Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Davis Mountains fall wildflowers
September 15, 2004

“Let’s be crazy and spontaneous,” Deborah nudged me. On August 28th we were sitting outside of Reyna’s Deli on south Midkiff after lunch. “Let’s go daytripping.” After staying two months with us, the grandkid had just gotten on a plane. In retrospect, we decided we had gone on the drive because we did not want to feel sad because we missed him.

“Let’s take the backroads to Balmorhea,” she said. I did not even ask why Balmorhea – I just put the car in gear and got on I-20. “We’ll turn off at Monahans and go through Coyanosa down to I-10,” I told her.

The Coyanosa road (FM 1776) is a good back road. In that 30+ mile stretch we saw less than a half-dozen cars. We did our usual “stop-and-turn-around back-road behavior,” every time we saw a wildflower we could not recognize at 70 miles an hour, or when we saw an abandoned building, or a historical marker, or the evidence of this spring’s burn along the Pecos River. The countryside was green and lush (for west Texas.) This summer’s rain has been an incredible blessing.

Just 300 feet to the east of the bridge over the Pecos was our first YEE-HAW! In the road cut some gray-leaved plants with dozens of butterflies dancing on their tops “roped and hogtied” us to a complete stop. “Hmm, it is just Stinging Cevallia – but we’ve never noticed butterflies on it before – wow.” But that was not the YEE-HAW. That was the “Fragrant Heliotrope”, 6 inch gray mounds with yellow-throated white flowers, and a “gypsophile” (growing in gyppy soil) to boot! “I have never seen this before, and I’ve been roaming west Texas looking at plants for over 40 years,” I shook my head. “I love it, I love it! I love finding something I have never seen before!”

When we got to Balmorhea we drove out to check on the lake, which was full to overflowing. Then we drove around town, looking at the plants people had in their yards, and stopping at a couple of stores. “Coral wreath vine cascading over a fence, trumpet vine climbing forty feet up an old cottonwood, pink and white crinums blooming late in the season, a dozen wild turkey in a yard under some old pinyons probably transplanted from the Davis Mountains – dadgum girl, maybe we should buy one of these old houses for a weekend place!”

“You say that about Post, San Angelo, Carlsbad in New Mexico, and every other town we like.” Deborah gave me a teasing shove. When I returned to the highway, and sat looking left and right longer than I needed, she grinned. “I’m not ready to go home yet either.” We turned left, further away from home.

As we climbed up the first long hill on the way to Fort Davis on SH 17 we stopped to examine some white spikes of “Snake Cotton.” Deborah had never seen it before – in the seven years since she returned to West Texas it has not rained enough for it to germinate, not until this year, that is. The sweet aroma of the beebrush in the draw was intoxicating. In the cool humid air (several thunderheads were building nearby) the luscious scent got us giddy.

I took the Boy Scout Ranch turnoff (FM1832) and kept the speed down under 10 miles an hour. Two pickups dragging loaded horse-trailers met us a quarter-mile down the road. (They were the only vehicles we saw while we were there.) There is no shoulder on the road, and we had just parked in our lane and gotten out to look at lyreleaf parthenium, a kin to mariola, guayule, and rabbit-tobacco. It was another YEE-HAW for me! The vaqueros slowed, as if to ask if we needed some help, but just grinned and waved when they saw the specimen in my hand. The redolent acres of beebrush, the shafts of golden light streaming through the clouds, the green-beyond-green slopes of the foothills of the Davis Mountains – all of it – “uplifted” us.

Uplifted? Yes! We were in the presence of “Glory.” The sensory beauty of the place grabbed us emotionally, filling us with rejoicing. Hallelujah! We whooped and hollered along with “Dos Arbolitos” blasting out of our speakers. Deborah knows it by heart, so she started belting out the words and both of us danced in the middle of the road.

It is only 12 miles to the gate of the Boy Scout Ranch from the turnoff on SH17, but it took us almost three hours to drive up and back its length. We stopped at least 30 times. The YEE-HAWS just kept coming! Over and over we kept finding plants we had never before seen. I have roamed the Davis Mountains in August at least a dozen times, but I can only remember doing so one other rainy year.

As we drove along, Deborah kept calling out species of plants we have in the Gone Native Arboretum. “There is some bouvardia – look how compact it is – do deer graze it? Ours is so much bigger and fuller. Oh, my word – look at all the esperanza (yellow bells) on that slope! I had no idea it was so prolific! Here is rouge plant, and the brickellia that we recently learned is important in traditional Mexican herbalism.”

On the last hill before the gate of the Boy Scout Ranch we stopped to examine some scarlet morning glory. As I was reaching into the bushes it climbed upon to look for some seeds to collect, Deborah suddenly blurted “Here is pipevine!” She pointed at a plant almost under her feet. “Look at the caterpillars – red spikes on a purple black body. No wonder we have been seeing so many of the pipevine swallowtail butterflies.” I looked closely. “It is in bloom, too. Look at those funny funnels, green on the outside, purple brown on the inside lip.”

I started dancing and yelling YEE-HAW over and over and over. I looked for pipevine for 30 years until I saw it my one-and-only time down on the Devil’s River about ten years ago. It was a “Holy Grail” plant for me, a plant that I fervently wished to see because of its intricate ecological connections. When I calmed down, Deborah was shaking her head. “I do not know how I knew it was pipevine – I had not seen the blooms. I do not know the leaf. I saw the smaller caterpillar and immediately blurted out the name.”

I looked at her, excited, not wishing for the experience to end, and said, “Let’s get a motel room and spend the night, and in the morning pick out another road to mosey along.” And so we did. The next morning we went up the Mt. Locke road, where we found the endemic Macrisophonia hypoleuca with its 2 inch white blossoms. It only grows on Mt. Locke and at Laguna Meadows above the Basin in Big Bend National Park. We found hundreds of the beautiful tangerine-colored lily Anthericum torreyi on further down the road, and in the roadside park in Madera Canyon stumbled upon one specimen of exotically-scented Agastache micrantha. We eventually found over 30 species of plants I had never before seen.

The Davis Mountains region of trans-Pecos Texas is a treasure. It offers historical sites, art galleries, great restaurants and bookstores, beautiful scenery, cool mountain temperatures, and some of the most wonderful and incredible wildflowers in the world.