the natural calendar of the southern llano estacado...

January

As the month begins, gray fox pups are born

While their daddy sleeps all day in a tree

Near the vixen’s den.

As the pups open their eyes, the underground writhes

Billions of springtails mating, in galaxies of thousands.

The prairie dogs mate, too,

And the greathorned owls lay eggs

Even while the snow falls.

The whitetail deer lose their antlers

As they nibble dandelion, filaree, and mustard,

The companions of emigrating humankind.

February

In the first week modern drivers

Splatter the slowest and dumbest male skunks

But bobcats never become roadkill

Although they wander for mates, too.

Tiny draba, delicate between grass leaf litter

Is the first native bloom of spring.

The Cassin’s sparrow first songflight,

A quavery whistle rising in the sky

Settles in our hearts.

At the end of the month,

Dragonflies fly, salamanders lay eggs

Under ice-rimmed ponds

The first cottontail bunny baby

Of the year opens its eyes

When lizards scamper on warm days. 

March

Mule deer shed their racks in time

For the just awakened flies and ants

Grasshoppers jump at the squeak

Of newborn cotton rats

The bloom of scrambled eggs

Set killdeer to courting

As sandhill cranes depart and

Pronghorn lose tuffs of winter pelage.

Ground squirrels whistle and frogs sing

When the yellow-headed blackbirds pass by

And spectacle pod dances in the winds of spring.

Scissortail flycatchers and black-chinned hummingbirds

Skip above two dozen species of wildflowers

And turkey vultures circle north over

Box turtles investigating the changes of winter

April

Prairie dog pups come up to play

With baby preying mantids

And kingbirds chase hawks and ravens

While a bobcat kitten’s eye still are not open.

Impatient tarantulas clean house

While prairie chickens dance and boom

Disturbing baby pronghorn fawns.

Orioles gather hair

And swallows ball up mud.

Ground squirrels tussle

And bullbats pop their wings.

Mississippi kite soar in circles

And thousands of migrating sandpipers

Hem and stitch the shore of playas full of water.

Redwinged blackbirds lift their epaulets for a mate

Above thousands of frog eggs bobbing

A million ladybugs speckle the fresh chartreuse mesquite as

Painted buntings and blue grosbeaks bring tropical heat. 

May

 The birds of winter begin to leave and

The summer birds arrive

150 species of birds flit over the blooms

of the mesquite and 200 species of wildflowers.

While yuccas bloom

Cactus wren young act the fool

And the pronghorn males go wandering off in groups.

At first the lotebush has berries,

But their blooms come later.

Possum young cling to their mother

And red shiners are truly red.

As the heat sends fuzzy orange caterpillars scurrying

The grass yellows and curls for the summer

And the ground becomes hard as rock –

But – if it rains, spring continues!

June

The lotebush blooms,

Pools of nectar glisten

Flies, bees, wasp, and ant swarm

And rainbugs march after a rain cools the earth.

Sunfish males hollow out nests

And blackwitch moths pass by

On their death flight to the north.

Dog day cicadas drone in town

Mesquite cicadas squirm to

The other side of a branch

Termites swarm after a rain

And feed the toads rising after a year underground.

Tiny quail chicks run (and there is always one more!)

Around male tarantulas searching

For rain awakened mates.

  

July

Schistocerca and Melanolopus grasshoppers migrate

In locust hordes in some years.

Painted grasshoppers lek in open grass

And that is why the curlews return.

Badger young wander in sibling groups,

Black tens swoop over rain-filled playas

Scooping the floating insect detritus

Living and dead.

Clumsy blundering giant beetles arise

From horsecripplers.

Cattail caterpillars bristle on the slick green

And spiderlings come to earth with predawn dew.

Mockingbirds and curve-billed thrashers wear

Prickly pear purple capes

In the playas egrets wade

And in the pastures lark buntings

Twitter again.

August

Windmills stop turning for a fortnight

And dozens of migrating hummingbirds

Begin weeklong visits.

Baby whiptail lizards tentatively explore under

Seepwillow swarming with sand wasps

Near halophytes saltmarsh moths mate all nightlong

And in the prairie prairie dogs refurbish their burrows,

while great blue herons arrive at every pond

to teach fish guile.

Thistle down is plucked for lesser goldfinch nests

And the soft sibilance of upland sandpipers

Filters from cloudy night skies.

Deer rub their velvet in jerky irritation

And young toebiters leave their daddy’s back.

At daybreak leopard frogs songs deafens a passerby

Mississippi kites form swirling kettles and head to south America.

South Texas butterflies ride the moist Gulfwinds of hurricanes.

The redwinged arphia grasshoppers begin to crepitate.

 September

Avocets and stilts leave

As Wilson’s warblers pass through.

Windscorpions dig burrows for eggs

And thief ants swarm

While preying mantids foam egg cases.

Orioles leave

And ducks, soras, and harriers arrive as

The fall horde of miller moths

Come from the dusty grass of sundown.

Painted buntings leave

As prairie falcons and white-crowned sparrows return.

Paper wasp reproductives lounge at the nest

And stillwater mayflies live as adults for a day.

Next year’s wildflower begin germination

And mesquite twig girdlers invade

While pronghorn males frantically round up harems.

October

The cold-blooded ones end their year

As bird migration slows

The first morning fog of fall

Hints at winter’s kill.

Monarch butterflies turn trees gold

Telling the buzzards and bullbats it is time to go.

Box turtles go underground

When scissortail flycatchers leave. 

Robins and cedar waxwings arrive in town

Pronghorn shed their antlers as

Packrats add to their roofs

Paperwasps swirl in mating swarms.

Horny toads go underground

As spotted towhees arrive to dance

On ground greened by the rosettes of next year’s wildflowers.

