Essays
Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero
The Sibley Nature Center can find the perfect adventure for you or your child
May 9, 2007
12 people sat in the dark in a van. No one spoke. The humid warm air only cooled when a breeze wafted through opened windows. A cacophony resounded outside – at least ten, but what sounded like twenty “characters” where whooping it up all around the van. In the darkness the sounds took on corporeal form. Another van, with 13 more people, was 100 feet away, but they were not the ones making the noise. Very few people have heard what those 25 people were hearing. For ten miles in every direction, no other humans were among the vegetated dunes, oilfield pumpjacks, and electrical transmission lines. Members of the Sibley Nature Center, the southern Llano Estacado chapter of the Master Naturalists, and the Midland Naturalists traveled to the Yoakum-Cochran county line to listen to, watch, photograph, and admire the once-plentiful but now-rare Lesser Prairie Chicken at their springtime mating ritual on booming grounds used for decades. (Check out this photo essay to learn more about the April 21st trip.)
“Oh, wow...” was all that Sibley Nature Center Developmental Director Richard Galle heard as he eased his kayak past fellow paddlers Colorado City attorney Pat Barber and wife Sharon in the depths of Mariscal Canyon in Big Bend National Park. Forty members of the Permian Basin Outing Club were lucky. On Saturday April 28th, the water level in the river was very low. “I have floated Mariscal 30 times and have never seen it as low,” Galle told everyone. Big Spring resident and Master Naturalist chapter president Sammy Hunnicutt and son Colin may be the only people to ever paddle upstream through the Rock Slide in the canyon. On April 29th the water was 10 times as deep (in 12 hours it went from 18 inches to 13 feet deep at one gauging station.) The spring thunderstorms held off until Sunday morning, when everybody headed home. On their way home the participants skirted a thunderhead that later produced a tornado near Crane. (Check out PBOC.info for more information – and read their online newsletter with photographs of the trip.)
From 9:30 to 2:30 on May 3rd, 100 students and teachers of the Ambleside School of San Angelo joined Sibley staff along the banks of the Concho River, exploring a small rocky knoll covered with wildflowers. All but one child liked the taste of yucca flowers. “I listened to your version of the story of the Blue Nun and you told it much like we tell it here. Did you know about the little pamphlet that the local Catholic Church published about the story? Bishop Pfeiffer and others are creating a play about her for this year’s Feast of San Antonio celebration.” At the end of the program, one of the teachers just bubbled about how the Sibley Nature Center’s program celebrated west Texas history and ecology. Kids explored the tiny rocky knoll (150 feet long and 75 feet across) and were introduced to the taste of “weeds,” and learned how Indians used plants for clothes, medicine, and food.
4th grade gifted and talented students from Andrews listened to a story of the Mescalero Apache heroine Lozen set in the sanddunes below Blue Mesa and then hiked the trails at the Sibley Nature Center to find the plants described in the story. The students that listened the best won the most prizes (their choice of polished stones or rubber critters) when they returned. The father of one of the students pastures cattle at the setting of the story, but the young man had not heard the story. The teacher will have the same students next year, and we agreed to make plans to arrange permission from the Andrews school system and landowner to take a field trip this fall.
The board and staff of the Sibley Nature Center salute everyone that has gotten out and explored West Texas this incredible and glorious spring. We wish to tip our hat to all of the groups that utilize our facilities. Thanks, Midland Gem and Mineral Society, for all that you do! Kids love the polished stones, Pecos River ‘diamonds,’ and quart crystals the Society donates to the Sibley Nature Center. The group’s display of polished rocks from West Texas exposes visiting students to more of West Texas geology. When we give our “Sanddune Habitat” program we always show off the mammoth tooth that a member of the group donated.
It is amazing how much is happening in West Texas with people and the out of doors. The Sibley Kid’s Club braved gale force winds during their inaugural meeting at the Sibley Nature Center, then chilly temperatures, and were frozen out by the Easter snowstorms. What will happen in their May meeting? The Junior Master Gardeners raised vegetables to sell at the Master Gardeners’ annual spring flower sale at The Horseshoe and have been working in the program’s garden at near the Sibley Nature Center’s trailhead. Mad Science will host a summer camp at Sibley in July, and the Junior Master Gardener camp will last throughout June on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Mark Webb, an instructor and computer guru for both the Junior Master Gardener program and Sibley has been erecting a 60 by 30 foot greenhouse to propagate and sell unique drought hardy ornamental plants. Midland College biology professor Dr. Paul Mangum has been researching the relationship between mesquite and desert holly with his Biology 2 class, and he propagated some Cinnamon Toast Tree seedlings to be planted at the Sibley Nature Center. Dr. Mangum recently took samples of the “Frances Williams Chocolate Daisy” and began learning the proper techniques of tissue culturing this unique and showy hybrid ornamental perennial flower.
The list goes on – later this month, employees of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Department will meet at Sibley for a two-day meeting about the status of pronghorn research and protection. Hardin-Simmons University biology professor and lizard expert Allan Landwer met June Leland Wildlife Foundation members to verify the presence of the rare Sanddune Lizard in Yoakum County. Members of the Midland Archaeological Society will be joining other Texas Archeological Society members at this year’s field school at Menard in June. The Permian Basin Speleological Society will be headed to the cave on the Clark Ranch in June as well (check out www.pbss.org for more information.)
If you want to do something new and different, join the Sibley Nature Center! We can help find an outdoor adventure perfect for you!