By Michelle Allen
I’ve always lived in the kind of place where the loudest sound at night is the wind moving through the trees. My hometown isn’t a city at all — it’s a village, the kind where everyone waves when they pass you on the road and the biggest excitement is the annual Forth of July Celebration or a Friday night game. Life there is slow, familiar, and rooted. It’s the kind of place that teaches you how to breathe.
But part of my year is spent somewhere completely different: right in the heart of Oklahoma City, in Mesta Park, where my boyfriend lives. From his front yard, you can see the Capitol dome rising above the trees — a reminder that this is a place where things are always moving, always shifting, always alive.
So when I think about the “best thing to do in your city,” I have two answers, depending on where I’m standing.
In my Michigan village, the best thing to do is simple: be still. Walk the back roads. Listen to the river. Let the quiet settle into your bones. There’s a kind of healing in small‑town silence that you can’t buy, can’t schedule, can’t manufacture.
But in Oklahoma City? The best thing to do is to simply step outside and let the city show off a little. From Mesta Park, the evenings feel electric in a way that’s hard to describe unless you’ve stood there yourself. Porch lights glow, neighbors walk dogs under the canopy of old trees, the hum of life drifting from Uptown 23rd, and just beyond the rooftops, the skyline starts to shimmer.
And then there’s the Devon Tower — impossible to ignore, especially on game nights. When the OKC Thunder play, the whole building lights up in brilliant blue, like the city itself is cheering. You can see it right from the front yard, rising above the Capitol dome, turning an ordinary night into something that feels celebratory. It’s one of those small-but-big moments that makes you pause and think, Wow… I get to be here for this.
Maybe that’s the beauty of having two homes: one teaches me to slow down, and the other reminds me to look up and take it all in. And somewhere between the quiet of Michigan and the heartbeat of Oklahoma City, I’ve found a rhythm that feels like my own.
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