 November

Young raccoons disperse

When rescue grass gives a promise of spring and

Carpet the shade of mesquites dropping leaves.

On foggy mornings the lacy drapery

Of thousands of spiderling draglines festoon

Every golden grass stalk.

The late fall mayfly swarms

When the diving ducks (goldeneyes and mergansers) arrive.

Pairs of sharpshinned hawks indulge

In chase-flights

Startling migrant bluebirds

Away from junipers twinkling with berries.

December

Snow might come

As a fine dust

Or a downy blanket and

When it melts the sweet smell of moisture

Fills the morning.

Cattail fluff soars on stiff breezes and

Visiting woodpeckers brace themselves to drill while

Nuthatches circle tree trunks.

Golden eagles set up winter hunting grounds

Over prairie dog towns

Overseeing white tail deer in rut

And pronghorn gathering in mixed sex bands

Foxes court

Quavery yelps

Make the longest nights of the year

Shiver.

Frances Williams

This was published 5 days before my Mother died... and she got to read it....

My mother is dying of cancer. I love her. A parent hopes to be a positive influence and role model to his child. Frances is my premier inspiration and foremost mentor. Deborah says I idolize her. She shaped my childhood with a deft and gentle wisdom, unobtrusively influencing my interests and enthusiasms. As people have learned of her illness, kind words such as those of Nancy Henderson ("Your mother has been such a gift to this community") have brought tears of joy and gratitude to us.

Nancy was not only speaking of Frances' role as County Librarian from 1968 to 1979, but also as an educator of natural history. Frances gave hundreds of talks on the natural world of the southern Llano Estacado and edited the Midland Naturalist's monthly newsletter, The Phalarope, for 35 years. My Mom's contributions to the science of ornithology are acknowledged by the authors of every book that mentions the birds of West Texas.

When Frances and Harold Williams were courting, they shot .22 rifles at cans floating down the Canadian River in Norman, where both graduated from the University of Oklahoma. Frances' first degree was in French, but she later returned for a Masters' in Library Science. During the war years ammunition was expensive, so they started sitting and watching birds come to the water. Curiosity led Frances to start observing their different behaviors and to record the annual cycles of migration.

When Frances and Harold arrived in Midland during World War II, they were befriended by Ola Dublin Haynes, a pioneer settler's daughter. Ola introduced them to local ranchers on whose spreads Frances was able to pursue her field research of the Cassin's Sparrow. Her work, published in Arthur Bent's Life Histories of American Birds, remains the definitive work on this diminutive sparrow.

Frances is widely recognized as the foremost ornithological pioneer of West Texas. She is our regional version of Margaret Nice or Florence Merriam Bailey, women scientists who persevered despite the diminishments of non-egalitarian cultural biases, i.e., sexist fundamentalism.

As a founding member of the Texas Ornithological Society, Frances helped to bring scientific rigor to amateur ornithology throughout the state. She served 25 years as a member of the organization's Bird Records Committee, and an equal period as the Southern Great Plains editor for the Audobon Society's journal, American Birds. In recognition of her work, she was one of only 150 people who have been awarded Life Membership in the American Birding Association (out of 10,000 members).

Frances is the epitome of unconventionality. One of the first professional women to wear pants to work, a field scientist at a time when women were supposed to be June Cleaver, Frances also was a stalwart defender of social diversity in the face of bluenosed priggishness that demanded certain "offensive" books be banned from the County Library.

"It is what you do that counts, not your looks, nor your personal quirks, beliefs or pretensions." Frances was raised a John Calvin Presbyterian. "What will be, will be, so don't complain, whine, lie, disparage, or demean. Negative attitudes are a waste of time. Only boring people are bored. People who do not use their minds are zombies."

Frances did her utmost to instill curiosity and a love of knowledge in her sons. We were taken to the field to roam and explore as soon as we could walk. I was her bird-dog as she did her research. "Go to the yucca, then the lote, and turn at the Buena Mujer before coming back." I knew the English (and some Spanish) common names for hundreds of native Llano Estacado organisms before I could read. She read to us every night. One of her favorite children's books was Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. The stories' twists of logic and fate appealed to her desire to instill curiosity.

Frances fought one of the most insidously horrible monsters of the 20th century -- television -- in the process of giving me my vocation. We did not have a TV when I was a young child. The only time I ever got a whipping was at age 13, when I repeatedly disappeared to neighbors' houses to zone out until she tracked me down and dragged me home.

By her actions, comments and encouragement of interests that I could pursue in books, I learned that television engenders unconscious, non-participatory receptivity. It has turned Americans into interchangeable drones having no sense of home or culture that is based on natural, regional influences. We have lost a good deal of our instinctual desire to engage in joyful, interactive relationships with our home place by allowing our nighttime stories to be supplanted by the vapid pablum of network programming. We seldom learn to observe and interpret our surroundings because our connections to our homeland have been severed by mindless addiction to the flickering blue boob tube. Television creates boredom because it does not challenge the mind.

At the age of eighty, Frances is still an adept observer. We take walks along the trails of Gone Native each "coolish" morning, Frances leading the way on her 3-wheeled electric cart. Still engaged in field observation, she points out to me everything that interests her. "Look at that hognose snake -- why is it curled up at the mouth of the pipe from the windmill? Is it cooling itself in the water? Is there a breakfast frog waiting in the pipe? Or is the snake hoping a frog will leap up on that little lookout rock?"

Her love of interaction with nature has taught me that every plant and animal has a story to tell. Meaning can be inferred and interpreted from the very presence and physical condition of every living thing. Self-paced and self-motivated curiosity is every human's instinctive educational system. Observation of the natural world is the best way to train the mind, because children are innately fascinated with creepy crawly strangeness. Even snakes can be utilized as riveting stimulators of intellectual curiosity, and should not be feared or hated as symbols of evil.

