Wild onion and the Great Plains Restoration Council

Wild Onions (Photograph by Jack Matthews)

Three thousand acres of old-growth prairie is at the backdoor of Fort Worth near Lake Benbrook.

I put the last acres of Flying Hat Ranch up for sale last week. The location for 29.15 acres is 38295 N SH 108, Mingus, TX. The posts of Sage to Meadow since 2009 have been centered on that ranchito, which had started out at fifty-three acres. Ranch Realty Pro, the broker being J. Bryan Davis, of Stephenville is handling the sale the land.

Yes, I am sad, even grieving, that we had to sell. But the traffic to and from Fort Worth on Interstate 20 has become risky, even dangerous. (From my home in Fort Worth to the Far Field is seventy-two miles.)

So this morning, I searched for public places near me that I could go out and trek and commune with nature. I found just a few miles away, the Fort Worth Prairie Park that is under the purview of the Great Plains Restoration Council.

3,000 acres of old-growth prairie

I never knew the prairie was so close, so protected from development.

I took my Nikon camera and hiked three-quarters of mile into the prairie. I could see the flags of Fort Worth development and hear the planes overhead, but no matter, I wandered with the prairie and found wild onion and spring blossoms. I came across an old campsite (historic) that had not been used for several years. Here are some of the photos of my afternoon.

Pink and yellow blossoms

Blue blossoms

A family of onions

Fire ring

Look closely at the red ants busy tending their home

I will go back to the prairie. The link to the Fort Worth Prairie Park site and Great Plains Restoration Council is https://gprc.org/our-work/fort-worth-prairie-park/.

I am connected to all things. There is no “other.”

All photographs by Jack Matthews.

Bend, Texas Arroyo

Bend, Texas Arroyo

If you choose, you may follow this arroyo for a tenth-of-a-mile down to the Colorado River at Bend, Texas. The above photo was taken in early spring, this year.

When I was ten or eleven-years old, I built two fragile, but sturdy, bridges across the arroyo. They have long since collapsed from my “construction” in the 1950s. Seventy-plus years ago. There’s neither sign of them, nor of the water pump and pipeline used to bring water from the Colorado up to my grandmother’s house in Bend. The water filled a 500-gallon tank that often overflowed when I failed to turn the pump off at night. The house my grandmother stayed in was the Southwestern States Telephone house, holding the switchboard for Bend and surrounding area. Effie Morris Parks was my grandmother’s name, and she had been born and reared in the Bend community.

Effie drove to San Saba every couple of weeks for supplies, and I maintained the switchboard for customers to reach one another and the outside world.

This early spring of 2022, my wife and I drove to Bend, and I gave her a memory tour of Bend. The switchboard has been removed, the telephone lines coiled up, the poles cut down. My little bridges are gone as well. But there’s cell service and a new bridge across the Colorado.

I have memories I’ll turn into stories from the Bend, Texas Arroyo and the spirit of those days will be reconstituted with a “bridge” to my past.

Truchas Peaks, New Mexico

 

Looking westward toward the Truchas Peaks, New Mexico, November 2017.

I have been traveling to Taos, New Mexico, several times in the past year.  I stop at this spot near Mora Pass that is up in altitude from Sipapu Lodge in order to look back at the mountains before I head down the Mora Pass to Holman, Cleveland, Mora, and Las Vegas.  The valley you see in the foreground is the starting valley and surrounds for Rio Pueblo that flows eventually into the Rio Grande near Embudo.

I have climbed two of the three Truchas Peaks, encountering Bighorn sheep on the trail to the summit.  I was in my twenties when I climbed; now I am seventy-five years old and I stop and look back on the mountains and my life, the near and the faraway.

Lately, within the last few weeks, I have seen near my home in Fort Worth the most beautiful coyote poised and stationary alongside the Chisholm Trail Tollway, its coat shiny and tail bushy and full.  In my frontyard, two racoons ambled by and climbed into the trees.  A bluejay in the neighborhood warns others of my approach as I walkabout.  At my Far Field near Mingus, Texas (the source of most of my posts on this blog), I have heard the Sandhill Cranes in the sky, but failed to see them catch the thermals.  But, I hear them.  I see the turned soil of wild hogs in my field, the voles that run away from my tractor when I shred mesquite.  When I was in Lubbock at Thanksgiving I heard and saw flocks of Canadian geese in the air and along the playas of the region.

