Essays

Moseying: Locations of Interest

Borden County
August 10, 2005

“There is a second roadrunner in that salt cedar!” Deborah spotted it before I did. One roadrunner had just hopped up from the rainwater puddle below the culvert of the crossing of the Gold Creek fork of the Colorado River. We had seen one of the roadrunners thirty minutes before, as we tried to negotiate our way in the maze of oil field roads in a valley at the edge of the Llano Estacado on the border of Dawson and Borden Counties. The “Roads of Texas” map showed Borden County road 224 connecting with Dawson County road “V”, but neither county had spent money for road signs in such a remote area.

After deciding we had missed the county roads and gotten off on a private ranch road, we turned around, to return to SH 1054, having accomplished our goal of reaching the juniper shadowed cliffs of the Caprock Escarpment. As we watched, both roadrunners dropped onto the road and headed away from us. I eased off of the brake, and the car rolled slowly towards the roadrunners. One trotted down the middle of the road, but the other roadrunner scampered into the isolated half-acre population of sand sage on the south side of the draw.

“Why did one pull a vanishing act, while the other stayed visibly obvious?” I pulled to a stop next to the visible roadrunner as he clambered up into a mesquite. “We have now seen at least a dozen roadrunners here in Borden County. It is a roadrunner day – starting with the roadrunner at our gate as we left home.” (We saw over twenty roadrunners by the end of the day.)

Roadrunners are very special birds for us – Magoosh the roadrunner had befriended us years ago, accompanying us on walks, sitting with us in our garden, and showing us foxes and snakes (by making the roadrunner BRRRRT sound over and over until we came). After his death on the county road, we had begun collecting roadrunner images for ornamentation in the house and garden, and Deborah now has several pieces of roadrunner jewelry.

“Was the first roadrunner trying to catch that leopard frog?” As we had crossed the culvert, Deborah noticed the frog that had not moved in thirty minutes. I picked up my camera and photographed the bird on his perch. “I don’t know, but they are omnivorous,” I answered. The bird sat motionless, except for blinking his eyes, with his beak open in a gape – gaping is a bird’s version of sweating or panting to rid the body of excess body heat. We turned to look for the other roadrunner, checking the early afternoon shadows of the sand sage. Even though we looked for the second bird for a few minutes, it refused to reveal itself.

Only 800 people live in Borden County. In five hours of moseying down its roads we saw fewer passing cars than we saw roadrunners. The Colorado River becomes a living stream in Borden County, south of Mushaway Peak below the confluence of Tobacco Creek, Wolf Creek, Plum Creek, Rattlesnake Creek, Grape Creek and several other tributary draws that begin along the caprock. Today the area is little known, a region of large ranching operations and a steady trickle of oil production. To the Comanches and the Apaches before them, however, the Colorado River headwaters were a place of winter bounty and refuge.

The Comanche Indians, after receiving guns from French traders, and after becoming well-adept at hunting and warring from the back of a horse moved south into Texas about 1700. A number of references indicate that the Comanches fought the Apaches of the breaks of the Llano Estacado in a storied nine-day battle in the 1720s. Lipan Apache legends relate that a group of Apaches, led by “Ipa” led part of the Apaches south. The Lipan Apache name for themselves was Ipa-nde, which means “the people of Ipa.” The Apaches had been in the region since the time (if not before) of Coronado (1540s) who had called them “Querechos.”

In the official correspondence of Colonel Ranald Mackenzie during the final days of the wars against the Comanche, his Lipan Apache scouts had said that the region around Muchaque Peak (the original spelling of today’s Mushaway Peak) and the headwaters of the Colorado River was their old homeland. The Lipan Apaches had treatied with the Spanish in San Antonio beginning the mid-1700s, and had even convinced the Spanish to build the San Saba mission so they could have some protection from the Comanches in the 1750s. This would seem to indicate that if the Lipans had long-lasting memories of the region around Muchaque Peak. Their time of residence would have been from the 1720s to the 1750s.

In 1875, J.J. Sturm and three Comanches rode along the eastern edge of the Llano Estacado to deliver Mackenzie’s ultimatum of surrender to the Comanches at Quanah Parker’s camp on Bull Creek near Muchaque Peak. Other references indicate that Comanche groups often used the area for a winter camp. Another indication of its importance is the fact that Comancheros from northern New Mexico built a dugout trading post in the region during the years of the 1860s and 1870s to receive Texas cattle stolen by Comanches.

I am drawn to Borden County by its history, and by its “emptiness.” As we topped each rise along the roads, the wide-open vistas of rangeland stretched before us. Subtracting the oil wells, fences, and electric lines, the countryside looks much as it always has. Salt cedar now grows along the arroyos, mesquite has spread up and out of the draws, and a few ranch houses are scattered about, but a sense of timelessness comes easily to the mind. Pronghorn and deer can still be seen, and this year coveys of quail scattered before us every mile or two. Cattle have replaced the buffalo. The sight of a pair of horses dozing under a mesquite brought to mind the sizable Comanche horse herds (their marker of wealth).

“I can see why the Comanches loved this area,” Deborah said in the late afternoon, as we walked over the bridge at the crossing of the Colorado River on the Willow Valley road. Cottonwoods and black willows lined the watercourse. “That big old black Angus bull is almost as big as a buffalo – I did a double take.” The pilings to an older bridge at the crossing added to the historical aura of the site. Small prickly pear grew on the bridge beneath our feet, another detail inducing the awareness of passed time.

In the trees we heard the chittering babble of scissortail flycatchers. “The rain this year has been so good for wildlife. We have not seen a summer so green in such a long time.” I hugged Deborah, about as happy as a boy can be. “I have been amazed at the number of the scissortails we have seen today,” I added, pointing in their direction with my chin.

“Fiffertails,” Deborah whispered, as she leaned against me. (Fiffertail was my first spoken word, as I was the child of a birdwatcher.) Lila was quiet, too, leaning against us both, her doggy tail thumping in rhythm with our contentment. “What an utterly beautiful day, and what a magical day of roadrunners.” (Later, when we got home, the roadrunner met us at the gate again!)