By the time I reached high school, I had become contemptuous of the "modern" public educational system. Invented a hundred years ago and not substantially changed since, "school" has devolved into a non-challenging baby-sitting service for many students. Schools rarely educate children about their regional homeland -- local folk history, regional cultural traditions, and the natural world surrounding them is rarely mentioned. When schools neglect to acknowledge the influences of homeland on a child's definition of self, we risk the creation of rootless, apathetic consumers or angst-ridden nihilists who are homicidally angry at being cast adrift without moorings.

I became neither a consumer nor a nihilist because our family camped 30 to 45 nights a year and traveled every back road of the Southwest, taking joy in watching birds and identifying flowers. Frances taught me more than I learned in most of my high school classes: science by avocation, history by reading, cultural diversity by traveling, language skills through her love and constant use of books, and spirituality by immersion in the natural world.

Religious dogma -- be it Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, or Hindu -- is the plaintive sound of our OWN voices, weakly attempting to describe and define an immensity beyond comprehension. For Frances, the natural world is God's true cathedral. " God speaks to us most powerfully as Mother Nature. The beauty of thousands of Sandhill Cranes strung out against a kaleidoscopic sunset, trumpeting in joyful celebration of a successful day is one of the most profound expressions of God's presence in our lives. We should bear witness to the glories given us."

ravens in Midland county

SQUAAARRRK! SQUAAARRRK! A Chihuahuan raven sat on the crosspiece of the powerline pole, peering down at me, laughing at me as I struggled with the lugnuts of a flat tire. "Blankety-blank hydraulic wrenches!" I yelled at the big black corvid. He cocked his head, winking an intelligent eye, and shook his back to zip up the barbels of the feathers. The cold north wind lifted a few neck feathers and a patch of white underfeathers blinked.

On the shortgrass of the western reaches of the Llano Estacado, the intermontane basins of the Chihuahuan desert, and on the plains of the Pecos River Valley Chihuahuan ravens are ubiquitous. A highway traveler often sees a pair every few miles, patrolling for roadkill, the most obvious large bird on the bleak terrain. Native Americans in the northwest have thousands of stories starring Raven, a trickster figure mirrored in the southwest by stories of Coyote. For Yaqui sorcerers in northwestern Mexico, Raven is an ally and familiar. I like them, too, especially specifically Chihuahuan ravens.

Chihuahuan ravens are found in the Chihuahuan desert, as well as the Llano Estacado and the Stockton Plateau (which is the arid western extension of the Edwards Plateau.) They are smaller than Common Ravens, found in the mountains of the Chihuahuan desert and elsewhere in North America where conifers are predominant, and bigger than Common Crows, which only come as far south as Lubbock and Seymour.

For 50 years, back when Midland had an open pit trash dump near Cole Park, thousands would gather every winter, trying to teach us humans the philosophy of recycling. Every winter night in those years they roosted on the ground where the Hobby Lobby is now, in the lee of a fencerow sanddune. When the dump closed they dispersed, but for another decade smaller winter roosts were located on the highlines where Home Depot is now. As far as I know, the winter roosts are things of the past. In the space of two generations the population changed their habits again, returning to doing as they did in the buffalo prairie days, remaining on their home territories year around.

In March take a drive up the Telephone Road, and when you find some ravens park, set out a lawn chair, have a picnic, and enjoy a most amazing show. The courtship flights of Chihuahuan ravens are spectacular exhibitions of aerial virtuosity. The flight begins with a chase. Diving, banking, looping, first one then the other takes the lead. They climb higher in the sky, doing loops together, then tumbling in a free fall to catch themselves and soar higher. During the climb they come together and clasp talons and roll over, then break apart to fly upside down, and then separately sail in ever increasing circles downward to land together on deadman corner posts on the fence line.

Nests are built in mesquites, hackberries, and on the crosspieces of electric line poles. They often use old nests, adding a few sticks, some rabbit fur for comfort, and a little bit of wire to help bind it together. One nest in New Mexico consisted entirely of barbed wire. One nest I saw had 7 types of wire, sticks of 5 species of shrubs, 3 different thicknesses of cordage, and strips of burlap feedsacks for the interior lining.

Ravens are collectors. A number of writers have told stories of pet ravens (it is illegal to keep pet ravens today) hoarding shiny objects, pebbles, car keys, writing pens, and more. They also will store food, hiding hunks of meat under a clump of grass or a yucca rosette. The collecting and hoarding are representative of their intelligence. One researcher hung meat on a string from a tree branch, and ravens quickly figured out how to pull the string up, stand on the loop, pull the string up some more, again stand on the loop and pull again, until the meat was reachable.

Ravens and coyotes help each other out. Ravens come to feed on the leavings of a coyote kill, of course, even following a hunting coyote in hopes of grabbing a few fresh scraps. A number of observers and researchers, however, have noticed that ravens seem to find prey for coyotes, circling and squawking until the curiosity of a pack of coyotes is aroused and brings them running to attack the injured or sick pronghorn or deer or lamb or calf.

Stockmen and farmers often are in adversarial opposition to ravens, assuming their carrion eating ways are indicative of being predatory. Local pecan growers have done battle with ravens when the birds process fallen pecans before the orchardist. In times past in some people the adversarial attitude developed into hate, and now the non-farming descendants of these individuals drive the roads shooting every raven (and every hawk for similar reasons.)