Magpies fly across the backyard of my daughter’s home in Taos.

I am looking and I see the wild on this earth.  I am having a conversation with the wild.  And, I listen so attentively and look so closely that I am beginning to grieve as I never had before.

Norman Clyde and Life on Mountain Trails

Norman Clyde taught, read, guided mountain climbs and rescues.  “Norman Clyde still guided parties into the Sierra into the 1960s, when he was in his seventies. In the 1950s and 1960s, he lived by himself at the old Baker ranch-house on Baker Creek near Big Pine. Because he was trained in the classics, Norman Clyde loved to read books in Latin and Greek. At the Baker ranch-house, Clyde had thousands of rare classical books. At age 80, he was still sleeping outside the ranch-house on a mattress and sleeping bag, as long as it was fair weather.”

The above photograph on the cover of the magazine, Climbing, I have kept since a friend of mine, Mark Garlin, gave me the magazine in 1972.  Norman Clyde died later that year, December, 1972, at the age of 87.  I have kept the magazine at my ready shelf since that time because of my love of climbing mountains and the presence of strength and fortitude in Clyde’s face and posture.  Despite age, he has tools of his love and trade beside him:  rope, ice axe, and rucksack.

When I have climbed mountains by way of trail and path, not rope nor ice axe, I have met young and old, educated and not, rich and poor, and men and women who love the outdoors and the challenge of a good climb.  Without fail, those that are on the trail take an interest in the columbine and rushing waters and all the conifers in high country.  Oh, the trees: ponderosa pine, spruce, juniper, pinion.  There is learning in the austere mountain trail that is both external and internal.  In the external, one sees and usually identifies geological formations, the topography, the magpies and jays, and the trees.  Internally, the lessons run deep and are formative, even in old age.

Norman Clyde in the photograph above was in his eighties.  The perseverance in his climbing is found off the slopes in building strawbale compounds (as my good friend, Jimmy Henley, was doing at the time of his death in his seventies), performing the arts, climbing trees as a trimmer, and pursuing goals in getting a degree.  If ever you think you are too old, think of Norman Clyde on the front cover, the mountains behind and the tools of his adventure about him.  Clyde will climb until his body fails.

As I wrote, I keep Clyde’s photograph on my ready shelf.  If he can climb at his age, I can hike and build fence and mountaineer at my age.  As I climb in the high country, three questions arise:  What am I doing here?  What should I do?  And, how do I know?  The answers are simple and complex.  I am hiking.  I am hiking.  I know I am hiking in this moment at my pace, walking among the trees, hearing birds, seeing and hearing rushing waters, touching ground, seeing the sky as I meet others on the trail.  Those are my three answers.  In a sense, those are everyone’s answers.  Until our bodies fail.   Norman Clyde, front cover, Norma Clyde, front cover….

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Photograph of Norman Clyde by David Hiser.

Quote in first paragraph from Wikipedia, “Norman Clyde,” accessed Aug. 23, 2016.

The three questions in the last paragraph are derivative from my course in philosophy at University of Texas at Austin, 1961.  On the Philosophy Department’s website page (at least a couple of years ago) those questions were posed in a slightly different way.

I climbed with Mark Garlin, my friend who gave me the magazine.  He lectured at the Air Force Academy in the 1970s on climbing and survival in the mountains.

 

 

Cloud portal to the coast

Thundershowers on either side of Interstate 20 west of Cisco, Texas, May 2012

Last Friday, May 11, 2012, I drove to Abilene for commencement at Cisco College where I instruct.  West of Cisco, on Interstate 20, I saw this cloud portal — at least that is what I call it.  I sped between the two thundershowers.  A few drops fell on my car.  The first couple of weeks in May is a time of showers and cool temperatures in west Texas.  That is not always true, for this time last year, I was busy writing about wildfires in my area.

I have a friend at Cisco College that teaches English and he traveled to the Oregon coast last year, staying near Seal Rock and Newport, soaking in cool temperatures and consuming seafood and local white wines.  He talks about moving to Oregon, selling his ranch and settling in the cooler climes.  I think about the higher altitudes of northern New Mexico around Truchas and Taos that have sharp winters and cool nights during the summer.

