating the tall-mid grass prairies of
central Oklahoma provided wood for fires and shelter from the cold northers
that blew in each winter. Ole Jesse had picked a spot on the river that
had long been a place populated in the winter by Kiowa, Cheyenne and
Arapaho, and other buffalo hunting bands coming in off the plains to their
winter lodges. As a result the area came to be called Council
Grove. Names stick, even if the memory of why largely disappears. Standing
at Jesse's store, point your compass at 295 and find a way to cross the
river and get somewhere along that line.

Places tend to never lose their usefulness I suppose, though Jesse's isn't
there anymore, folks still hold council among their friends here. Sometimes
when things don't work out, they speak harsh words and try to inscribe them
so indelibly that everyone else can feel their pain and know who caused
it. Off to the south of the Council Grove box, councils are still held and
the words spoken sometimes take the form of art. While we can read much of
it, I suppose in several hundred years, folks might lose that capacity and
see in them something more, or less, and ascribe to them mystery like we've
done at Three Rivers, Newspaper Rock, and Lascaux. Oh, but on to the box.
Standing on that line you shot from Jesse's store, you want to triangulate
on the gatehouse that lets the N. Canadian flow on down through its red
muddy channel to the other pearls on this string. That feature would be
seen at 356, if it weren't for the trees.

Find the twin posts, though, stand between them and follow the needle
N. Wriggling into this grove, you'll find that it would only shelter only
a pretty intimate council.

DW