At least once a month local birders traipsing the county and farm-to-market roads will discover five to fifteen dead ravens and raptors, sometimes even hung from the fence lines as macabre trophies. The few individuals that "go varmint hunting" and illegally discharge firearms along public right-of-ways also dump their beer cans, whiskey bottles, fast food containers, lit cigarettes that start grass fires, porno magazines and their own excreta along the roads as well. The days of these scuzzballs are numbered, however, because we amateur naturalists have cell phones nowadays and DPS troopers will come in a heartbeat when told of illegal gunplay.

69 ranch trail guide for kids on the land program...

I have been blessed over the years to participate in science and history field days on regional ranches here in West Texas... this is one script I produced for such an event...

The Callahan Divide is named for James Hughes Callahan, a soldier and officer during the Texas Revolution and the war with Mexico in 1845. The term is loosely used to describe all of the hills from near MaryNeal all the way to Baird. On the southside of the divide rainwater joins the Colorado River, while on the north all waters flow to the Brazos River. The Divide has also been divided by cartographers and resource managers into the Nolan Divide (from Buffalo Gap to just south of Sweetwater,) while the westernmost hills  from there to a few miles west of MaryNeal have been called the Champion Divide.

The northside of this range of hills is a place of surprising diversity of plant and animal life. Plants from Hill Country and even East Texas grow within yards of plants that are common on and near the Llano Estacado and Stockton Plateau to the west. Until the mid to late 1600’s the area was home to tribes that are grouped together as Jumanos, who farmed and lived along the rivers and hunted in the hills. From then until 1750 it became the territory of the Lipan Apache, when the Comanche pushed them further south.  Near the end of this trail is a wide flat open area, where hundreds of arrowheads have been found, indicating that the spring here was a favored camping ground.  The Lipan Apaches and Comanches  may have had fall camps near the spring as they hunted and dried the winter’s supply of buffalo meat. The buffalo wintered a little further to the south in colder winters, but may have stayed in the Brazos drainage until winter’s cold sent them south with a blizzard.

Plants are full of stories, as well as serving as food, medicine, dye, and material with which to build.

1.          The first plant we will look at is Cowpen Daisy. Its story was invented by the Navaho Indians who live in the 4 corners, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico meet. In the Civil war the Navahos were imprisoned at Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico, along the Pecos River.  An elderly vaquero who lived near Imperial, Texas, told me the plants would cause lightning not to hit his house, which is the point of the story the Navahos told so far away.   How the story traveled 300 miles down the Pecos, is unknown.  

Here is the story; There was a little boy who was mean. He talked back to his parents, hit his little brothers and sisters and stomped every bug, lizard, frog, or turtle he saw. He was far from his home one day, when a thunderstorm grew quickly. Hail was falling between his home and where he was, and the thunder followed the lightning immediately. He became scared, and he began to panic “Where will I hide? “ A voice answered him, under the cowpen daisies. He looked around and saw no one. Lightning struck within a few feet. “Hide under the cowpen daisies.” He obeyed immediately. He lay under the plants crying and shaking as lightning struck all around. After what seemed forever he heard the voice again, “It is okay, the storm is passing.” He opened his eyes to see the source of the voice, and there was a horny toad right in front of his nose, and the lizard was nodding his head up and down. Ever after that the little boy  behaved his parents, and was nice to his brothers and sisters, and only killed animals for the dinner table, not for fun

2.      Early settlers made jelly from the bright red berries of algerita every May. Their tart juices gave the homesteaders a good dose of Vitamin C, after a long winter without fresh green vegetables or fruit.  Algerita bushes are planted by birds (by pooping the seeds as they sit in a bush already there) You will often find cactus, algerita, sumac, hackberries, and moonseed vine growing under a tree or larger shrub. The wood at the base of algerita is a bright yellow, and was used by woodcarvers among the Indians and settlers. The bark has berberine in it, and was used in herbal medicines. Algerita is the West Texas name, but south of the Colorado River it is known as agarita, while down in the brush country south of the Edwards Plateau it is known as agrito, a Spanish word that means “the little sour one” in English. Many of the first generation of Anglo ‘s that settled the western Callahan Divide were people from Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia and drawled more than the earlier Texans to the south  and added “ls to words. Until the 1930’s most people lived in the country, and not in the towns and cities, and everybody in the area knew about algerita and its great tasting jelly. The new yellow wood was used as a medicinal tea for stomach ailments, and when eyes and noses were running. 

3. Everybody here should know the mesquite.  It grows almost everywhere in West Texas. It has big thorns. Folks use it in their barbecue pits for flavoring, and woodcarvers make everything from gunstocks to rolling pins with its wood. The Indians used it for food, grinding up the beans into flour that tastes like applesauce. The flour was mixed with water made into flatbread (we call them tortillas today), or added to stews to thicken them. Further west in Arizona were places Indians pruned the mesquite to make the harvest easier.  If the Indians let the water and the flour ferment, tiswin (an Apache word) was the result – a mild beer like drink. The sap of the tree was cooked down until it formed a very sticky paste, which was used as glue, especially in fletching feathers to arrows.

4. Hackberry is a common tree in the draws of the flatter land north of the Callahan divide, but which live all over the rocky hill slopes, as well as in the canyon bottoms. Before the Spanish came in the late 1500’s to New Mexico, honey bees were not present. By the 1700’s the canyons had many wild bee colonies, some of which still exist to this day. If the early Indians wanted something sweet, they had to process fruit. Hackberries, though small, when boiled for a long time, made a sweet paste, which was poured on rocks to let the sun dry. The fruit leather could be chewed, or added to stews. The fruit attracted turkey, especially to where groves of hackberry were found, providing an ease in hunting during the season of fruit fall in the winter.