We both will probably stay put: he in Santa Anna, me in Mingus, for there are mild winters and days in May where thundershowers bring out the Cut-leaf Daisy, Fire Whorls, Queen Anne’s Lace, Purple Dandelions in brilliant colors while horses and cattle graze in lush Spring fields of gramma and bluestem.  I should like, however, to go to the Newport and Depoe Bay area of Oregon where my friend says, ‘There is a resident pod of whales for ten months out of the year about the coast.  You can see them surface and dive, surface and dive.’

I want to see that scene some day.  The cloud portal in the photograph above opens to the west, towards the Pacific, towards the whale.  And away from home.

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Notes, corrections and additions:

Depoe Bay was added as an additional site my friend visited.  It is a central location for beautiful scenery and whales.  The boating outing in ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ was filmed in the area.

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Critters and tomato juice

Two burrows along Salt Creek bank.

Along the banks of Salt Creek that divides my pastures into two sections, I find burrows of armadillo, skunk and other critters.  Back at the barn, below the ranch house during the night, various critters slide under the wall railings and scour for grain that falls through feed bins.  When I walk the dogs in the early morning — about 5:00 a.m. — I scan the trail for tail of skunk so as to avert a stinky collision of critter and dog.  When my dogs are sprayed by the effective skunk, I wash them in tomato juice.  That has not happened in thirty years as I have successfully intercepted the fight — at least thus far.

Successful remedy for partially washing skunk from dog.

Field notes 3/22/2011 — diamondback and monarch

Winds sustained at 22 m.p.h.  Highway travel to Abilene slowed.

Yeller, our Aussie-Lab mix dog, sat in the hallway in front of the glass door leading to the outside porch.  He growls deeply, the deepest and most sustained growl I have ever heard from him.  I go to the front door, thinking Yeller has alerted us to a strange dog or our resident lizard that comes across the front porch.  Yeller growls deeper.  On the porch, I see a four-foot rattlesnake slithering next to the closed glass door, six inches from his nose.

The glass door separates Yeller and us from the rattlesnake.  Brenda gets Yeller and Lottie, our Schnauzer, away from the door and takes them into another room, away from what must happen.  I grab the Remington 12 gauge and run around to the front door and dispatch the snake quickly, angling the shot to prevent blowback.  We are unnerved since no rattlesnakes — other snakes have been left alone — have been seen around our house since we moved here in 2003.

I must make sure the grass is cut about the house and piles of brush are placed at a distance away from the yard.  We have become complacent and need to sharpen our senses.

Later this afternoon, I see a lone monarch butterfly sitting on our wild verbena in the front field, a hundred-feet away from the front porch event a hour before, feasting on nectar, gently folding and unfolding the wings.

I am not sure what to make of monarchs, diamondbacks, dogs and all of this that comes across my field.  I am saddened and must do what needs to be done to be safe and live.  This day, March 22, 2011, has been filled with many things I do not understand.

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[From Backpacker, June 2000.]  Sure, carrying a hiking stick makes me look like a rugged mountain man, but it also helps me in more pedestrian ways. By easing the load on my knees and shoulders, it helps me chew up big miles, plus I can tiptoe across loose rocks, slippery logs, and rushing streams without a wobble. Here’s how to create your own personalized staff.

1. Search your local forest for a downed branch that’s stout, straight, and preferably, blemish-free (no obvious cracks or big knotholes). The stick should reach your armpit and measure 1 to 2 inches in diameter.

2. Remove twigs with a pocketknife and strip the bark if you want. Round off sharp points or level knobs with a plane or file. Hold the stick as though you’re hiking (your elbow should form a right angle) to figure out where your grip will be– 2 to 3 inches below the top. Customize the grip by cutting shallow grooves for your fingers like those on a steering wheel. Just above the grip area, drill a 1/4-inch hole for a wrist loop. Smooth the surface of the stick first with coarse, then fine, sandpaper.To remove residual sawdust, wipe the stick with a rag dipped in paint thinner.

3. Decorate the stick with carvings, wood burnings, paintings, emblems or bear bells. If the wood is still green, place it in a warm, dry location to cure for at least 2 weeks, and rotate it often to prevent bowing.

4. Apply two coats of wood stain, allowing each coat to dry overnight, to give the stick a darker, richer hue. Then apply three coats of clear urethane varnish to seal the wood and prevent rot. Allow each coat of varnish to dry overnight. Sand the stick lightly with very fine sandpaper or steel wool after each coat.

