Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Backroads of Crockett County
April 30, 2003

It is possible to get lost on Crockett County roads. My parents and I learned the hard way, years ago. We were birdwatching on the Sheffield Audubon Christmas Count. The sky was featureless with a gray low overcast laden with moisture. A wind gave a chill to the air, while the humidity created a sense of early spring atmosphere.

After going 80 miles straight south of Midland on Highway 349, western Crockett County is just to the east of Iraan and Sheffield. In summer, varied buntings, though hard to find, offer a touch of the Big Bend ecosystems close to home. In secluded south facing slopes of the mesas Big Bend plants such as leatherstem and guayacan can be found.

At Iraan, go across the Pecos River bridge and take the first gravel road to the south. This road snakes along the base of the mesas, and affords several glimpses of the river. About three miles north of Interstate 10, mesa and river meet. Huge tilted slabs of rock separate the two, with steep slopes above. For years the landowner there allowed picnickers, as another did 10 miles to the southeast along Live Oak Creek. Recently a naturalist friend reported being asked politely to not step off the county road. In recent years, people have left huge fires burning, littered the ground with shards of broken beer bottles, trash, and improperly buried human waste, so what was once were long-time Stockton Plateau gathering places are no more.

“Point of Rocks,” as we called it, is a great place to see a Green Kingfisher, originally a species from northern Mexico and the lower Rio Grande, which emigrated up the Pecos in the 1960’s. My mom’s records from the 1950’s have no mention of their presence, but by the mid-1960’s the tiny iridescent dark green birds zoomed up and down the river year around. Perched on favorite snags, they wait for fish to swim under them, then they plunge in a blur straight down to totally submerge and then pop up, wings frantically struggling to shed the weight of the water as they return to the snag.

After the drought of the 1950’s cedar (juniper) increased exponentially in the region, coming down from the rocky mesa cliffs to the open pastureland. The junipers began mixing with the live oak groves that are spotted throughout the region in the deep soil of old river terraces. After thirty years, the habitat changed enough that the endangered black-capped vireo established numerous breeding territories in the canyons. It took a while for the change, for my mom did not find any black capped vireos until the 1980’s.

Normally the vireo prefers the mix of juniper and oak, but this western population has added a refinement to its behavior – they utilize seepwillows, unlike other populations of vireos who do not. Seepwillows increased exponentially in the two decades after a big flood in the early 1950’s stripped the draw bottoms of vegetation and left miles of dry gravel streambeds. The seepwillows are multi-trunked shrubs to fifteen feet and can grow together into a strongly scented jungle.

For amateur naturalists, the region has much to offer. Lancaster Hill (a few miles east of the river on the old Ozona highway) is also recognized as a biological site of interest, with Gray Vireos found nesting there in the early 1990’s, and the discovery of rare plants such as Texas snowbells. Throughout the region, beautiful native plants, such as Texas sage, Mexican redbud, desert willow, whitebrush, beebrush, and Texas mountain laurel give the xeriscape aficionado excellent points of reference for understanding their ornamental possibilities. No matter a person’s specific “ology” interest, a naturalist can spend countless days there, exploring and learning.

This brings us back to the story of getting lost. The morning had started off well, with seventy-five species of birds revealing themselves by noon. One of the grandest sights was at a stop below a perfect ten-acre bowl of cedar trees at the head of a draw under a mesa top. We “cheat” to find birds in the winter – we play a recording of screech owls screaming and of the late Alaska ornithologist Peter Islieb “spishing” (making loud “hurt prey” squeaks by kissing one’s hand), which makes birds come look for the predator to “mob” it. We do not use the technique in nesting season. Within three or four minutes of starting the tape, robins began dropping into the valley in search of the owl. For thirty minutes over 500 of the plump red-bellies gathered around us.

After lunch, we cruised the roads, stopping at every stocktank and thickly vegetated drawbottom or mesa slope. My mom and I hiked an hour that afternoon at a grove of live oaks where the Midland Naturalists had gained permission from a Midland-based landowner.

The roads snake around the mesas, going up and over them, running into oilfield roads every mile or two. A number of the gravel roads are open-range, without fenced right of ways. Late in the afternoon, the low clouds lowered and fog reduced the visibility to a hundred yards. When we left the Live Oak Creek road we turned right instead of left (which would have put us on the Iraan to Eldorado highway). Instead we unknowingly ended up on the Hoover Divide road up on a featureless mesa top sparsely vegetated with mesquite and cedar. We kept expecting to find the highway, and even stopped to discuss the possibility of a wrong turn.

My dad swore up and down that we were on the right road and going the right direction. My mom and I were not sure, and despite our misgivings decided to trust my dad’s “frontiersman” memory of landmarks. Too many times we had seen him take us back to a place after not visiting it for years, and listened to his description of the scenery of the destination on the way to it. Several more miles slowly drifted by, the pickup bouncing on corduroy bumps caused by heavy oil field vehicles. My mom finally told my dad to stop again – “we are lost – I know we are out of the count circle, I just know it.”

My dad hemmed and hawed. While they discussed the matter, I got out and starting walking around, looking at the vegetation. After a minute or two, I realized I heard big trucks on a highway, just a little ways away. I came back and reported, so we continued on, and sure enough, two miles later came out on the old Sheffield to Ozona highway – (I-10 was still two decades in the future). We promptly identified our location, thanks to a highway sign. We were 15 miles southeast of where we had hoped to be. We had been going south, not north.

My poor father – for the remaining thirty years of his life, we never let him forget we remembered the time we got lost.