5. Soapberries have much larger berries, but are not edible. If the berries are added to a pot of hot water, soon suds would begin bubbling over the edge.  Along with yucca, soapberries kept the Indians clean. Since you cannot see yucca here,  and this spot was a favored camping ground, surely the Indians used the soapberries as they bathed in the spring water. The saponin (the chemical in the soap) floated downstream, they discovered it would “stun” the fish. Comanches ate fish, sometimes, but the Apaches never did. The Jumanos ate fish.

6. When Anglo settlers settled the Divide they found a rockwall near the spring. It may have been a sheepherders camp, from the mid 1870’s, when  Hispanic pastores (sheepherders) from northern New Mexico took advantage of the declining powers and numbers of the Comanches  and brought in thousands of sheep that grazed the Llano Estacado and the breaks (headwater canyons and valleys of Colorado, Brazos, and Red Rivers). Rock walls have been found in the breaks of all of the rivers that headwater on the Llano Estacado, for they helped keep the sheep close during storms and the night time. By the early 1880’s Anglo ranchers claimed most of the land, and the pastores retreated back to New Mexico.  For relaxation, and to honor the pastores, Temple Dickson built these rock walls during the 1980’s and 90’s.

7.  In the wide open spaces of West Texas, Indians, Hispanic pastores, and Anglo settlers all learned to look for cottonwoods if they needed water. A person could see the tall light green trees from many miles away, and know that water would be available there (even if they had to dig in the soil or gravel.) All of the people throughout the region’s history probably purposefully planted cottonwood along most of the streams in the region. The Comanche found that the inner bark of the cottonwood (and the willows) made a good survival food for their horses in long cold winters and dry times when grass did not grow.  Cottonwood has a soft wood, so some Indians would carve dolls and kachinas, painting and dressing them up, either for children’s play, or for storytellers to illustrate their stories and myths. 

8. We have finally reached the spring. The springhouse to the right was were the earliest settlers here kept their food cool before electricity reached this remote area, which was as late as the 1930’s for many people in this region. Bottles of milk, produce, and even meat were cooled in a springhouse. Early settlers often planted watercress in the streams on the north side of the Callahan Divide. The small leaves that rest on the surface of the water.   Like the algerita berries, it was another source of needed nutrients, especially in the spring.

9. Many of the streams along the Callahan divide also have colonies of mint planted by the early settlers. It could make gyppy or salty water taste good enough to drink, as well as being a great addition to salads and some stews. 

10. We will swing up to the cactus along the fence. The prickly pear cactus fruit (known as tunas) are tasty to eat, and make great jellies as well as a refreshing drink, when mixed with other plants, like the mint. The pads themselves are edible, after being cut in strips and soaked in brine. The result is known as Nopalitos, which are great in huevos rancheros (scrambled eggs)! Bags made of the skin of the prickly pear (with the prickly spines removed) have been found in caves in Texas along with artifacts from 8000 years ago.

11. If you look close at the prickly pear pads, you will see that some have lots of white stuff (like cotton) on the pads. If you remove one of those white fluffballs and roll it in your hand, your fingers will turn bright red. This is a great dye. Once the Spanish discovered it in the 1500’s (being grown in vast plantations in Mexico by the Aztecs), they made millions of dollars selling the dye to the church and other rulers in Europe. A ship full of cochineal dye was worth more than a ship of gold!  It was the first red dye that would not wash out of cloth after every washing.   Eventually the English stole the prickly pear and the bug from the Spanish and started producing the dye as well. Early American settlers on the east coast had to fight the redcoats (English) in the 1770’s to make the United States an independent country.

12.   We will swing back down to the creek and stop at one of the pecan trees. Pecans are native in the Concho and Colorado River bottomlands to the southeast and southwest and in the Brazos river bottoms a little further northeast.  Indians would plant the pecans along creeks, spreading its range. It was the source of trade, both before the Spanish arrived in Northern New Mexico, and after.  In the 1600’s mule loads of pecans from the Colorado River went first to Santa Fe and then south, sometimes all the way to Chihuahua City in Mexico. The Dicksons planted these pecans, but there may have been a few in the Callahan Divide before settlement. Being excellent wood, many pecans were used as building material; so the range before Anglo settlement is not known, as not many settlers wrote down what sort of plants were on their property before the resources were utilized until they vanished.

13. Cattails fill the streambed. Cattails are also edible – the roots when cooked tastes like potatoes, while the pollen makes great pancakes.  The leaves make great mats, not only to sleep on, but the Jumanos and Apaches often built wickiups of willow and draped mats of cattail over the willow framework, and added old animal hides when rain was coming. The cattails in front of you could feed all the kids here today for a week! The new male bloom shoots at top are fine to eat raw. The fluffy seeds made a soft lining for the diapers of Indian babies, and were stuffed in life jackets in World War II when the Japanese took over the kapok plantations in the south Pacific.

14.  The grass to the right with the long nodding seed heads is wild rye. The seed is large enough to grind into flour. Where ever there is rock in West Texas, sooner or later mortar holes can be found, some dating back 8000+ years ago.  Sometimes the pestle will be found, too. Wild rye only grows in moist canyons and draws.

15.   On the slope to the right are young junipers (most folks in the Callahan Divide call them cedars). It is another great wood for burning (like mesquite) for the campfires of the Indians and the chimneys of the early settlers.  The berries were harvested to add flavoring to teas and stews by the Indians, but Anglo settlers made gin with the berries (a strong alcoholic drink.) When barbed wire came to the region in the 1880s, thousands were cut down for fenceposts, some of which still stand, with the original barbed wire. In the Colorado river valley to the south free range ranchers cut the fences of the wealthy landowners who put the fences up, and for about two years masked men rode the countryside destroying fences.

