Essays

Moseying: Living La Vida Llanero

On May 10th, learn about the Chihuahuan Desert and buy ornamental native plants
May 7, 2008

Each bioregion needs a facility to promote public awareness, appreciation, and concern for the natural and historical diversity. The Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute (CDRI) was created in 1974 to teach visitors and residents of West Texas about the Chihuahuan Desert. In 1978 they purchased 507 acres south of Fort Davis, and today have a wonderful visitor’s center, mining display, arboreteum, and great hiking trails. Despite the involvement of a number of Midlanders as members of the organization, the CDRI is not well known here. Under Executive Director Dr. Cathy Hoyt’s guidance and the addition of a lively enthusiastic staff, the Institute has been developing many new projects. Education Director James Saunders will present a program May 10th at 1.30 p.m. at the Sibley Nature Center about the special places, plants, and animals of the Chihuahuan Desert and its sky islands.

Mr. Saunders grew up outside of Austin, on the shores of Lake Travis. He graduated from UT at Austin with a degree in zoology and worked for a number of years doing research on the Red Imported Fire Ant. He then went back to school and received his teaching certification and taught High School Biology in Austin, then taught middle school in South Texas for three years. In October, he and his wife, now a lawyer for Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, moved to Alpine.

“I like the wide open spaces and the vistas that go on for miles. Until I came out here, I didn’t realize that there were places left where you could go and not hear traffic noise or see light pollution. I started coming out here at least once a year during my freshman year in college. I came out here originally to hike in Big Bend and kept coming back. What really impresses me the most about West Texas is the geography and biological diversity of the region. I was expecting “desert”- empty, dusty, dry, hot. I quickly realized that I had been living under a misconception about what it really was like out here.”

“People make the CDRI special. Both the people I see on a daily basis, which includes my coworkers and the local teachers and students who come here for educational programs. But it also includes the visitors we get here from all over the world. And most of them have the same reaction I did the first time I came out here: “I had no idea. I thought it was just a desert.” My favorite place may just be on my back porch, where I can watch hummingbirds visit the blooming cacti, or listen to owls calling to each other at night, or count shooting stars. My favorite animal and plant changes on a pretty regular basis. Right now, I am particularly fond of coyotes, because I like to listen to them yipping to each other early in the morning before the sun comes up.”

Earlier in the morning, beginning at 10.00 a.m., Steve Lewis of Mertzon’s Native Ornamentals Nursery and Austin Barber of Colorado City’s Green Man Nursery will sell drought adapted plants for your garden. Many of the plants are native to the Chihuahuan Desert, including the Davis and Chisos Mountains.

I interviewed Steve and Valorie Lewis as we planned out the plant sale. “We began Native Ornamentals Nursery in 1986. As a young couple in the 1980s we learned about a kind of landscaping called Xeriscaping and wanted to be part of the “Common Sense” that xeriscaping is all about. We both love growing things. We both love learning about west Texas, past and present, especially west Texas plants. We decided to grow the plants that we love, hoping others would share our interest in and admiration of west Texas plants.”

“Steve’s favorite plant is Pinyon Pine—beautiful evergreen trees with fragrant leaves and sap, that makes aromatic firewood, and has edible nuts that were an important food source to the native Americans. My favorite is Algerita. I always remember riding my bicycle as a child and being enveloped in waves of the fragrance of the bright yellow algerita flowers and spending afternoons picking and eating the berries.”

“Our biggest difficulty was in May 1996, when after ten years of growing, with a nursery building full of really nice plants, we had a hail storm. Twenty minutes of golf ball to grapefruit size, solid ice hailstones that were knee deep when the storm was over. There was nothing but the pipe frame left of our nursery building. Almost all of our nursery stock was destroyed. We salvaged maybe 10 per cent of our inventory. We had to ask ourselves if we even wanted to rebuild. The nursery was such a part of us that we had to rebuild. We are both west Texans—Steve was born in Ft. Stockton, Texas, and has fond memories of his childhood in the oilfield camps of west Texas and fishing trips to the lower Pecos river area. My family has ranched in Mertzon for four generations.”

Austin Barber studied greenhouse horticulture at West Texas A&M. “I'm a certified master gardener and master composter (Hooray for thermophilic microorganisms!) Besides growing plants I teach a rare traditional tribal combative art (Penchak Silat) from West Sumatra in Indonesia. My favorite plant is feather dalea, because it can grow in a crack in the sidewalk and still bloom. Learning to grow algerita from seed was a challenge, but now I have great success. Feather dalea was difficult until I learned to put ground up limestone in the potting mix. Anyone that thinks I have a green thumb just does not know how many plants I’ve killed!”

“I speak to lots of different garden clubs, women’s groups, and other civic groups and nowadays it seems many more people are more open to it. People now believe it is the right thing to do morally and socially – because it saves our most precious resource – water. More and more people now think it is okay to believe the plants around us are beautiful.”

“I was born in Waco, but moved to the family ranch when I was two. I grew up riding horseback, hiking and camping. When I was around eleven, my cousin, a friend, and I wondered what it was like living on the river hundreds of years ago. When we camped we tried to find what the land had to offer and ate lote berries, algerita berries, prickly pear tuna, soft-shell turtles and fish and sometimes cottontail rabbits. We nearly starved! We decided you would have been tough to call this home back then.”