Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

A fine young male, fresh and brightly colored and very handsome
April 4, 2007

“I was overwhelmed with all the information. Even trying to take notes, I was left feeling lost. I would enjoy being able to have more classes like this where we are in the field and are instructed on what we are observing,” Terry Ferguson wrote on her post-field trip “quiz” for the March 24th class of the Llano Estacado Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists. The Master Naturalist program is similar in structure to the Master Gardener program. After receiving 50+ hours of instruction, class participants are asked to perform 50 hours of community service during the next year for the Texas State Parks and conservation organizations.

Fourteen of the original twenty-one class members toured two locations that day – the Sibley Nature Center playa, and another playa south of town. The highest hill in Midland County borders the second playa, and a number of the plants restricted to the limestone habitat were examined as well. The other sessions of the program were lecture classes presented by professional biologists, but with the fresh stirrings of spring enhanced by incredibly pleasant temperatures and a sweet flower-scented breeze, it was time “to enjoy nature.” I had failed to arrange for another professional biologist to instruct the class on playa ecology, so I offered a different style of pedagogy.

Before the session, I had asked the group to read several essays about playas from the Sibley Nature Center website. My goal was to have the group understand how important playas are in the landscape of the region. Playas were the landmarks that Indians, Spanish and Mexican explorers, hunters, and traders and U.S. Calvary used to navigate upon “the endless grass ocean” of the Llano Estacado. The location of buffalo and pronghorn herds, as well as incredible numbers of wintering ducks, geese, and cranes, were dependent on playas. Their importance was incorporated in the stories of those earlier Llaneros whose strong emotional attachments to playas were interwoven into their “mythopoetics of place.” Playas were the “most special of places” for earlier Llaneros.

“I found out that if you want to watch long enough, you can tell the difference between male and female rattlesnakes. The female’s tail tapers more at the end, whereas the male’s tail stays fuller all the way to the rattles.” The field trip provided some exciting “sightings.” Finding a rattlesnake makes a field trip an emotional experience - we all walked in a much more circumspect fashion afterwards. As the class gathered around the snake to photograph it and watch it, class member and experienced herpetologist Allen Wemple kept repeating, “This is a fine young male, fresh and brightly colored – he is very handsome.”

I had been leading the group through a salt cedar thicket, picking my way along, but I had not seen the snake. I had walked right past him. The second person in the single-file line, Pat Hunter of Oxy Petroleum, heard his one and only rattle and saw him move away from our “right-of-way.” Several class members hung back and one voiced a concern, “Shouldn’t we be scared?”

I told the class the words of a rancher that I had observed instructing his grandchildren. “Rattlesnakes are not evil. God put them here, to teach us. They teach us to respect the land. They never ever attack people just to hurt us - we are monsters to them, huge clumsy monsters. Rattlers rattle at us to tell us and cows (and buffalo back in the old days) that they want every thing to go around them and not step on them. They only bite us when we are being careless, or when we are trying to kill them and we do a bad job of it. We did not put the rattlesnake on this Earth, girls, and we do not have the right to rid the Earth of them.”

Class member Paul King later wrote, “A keen-eyed person spotted a fairly large male rattlesnake coiled under a bush, soaking up the sun and enjoying the nice spring day. The last we saw of him, he was headed south and we were headed north.” We did not kill him.

“I make a pilgrimage every year to this ridge to seek out its unique plants. It is something I have to do every spring. I have to see Dutchman’s britches, Chimaya, feather dalea and the multi-colored Indian paintbrush.” I could not explain why “I have to,” other than I have an emotional attachment to the plants. I have even attempted to grow all of the species in a specially designed “rock garden” designed to duplicate the habitat. (Only the dalea is still growing, for the others did not survive the shock of transplanting.)

We had eaten our picnic lunches on the ridge. As everybody finished, Bill Lupardus, Allen Wemple, and I told the group of the many species of birds that the Midland Naturalists have spotted at the playa below when it held water during the 1980s. The Midland Naturalists, a long-time (over 50 years) local field study group, recorded many rarities such as a Black Skimmer (normally found in the Gulf of Mexico) which are still the only records of the species in the region. Parts of the playa were filled with a salt cedar and salt bush thicket where the group last year found Midland County’s first record of a nesting Black-tailed Gnatcacher.

For amateur field naturalists, the discovery of a new nesting bird, or of a rare visitor, or the discovery of a unique population of plants are emotional events. We get “a charge or a rush” and shout “Wow!” We connect with our home bioregion in a satisfying manner - we become “participants” because we are constantly out exploring and learning. A naturalist is never bored! If you would like to join the Class of 2008, please call the Sibley Nature Center and ask for me, and I will give your name to the Llano Estacado Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists governing board. Next year’s class will start next January.

A naturalist is not merely an “objective scientist,” gathering data and facts within a specialized field of study. Objectivity is really a subjective matter! The objectivity of Western science is a culturally subjective approach. As people develop their personal relationship to the natural world that surrounds them they form a “fully internalized bonding with place,” and become indigenous, and truly become citizens of their home bioregion.