Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Frijole Ranch in the Guadalupe Mountains
August 13, 2003

Frijole Ranch is one my most favorite places in west Texas. In mid-July I spent a morning under the giant Arizona walnuts and chinkapin oaks there. A two-story whitewashed native rock house there contains artifacts of the early settlement days right at the base of the Guadalupe Mountains.
I sat at a picnic table, watching the birds that lived in the trees and around the house. I overheard the burly bearded national park ranger on duty repetitively launch into an interpretative spiel to a constant stream of visitors spending vacation time exploring the gestalt of the region.

“This is the springhouse. It had a ram pump that forced water into a water tank, so as the result the ranch house had running water. The Rader brothers had built a small house here in 1876, but soon moved on. The Smith family, came in 1906, and developed the site. The tower and tank were constructed in 1918, but as you can see only the tower remains. In 1918 Mr. Smith developed a carbide generator to pump acetylene gas into outlets in the house to provide lights. In the mid-20’s he added a wind-generated battery charger for electricity.”

“J.T. Smith was an educated gentleman farmer, grafting many varieties of fruit trees. He built that little red school house next to the ranch house for his kids and those of his neighbors, paying a school teacher thirty dollars a month plus room and board. Besides the orchard, he had a greenhouse, a vineyard and a big vegetable garden in that open area of 15 acres to the south and southeast of the house. Several times a year they would load up their wagons in the evening, cover the fresh produce with wet linens and travel for two days to Van Horn to sell it. They used wagons until the late 1930’s, when the highway was finally paved.”

A decade ago I spent time interviewing Jack Kincaid, a service employee of the national park, who had been born in the house. His father Noel was the foreman for J.C. Hunter, the last owner of much of what became the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Noel, born in the Guadalupes and homesteading on his own at age 13, drove livestock to the “Bowl” for Mr. Hunter beginning in the 1940’s. The Bowl is a montane basin high above the house. Noel also maintained the watering system that pumped water from near the house all the way up into the mountains 1000 feet or more higher. When the National Park took over, they removed the watering system, to try to return the mountains to pre-settlement conditions. The Kincaid family lived in the house until 1971. Jack and his wife have owned the Nickel Creek Café a few miles away since 1981.

As I sat at the picnic table watching birds, in the corral to the south of the house the string of the park’s surefooted backcountry horses and mules loudly chomped their breakfast. A family of Canyon Towhees flitted along the three-foot tall rock walls that surround the compound of house, schoolhouse, bunkhouse, springhouse, milkhouse, and bathhouse. One towhee teetered along the small concrete acequia that led to the bathhouse.

Every family of tourists starring little girls ended up with the riding stock, the children squealing as they ran along the fence talking to the “ponies.” Three-fourths of the visitors took a five-minute tour, quickly passing by the artifacts within the house. Another fifteen percent walked to each outbuilding, snapping a photograph of the buildings nestled under the chinkapin oaks planted closest to the house. The two oaks closest to the spring have a six-foot circumference.

A ladderbacked woodpecker chipped away at loose bark on a drought stressed walnut, slowly circling in and out of sight as it backed down the trunk in a spiral. Two young Bullock’s orioles followed their brightly colored father in the denser canopy portions of the chinkapin oaks. He only fed them when their chirring was accompanied by wing-fluttering. Within a week he will lead them down the draw past Nipple Peak, the landmark that led Indians, ciboleros, comancheros, and 49’er emigrants to the plentiful water of Smith, Manzanita, Frijole and Pine Springs.

The flutter of a rufous underwinged ash-throated flycatcher puttered past my ear – he grabbed a fly headed to join the other flies squiggling on the tabletop. Livestock and flies invariably go together. The sweet slurp of a western tanager emanated from high in the trees – he must have left the high country recently, his familial duties finished for the year. A big black swallowtail butterfly rode the upslope breeze across the yard. I had seen its favorite nectar plant, wavy-leafed thistle, just up the road, with a single blossom poking between drought-withered leaves and seedheads still feathery.

As if on cue, a lesser goldfinch wafted down from the trees to light on a golden wheatgrass stalk just past the rock fence. They only nest when thistle seed is plentiful, lining their small cup nests with the hair on the seeds. Several seedling walnuts grew in the old orchard field. The drought must have reduced the deer herd in the Guadalupes, for these seedlings were the only evidence of regeneration. Only the old trees and the seedlings were present – no saplings or midsize walnuts were present. Local ranchers say the protected mountain lions that reside in the park have diminished the herd more than the drought.

As the midday upslope convection built gray bottomed cumulus clouds the visitors slowed the pace of their visits. Two families chatted with the ranger, all of them seated on the rock walls and benches of the entry yard beside the springhouse. The ranger deviated from his standard presentation as the visitors asked questions of greater detail. The burbling of the ash-throated flycatcher and western tanager echoed their soft melodic conversation. Midday is a time of relaxed contentment for many birds. Their morning hunger sated, they will doze most of the afternoon.

A white-winged dove mourned his sad tune – “que lastima, que lastima, que lastima” every few minutes, usually when the building clouds blocked the sun. When the sunlight returned each time, cool breezes swirled in the first minute of sun, then slackened. The ranger locked the house and folded up the open sign before heading to the park employee-housing district for lunch.

The flies diminished as the clouds gathered, lulled into inaction by the diminished light. Two remained on the table, licking a sticky puddle of dried soda pop. They slowly walked to another dark smudge before resting motionless. The birds fell silent, and the horses and mules half-dozed, eyes closed, with tails switching metronomically. Occasionally an equine would lift a foot and quiver to dislodge a gathering of flies on their haunch. They stood in pairs, head to tail, sharing the flyswitching chore.

Biting stable flies finally awoke as the non-shaded areas reached ninety degrees as the clouds ceased to increase. I became the only person at the ranch house. I meandered about to lose the mean little ankle-biters, peering into the windows of the buildings. My efforts to confound the flies proved unsuccessful, so I returned to my vehicle, leaving the ranch house without a human presence. A canyon towhee agilely chased a moth along the walls of the barn as I motored slowly away.