Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Coyote trailing in the sand dunes
July 28, 2004

“The world’s largest contiguous oak forest is in west Texas.” Saaay what? Sounds loco, doesn’t it? It is the truth, though, and the forest stretches from near Crane, Texas all the way to the area around Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Everywhere that there is deep sand that long ago blew up out of the Pecos River Valley to the slopes of the Mescalero Escarpment (the western “caprock” of the Llano Estacado) there are Havard Shin Oaks. Most of the trees are not trees, but shrubs.

Besides visiting the Monahans State Park near Monahans and the Bureau of Land Managements Mescalero Dunes west of Tatum, New Mexico, and Oasis State Park near Portales, New Mexico, lots of southern Llano Estacado folks visit two other accessible sand dune areas. North of Imperial and south of Interstate 20 along FM 1053, or along FM 115 from Kermit to Andrews, the dune buggy folks congregate. I am sure they have fun roaring around. Monahans and Kermit folks should look into creating a special park for them – as part of new economic development, along with a race season, dune buggy trade shows, and dune buggy stores.

I must admit, though, that I have an ulterior motive – this park would be the one and only place they could tear up the dunes. “Tear up the dunes – why, golly gee, the wind does that every time it blows,” I can hear somebody say. Yes, where it is already bare the wind wipes the sand clean of tracks, but when a person is jumping a 4-wheeler off the face of a dune and lands in a patch of shinoak, or giant bluestem, or giant reedgrass, or the other 350 species of plants that need senescent sand dune soil in which to survive, such activity slowly but surely destroys a delicate habitat.

I love the dunes – a place of incredibly sensual scenery painted with the most delicate pastel hues, as well as home to rare and unusual life forms. I have had wonderful experiences interacting with the animals that live on the dunes.

Have you ever tracked a coyote? Storyteller Doug Elliott (from North Carolina) and I did that one cool December morning in the Monahans dunes. We started before the sun came up, and found the critter’s tracks not far from where our bedrolls were spread on the sand. Following the tracks for over two hours we learned the story of his early morning perambulations. Doug is a master track reader – he could look at the pattern of the footsteps and tell which way the dune-dog was looking. That is possible, really! When they stop to observe, they take one step in the direction of their gaze. We found where the coyote had dug in the sand in pursuit of a kangaroo rat that had just escaped his leaping pounce – he jumped twelve feet down a slope, leaving skidding grooves in the sand. “He invented sandsurfing long before humans,” Doug commented.

We continued on, following the coyote tracks past the holes of hundreds of Nina de la Tierras (Jerusalem Crickets) who must have had a mass emergence the night before – it must have been a mating “lek” (gathering of breeding animals and insects.) The coyote had sniffed at about twenty of the holes, and at several he had dug. “Did he eat them,” we wondered, and were almost immediately blessed with a pile of his scat. And yes, there were parts of crickets in the droppings. “The crickets must emerge early in night – coyotes probably take almost as long as humans to digest a meal,’ Doug mused.

“He must have found another lek area, because he did not stay here long – his tracks don’t indicate he slept here – so maybe this was a dessert stop.” I was doing my best to add to the interpretation and analysis of the coyote’s doings, and this was about the first time I contributed something! We followed the tracks up to the top of the highest dune we could see.

We followed his tracks to one of the willow groves in the dunes. Willows? Yes, for rainwater only penetrates four to five feet into the dunes before it begins trickling down slope to the areas between the dunes. Sometimes a searcher can find pools of water, full of frogs, salamanders, and aquatic insects, but we visited during our long drought we have endured (and may still be in.) Down in the heart of the willow grove we found the “animal well” where everything came to drink.

When the pools of water dry up, the animals start digging. The longer the drought, the deeper is the well. The well we found that morning was almost three feet across, and angled down into the clay at a 45 degree angle for six feet. And at the bottom of the well, we could see water. (Doug’s penlight on his keyring was handy!) We found wild hog droppings under the trees, and a porcupine up in another tree. A great horned owl grumpily left his perch as we bushwhacked about in the dense thicket. Dozens of passerine birds flitted about in the tall dead sunflower and cocklebur stalks – we found nine species of wintering sparrows in less than ten minutes.

As we were slogging up the next slope, I got winded, and to slow Doug down so I could catch my breath, I made a prediction. “You know, I bet he is headed up there to do some howling and barking. Remember we heard him whooping and hollering as we were first waking up. What was he doing, reporting on his activities of the night? Bragging about his luck? Do you know of any studies of coyote communication?”

Doug “busted out laughing” at my garrulous blathering, seeing through my subterfuge. He stopped and asked if I had read a book written from a coyote’s point of view – I do not remember the name of it, now, but I had read it and told him so. He asked if I remembered a scene in it about a “gathering ground,” where every coyote in a large area come to leave their “mark,” and gather for group howls. I told him I had once found such a place in the Big Bend National Park.

We finally made it to the top of the dune, where I plopped down. The tracks did not stop, but went down into the next willow thicket. Doug went plunging down while I sat, panting. After he entered the thicket and had made his way towards its center, the coyote emerged on the other side, and sprinted up the next dune. Doug emerged from the thicket a few minutes later, still following the tracks and wandered out of sight until he appeared on the succeeding ridge of dunes. I looked at the tracks next to me, and realized we had been right behind the coyote for a while and probably had scared him from the “animal well.”

After I spotted Doug on the second ridge, I noticed the coyote sneaking back into the thicket below me. As Doug made his way back, he circled the grove, but the sanddog did not budge from what must have been his favored diurnal resting place. Doug had given up following the tracks, and had not seen the coyote. Coyote, the trickster of American Indian stories, was probably chuckling to himself, with that goofy grin canines have!