5. Thread a 2-foot piece of rawhide lace or heavy cord through the hole. Adjust the length of the loop to fit your wrist, tie the ends in a big knot to secure the loop, then trim the ends as necessary.

Wood is a fickle creature, so remember that hiking sticks are born as much as they are made. –Jonathan Dorn

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Notes:

“Making Your Own Walking Stick,” Backpacker magazine, June 2000.

Sandhills, Lilly and clumsy me

Left knee with icebag

Given the fact it’s a Saturday and most people want a calm and relaxing — well, maybe some activity — after a hectic week, the last thing a person needs to see is a knee with icebag.   My apologies, readers, but here it is or rather up there is the knee.

I was chasing Sandhill cranes most of the day to photograph them.  It was Wednesday and I divided my time between working on Blackboard (I teach five online classes of history) and going into the field of 53 acres of Flying Hat Ranch (FHR).  As my posts indicate from Wednesday, I was hearing but not seeing the elusive, high-flying bird.  It was a good day and I got work done, issues resolved on Blackboard and shot a number of photos for fieldwork.

I found and marked with an engineer’s flag several lithic tools in the field.  But every time! I heard the Sandhills, the camera was either in the truck or at the house.  Besides, until late afternoon, I didn’t see any.

Brenda comes home from work and I am walking back to the ranch house from the barn and I hear the Sandhills and look above me and what to my wondering eyes should appear but about 300 Sandhills, in at least two V-formations.  Beautiful and they were calling.

So, I broke into a sprint.  On my first or second spring up the lane, something popped or snapped in my leg.  I skipped, not sprinted, to the house and got the camera, but the cranes had their throttles to the wall and I missed the shots with the camera.  But I did see them.

My leg hurt and in the middle of the night, at two o’clock, I woke up in pain and by Thursday morning, I could barely walk.  I went to Fort Worth to the clinic and they sent me to Harris Methodist hospital for x-rays.  The P.A. told me I might be looking at an orthopedic surgeon!  Or rather, he would be looking at me with a scalpel in hand.

As it turned out, Friday I learned (after icebags and pain pills) that nothing was broken or torn, but it was arthritis!  Good news?  Bad news?  How in the dickens can arthritis bring me down to jumping on one leg from bed to bathroom, for crying out loud?  I don’t know, but next Wednesday I have an appointment with my Primary Physician for a yearly checkup and in addition to him invading my body cavity without mercy, he will enlighten me on the knee.

Brenda is taking care of the dogs and Star.  I’m looking at walking canes on the web.  Ever Google “canes”?  Well, live long enough, you will.  There are all sorts of canes.  Canes that fold, canes that have stupid heads on them, curved canes, canes with swords and even canes with risque girls painted along the stem and nose (there’s a whole glossary of cane nomenclature).  I’ve not picked my cane.  I have some nice looking cedar staves down along the barn I may craft upon and develop an Etsy Shop for homemade canes.

Lilly, the good old girl that we had to put down in January, had osteoarthritis too, and in the left knee really bad.  But, you know what?  She got up with a struggle and ate and walked and even pranced in the snow despite her knee.  She’s taught me a lesson about arthritis among many I’ll eventually churn out on Sage to Meadow.  I’m up and I’ll be in class Tuesday.  Star will be fed — I’ll do it slowly.  I’ll continue to contemplate canes.  If my knee continues to be painful, I’ll have to hire a person to do some seasonal work.  I’ll do a jig in the snow.

Frankly, if I had to hurt myself, I’m glad I was chasing Sandhills rather than tripping over the cat.  And, if I had to learn a lesson about dealing with the pain, who better to be my teacher than Lilly?  When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.  She did and doesn’t even know it.

Enough of this!  Now, where’s that pain killer I used to give Lilly?  Oh, yes, it’s in the tack room next to the saddles.

Cedar post traction

The weather remains cold, down to 12 degrees last night and up to 21 degrees at 3:00 p.m.  I do like Winter.

Since Tuesday, we have stayed put in the ranch house, burning pinion in the fireplace during the day, lowering the thermostat to 65 degrees in cooperation with emergency power issues in Texas.  The temperature is not expected to go above freezing until Saturday and another snowfall descends this evening.