16. The trees with the slender leaves along the creek are willows. Every culture in the world knew to make a tea of its bark when you had a headache. In the 1880’s Dr. Bayer (in Germany) distilled what we now know as aspirin from the tea. (Remember what the Apaches used willow for? They also used the bark in baskets, too.) You may notice buttonbush mixed in with the cattails and willows, too, with its round black seedheads. When it is blooming thousands of insects (butterflies, wasps, flies, and more) come to feed on the pollen.

17. We have walked for a little ways, and we will stop here to look at two plants with silvery leaves. Look close at both species…and figure out what makes them silver colored.  It is hair, isn’t it…it helps this plant survive drought, for the stomata on the underside of the leaf are not exposed to the wind, so less water is lost.  This big patch is “Holy Sage.” When Indians of many tribes prayed they offered dried and ground sage to the six directions before praying. When they took a sweatlodge steambath as a cleansing ritual after warfare, they rubbed the fresh leaves on their skin, and drank tea made from the plant. The tea settles your stomach, and somehow helps you sweat even more.   

18. Not too far away is Horehound. It is not native, but came on the Mayflower and on Cortez’s ship before he attacked the Aztecs. It has spread over almost all of North American. It was brought, along with Mullein, for medicine to treat coughs. Folks still make horehound candy, to ease the pain of a sore throat, and to stop coughs, because it works! Out of the 300+ species of plants growing wild on the 69 ranch at least 60 are plants from other places. We are always accidently carrying seeds when we travel. Can you figure out some ways?

19. Underneath the corner Pecan in this little grove that Mr. Dickson planted, you see small plants (about a foot tall) with gray leaves and blue blooms. This is trompillo, or purple nightshade. If you take the green berries and drop them in milk, it splits the milk into curds and whey. Pour off the whey and put the curds in cloth and wait a couple of days, and you have asadero cheese,  and if you have ever eaten a quesadilla you have eaten asadero! What makes it marvelous is that if you eat the berry it is poisonous, but the poison is not transferred to the cheese (you pull the berries out of the curds.)

20. Turning back to the creek, you can see a thicket of wild plums. Until the Anglos settled, the bears would have been thick in the thickets when the fruit was ripe. The bears were quickly all eliminated, but they seem to be “invading” the Hill Country in recent years. In another 30 years, there may be bears here again. Wild plums make great jelly, as well as fun to eat off the bushes. People planted the wild plums in the new towns before the railroads arrived. Some ranchers maintain a patch to make jelly every year.

21.  Before getting on the trailer, look across the creek at the little cliff. Looks a little snaky, doesn’t it? You should be mighty careful, if you were thinking about going there. We are stopping here, and going back to the house.  If you are a little hot, hunker down in the shade for a moment, and drink some water! You have only walked a quarter miles and discovered lots of things. A person can walk this trail every day for 50 years and always see something new.  If you get interested in learning about the out of doors you will never be bored again!

22.  As you ride back on the trailer…keep looking on the left side of the trailer until you see the cane cholla. A local folk tale claims that these were planted by early Indians as trail markers, leading up the eastern side of the llano estacado, point the way to good water. Other folks say they arrived with sheep, especially in the 1950’s when many ranchers had to switch to sheep to survive. In the 1940’s bed side lamps made with the woody skeleton of the cactus were popular items sold at stores specifically built to sell to tourists in many southwestern U.S. towns.  

tail flicking...

Synchronicity is always strange. On a hike recently, it seemed that almost every bird I saw was flicking its tail. As I stepped out of the door, a small flock of English Sparrows lit at a small puddle of water. As soon as their wings closed, their tails flicked up and down a few times. English Sparrows are a neurotic lot, agitated by fear and uncertainity. No sooner had they begun to bathe one noticed me and as one the group flew up into the nearest oak. One came back down, and again it flicked its tail, looked every direction and then panicked again.

I looked around for other birds. A Mockingbird teetered along the rock fence nearby. It kept peering into crevices, and as it did so, it fanned its tail, quickly closing it, and fanning it again. Looking up at the English Sparrows, it jerked its tail to all points of the compass. This common behavior did not surprise me. I watched it for several minutes, as it picked something tiny off of the rock surface. When I chased it off by investigating the identity of its pursuit, I found nothing that could have drawn its attention.

Water Pipits have been few and far between this winter. Only a handful was found on the annual Christmas Count, which by the way, produced the fewest number of species in over 30 years. (The drought, you know.) I was very surprised to see one on the cleared pasture. Normally pipits are found walking along the shores of bodies of water, such as the pools out at the alfalfa farms watered by Midland sewage water, or along playa shores. Unlike most other birds, it walks, one step at a time. Ducks, roadrunners, and quail walk too, but most hop. This one stood in the middle of the field, pumping its tail and its whole nether half, bouncing up on its toes.

A half-dozen great-tailed grackles lit near the pipit. My stomach lurched, as I immediately thought of the winter roost of these noisy and messy blackbirds on the south side of Midland Memorial Hospital. Two male grackles started parading, tipping their beaks up to the sky and half-lifted their wings as they strutted. When they closed their wings, up came their tails, pointing at the same angle as their beaks a minute before. The pipit exhibited the same prejudice I felt, and flew off, heading to the east and open country. It was probably headed to the exurban farm fields and livestock lots.

Over the years we have built several brushpiles to provide cover for birds and small mammals along the fence. In the brushpile closest to the gate, a Bewick's wren popped up to fuss at me as I squeaked and spished. (A birdwatcher kisses their hand, making loud squeaks, and then hisses, to sound like an upset barn owl.)

Bewick's wrens, like most wrens, are quite officious and indignant about strangers acting bizarre or getting too close. He hopped to the highest branch and started acting like a basketball player doing defensive drills, running in place and turning quickly in 45 degree angles. As it fussed its high chittery notes, it twitched its tail in rapid movements, up and down, up and down. Nothing else came out of the brushpile, so I moved on.

By the windmill, a meadowlark flashed the white sides of its tail several times, then launched itself with a few quick wingbeats to soar over the fence. The foolish thing could have remained motionless and remained hidden, since its plumage is the same color as the haybales (for mulch) stored there. The flash of white makes them quite conspicous, but it probably serves to distract an aerial predator such as a harrier, so it might attack the tail rather than the body of the meadowlark.

I moseyed on around the pond. For some reason, a Sora Rail was walking along the pond. A sora looks like a dark colored chicken, but it keeps its stubby tail cocked most of the time, lowering it as it pecks in the muck for dragonfly larvae and snails. The underneath side of the tail is a bright white, so its plumage serves a similar purpose as the meadowlark's. Most of the time, soras are almost impossible to see, as they clamber through the cattails in the marsh. To even know of their presence, a birder must clap loudly to startle it, so it will reply with its loud whinny it gives when disturbed.

As I watched the sora, a ruddy duck swam from a hiding place under the bank of the pond. They too cock their short stubby tails, even at rest. I hope this one sticks around, for in the spring their plumage turns a deep russet, and their bill glows turquoise in morning light.

A tinny chink of a noise drew my attention the small grove of wild plums. A verdin, all gray with a yellow cap hung almost upside down from a branch. It flexed its tail toward its belly as it struggled for balance. In the flameleaf sumac above the plums, a ladder-backed woodpecker pressed its tail against the tree trunk when it stopped to pound its beak to dig out boring beetle larvae.

Tails are such useful appendages. We poor humans, lacking so woefully, can only admire.

before the Americans came to the Llano Estacado

For hundreds of years before Lum Medlin started living in a dugout near Mustang Springs, Hispanic adventurers visited the southern Llano Estacado. History books mention the most important explorers – “important” meaning the first to arrive, or ones that had horrible travails -- but history books rarely mention common folk and how they survived day-by-day. We should all know the history of our bioregional homeland. If we don't, are we truly at home? And if we aren't truly at home, how can we claim the intricate emotions of patriotism?

The actions of humans often affect the landscape. The buffalo prairie was partially maintained by the Native Americans’ burning of grass to provide fresh new growth for the buffalo to graze. Native Americans have been here for thousands of years. Here in Midland County, the bones of Llana (I call her that in honor of our homeland -- instead of the ridiculous appellation “Midland Minnie”) date from 9,000 years ago, and locally-found Clovis artifacts date to 12,000 years ago.

The Jumanos were using this area when the Spanish arrived. These "rayados” (they had lines that looked like rays painted on their faces) had pueblos near modern day Presidio, and as far north as Gran Quivara in New Mexico. They invited Spanish priests to visit them at their buffalo hunting camps along the Concho and Colorado rivers, and at the trade fairs with the Hasanai (or Caddoans) along the eastern edge of the Llano. A wonderful magical tale of this relationship, "The Blue Nun,” is still told in Hispanic households descended from the Jumanos. The Jumanos helped in dispersing the horse to other Native American tribes, and as the horses escaped from both Spanish and Indian herds, “wild” horses could be found in many of the watered and timbered draws. Over time, the horses would overgraze the areas nearest their watering holes.

Apaches had begun to make serious incursions into the southwest just as the Spanish arrived. From the late 1500's until 1720's the "Pharones” and other Apachean groups were mentioned in Spanish reports. The Jumanos made a number of treaties with the Spanish in hopes of defending themselves against the Apaches. The word Apache comes from the Zuni word for “enemy” and was not commonly used until the 1700s.

In the 1720s, Comanches arrived on the scene with guns and other "modern” implements supplied by French traders. According to several sources, a nine-day battle between the Comanche and Apache occurred near present-day Wichita Falls. Afterward, the Lipan Apaches moved to the San Antonio area and sought the protection of the Spanish Army. Mescalero and Jicarilla Apaches moved into the mountains of New Mexico. Comanches controlled the Llano Estacado until 1874, when Colonel Randall MacKenzie hunted down the Quahadi band in the big canyons of the northern Llano Estacado.

There are wonderful stories of the use of the Llano before settlement. For example, imagine leaving the city of Chihuahua in August on a wagon train, slowly heading northeast, crossing the Rio Bravo at modern day Ojinaga, trailing further northeast to Horsehead Crossing, and stopping at Juan Cordona Lake to collect salt. After the salt collection the ciboleros continued on to the springs of the southern Llano Estacado, where they hunted buffalo from horseback with 12-foot lances, hamstringing los cibolos, and returning to finish them off. The meat was dried and salted, rolled into medicine ball sized spheres, and covered with tallow. When the wagons were full of meat and hides, the ciboleros returned to Chihuahua, often not reaching home until the first of November. These yearly trips began in the mid-1600s. According to buffalo hunter Frank Collinson's memoir, the cibolero visits lasted until 1881.

J. Frank Dobie wrote of the mostenas in his wonderful book "The Mustangs.” He places them near the Llano Estacado in the mid- to late-1800s, coming north from places like Musquiz and other areas south of Del Rio and Laredo. Since this was the refuge of Lipan Apaches, I have wondered if the mostenas came after listening to some of Magoosh's tales.

A family would leave their home driving a wagon and trailing three or four horses. Upon discovering a band of wild horses, the mostenas would go to work. These teen-aged girls would walk their ponies after the mustangs, taking turns, following them day and night, never letting the mustangs sleep, eat, or drink. As the wild horses tired, the rest of the family would round them up. Finally only the stallion would be left, and the mostena with the best riding skills would take over. She would approach the stallion at breakneck speed, forcing it to run, and when it tired enough for her horse to come along side, she would leap onto the stallion and ride it until it could run no more.