Schools closed.  Our mail carrier, Jeannie Chisolm, told us this morning that the roads are treacherous on her route that encompasses county roads in Erath and Palo Pinto Counties.

I needed to make a mercy run to Interstate 20, five miles away, for supplies.  First, I had to put weight in back of the F-250.  The old “two-bales-of-hay-watered-down-and-frozen” ploy was not feasible.  Too cold and I didn’t want the hassle of clean up next week.  As a second option, I decided to load the F-250 with cedar posts in order to weigh the rear end down.  Actually, the wood used for fence posts is not cedar, but juniper.  The colloquial is “cedar,” however, and I’m not about to go to the “cedar” yard and ask for “juniper” posts — might result in fisticuffs about definition of terms. But, back to loading cedar.

It’s not as easy as it sounds.  First, I broke the ice around the barn doors with a flat shovel in order to drive the DX-55 Case-Farmall into the pasture where I stored the posts.  After the tractor warmed up, I loaded two big stacks of cedars into the front-end loader, sweeping some snow off the posts and observed Meadow Larks nearby, scratching for seed where the posts had rested.  I drove up the hill to the house.  I used a rubber hammer to dislodge the goose-neck ball from the bed of the pickup, as it had become frozen after the rain Monday evening.  I use the rubber hammer and vise-grips frequently in these times.

I dumped — very carefully — two loads of 6 to 9 inch cedar posts into the bed of the F-250, raising the front-end loader above the bed of the pickup and away from the back window.  I estimated the load to be about 800 pounds, sufficient to give traction on ice for the pickup.  I test drove the 250 up and down the lane.  Two loads seemed sufficient — it was.

Between our place and the interstate, a pickup had overturned and at least ten off-road events in the bar ditch had occurred.  Trucks on the interstate traveled in one lane at 15-20 m.p.h.  We bought our few supplies and came back to the house on the road with two inches of ice beneath several inches of snow.  The clerk at the Exxon station stated that the local propane dealer had run out of propane and his trucks could not resupply until the roads cleared.  There was no milk for sale — all sold out.

Back at the house, we settle in.  I give Star a loaf of hay to tide him over till supper.  Lottie our Schnauzer jumps up on the fireplace bench to warm herself after we relight the fire.  I look out and see cedar posts in the F-250 and I know in an emergency we can make the Palo Pinto Rural Health Clinic (PPRHC) in Gordon with cedar posts as weight in the back for traction.

Snow and ice at Flying Hat

White-crowned Sparrows, Flying Hat, Texas, February 2011

Two nights ago, early Tuesday morning at 12:30 a.m., a rain storm followed by sleet and snow descended on our ranch. The wind blew, gusts to 50 m.p.h., and the temperature reached 10 degrees this morning.  Yesterday, I used the Case Farmall DX-55 tractor to pull our F-250 out of the lane that intersects County Road 114.  Beneath a snow of four inches, two inches of ice held fast to the ground and the F-250, being a two-wheeled drive, could not gain traction in the lane.  Brenda backed up the F-250 while I pulled with the Farmall.  We parked the pickup close enough to the electrical circuit at the house so that if necessary we could warm the engine with its electrical plug.

Yesterday, our rural mail carrier, Jeannie Chisolm, posted mail throughout her route using a four-wheeled drive Jeep.  I called her this morning for road conditions and she told me she became stuck one time yesterday as she delivered the last three mailboxes on her route.  She made it back to her home at 8:00 p.m. last night.  The road between Flying Hat and Interstate 20 is only passable with four-wheel vehicles or those with chains.

Star munches on hay and grain in the stable and I crunched some horse feed and threw it on the ground so White-crowned Sparrows could peck and fill themselves.

The State of Texas has declared a power emergency and seven-million people will begin to experience rolling blackouts to prevent an overload of the grid.  We have experienced no blackouts, but our Internet Provider, centered in Fort Worth, Texas, goes down infrequently.

Weather forecasts indicate below freezing temperatures through Friday at noon.  We have lowered our thermostat to 65 degrees and switched unnecessary electrical appliances to the OFF position.  We have a week’s supply of firewood stacked in the shed and oakwood windfall in the grove.

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Additional comment:  We had a blackout at 11:25 a.m. for about forty minutes.