Dime novels introduced the stereotypic drunken and bestial Comanchero, and films perpetuated the racist denigration of los pastores of northern New Mexico. Hispanic sheepherders have lived in the Pecos River Valley for 400 years. Puebloan Indians traded with Plains Indians for millennia, and los pastores learned to do so in their company. For several months every year beginning in the early 1600s, sheepherders turned traders would head out to the plains to do business. Much of this economic activity happened in the northern Llano Estacado, but a place like Big Spring had its moments as well. Comancheros would pay ransom for captives the Comanches had enslaved. This was perceived by Anglos as being "trade in human flesh” and thereby deemed evil, which led to the evil caricature Hollywood promulgated.

Cross-cultural exchange between Native American and Mexican citizens also occurred when Comanches raided Mexican villages and took captives. As would happen with Anglo captives in later years, a number of the captives decided they preferred the Comanche lifestyle. After becoming accepted into the tribe, some would visit their homes in Mexico, but return to the Comanche way of life. One source from the 1950s reports that when the Comanches were herded onto the reservation, up to a fifth of their population had at least one Hispanic ancestor.

The human history of our homeland enriches our knowledge of our landscape. When we can point to a hill and say, "that is where Lone Wolf retrieved his son's body,” or sit at the edge of a playa and say, "this is where Juan Tafoya rescued the daughter of los ricos from Belen,” or say, "this is where the famous buffalo soldier Pompey Factor won his Medal of Honor,” then we truly become patriots with a soul rooted deep.

buffalo dreams

Have you tasted buffalo meat? Have you tasted hump or tongue, or bitten into fresh raw liver sprinkled with gall juice? Have you read Josiah Gregg, Ruxton, or Maximillian Wied, and other early travelers? I someday wish to partake of the native American sacrament of early spring -- raw liver of buffalo sprinkled with gall. As I eat, I will quiet my mind, and let the subconscious toy with the learned, seeking new perspectives.

One evening I camped near the Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge. I watched 100,000 cranes leave their night roost, then for hours roamed the sacaton prairie looking for prairie chickens. Prairie chickens are even more secretive than turkeys- and it always amazes me how such large birds can be so invisible. As the afternoon shadows lengthened I saw a "spirit buffalo". It is not too hard to do so; nap and read during the afternoon, then lean against an alkali sacaton tussock, and idly stare through their four-foot tall panicles, and let the eyes unfocus. New shapes appear - grass clumps can then become buffalo, if you do not try at all.

That night, as the temperature neared freezing, my dreams sought to awaken me, to make me pull a tarp over my light sleeping bag, to keep the chill wind from goosepimpled skin. I was dreaming I was a buffalo. Dreams rarely change the dreamer’s persona, but this was the continuation of a transformation tale I had made up earlier that evening.

The tale talked of buffalo medicine, the power of the plains Indians to know how to set fire to the grass to turn it green, in hopes the buffalo would soon find it. I told of how the person with the power would don a buffalo calfskin to gambol within the heart of a herd. In pre horse days, the faux-calf could trick the herd into plunging over a cliff in reaction to other tribesmen suddenly appearing with noisemakers and waving blankets.

I recounted the hours of observation and training such a person had to undergo to learn how to act like a buffalo calf. I ended the tale with a reference to that person’s vision quest. After four days and nights of no food or sleep a person on a vision quest would hallucinate, and within the hallucination would experience deep empathy with some animal. In this story I used a young woman as the central figure, since it was a story for one of my goddaughters, who had just reached puberty.

Buffalo ranged in clans, in extended matriarchal family groups. Sexually mature bulls ranged in their own small bunches. During the October mating season bulls claimed a group of cows and their young. Great fights would occur as the bulls fought for dominance. Losers stayed near, hoping to luck out and mate when the toughest bull was asleep or very tired.

I dreamed I was a yearling, not sexually mature, still safe within the matriarchal clan. My cousins and I played king-on-the-hill, butted yuccas, and jumped off a steep bank into shallow water recklessly. We could hear the grunts of our mothers fussing at our younger siblings, born this year.

Our complete clan had just run for fun, an unpanicked chase from one choice area of grass to another near the playa where the cranes roosted. One old female, long-ago blinded by fire, rolled in the mud at the edge of the water, coating her worn coat against the fall mosquito swarm. Several of the cows had drunk their fill, and were almost asleep on their feet.

We could see another clan plodding to water in single file. The bulls had not started their rutting, but there was the hint of the beginnings of tension. Bulls weigh up to twice as much as the cows. During their time with the clan we yearlings would stay well out of the way, forming a mock coterie of not-yet bulls. We watched and marveled at the behaviors beginning to occur. Our mothers would chase us away next July, at calving time.

A rattlesnake, sunning itself before beginning the slow drift back to the winter den in the walls of the arroyo leading to the playa, rattled a warning at me. I stopped, then delicately stepped around it. Prairie rattlers almost never strike, unless stepped on and hurt, but do put up a fearful bluff. By watching it, and not where I stepped I almost stepped on another, and at its strike I panicked and ran.

My cousins panicked as well, and in our flight over a ridge panicked yet another clan coming to water. We all ran. And ran and ran and ran. After running for several minutes, I was so tired I woke up.

As I woke up I smelled the water on the wind, and was thinking, “ I can return to the safety of the clan”. But I was human, and did not have the safety of the clan, so I had to pull the tarp over me, and even under me before the chill faded.

A coyote barked nervously, displeased with moonset. The coyotes speak Comanche, so say my goddaughters, and by doing so, keep their spirit alive. Animals can become symbols, enriching the psychic landscape. The buffalo prairie is long gone, but its spirit remains as long as we tell its stories.