Essays

Moseying: Outdoor Recreation Activities

Daytripping by the flip of a coin
December 8, 2004

“Let’s go moseying, sweetie – and let’s do it randomly, by chance.”

My wife Deborah raised an eyebrow – “What do you mean?”

“At every junction let’s flip a coin to decide which way to go.” And that is what we did. At places with two choices, the technique worked fine – but at a crossroads we had to flip twice. The first time was to see if we turned or went straight ahead, and the second time, if needed, told us which way to go.

I wanted to go out in the country, so at first we passed side roads until our way lead us on FM 715 at its southern end. Monahans Draw crosses the road, and with all the rain, the draw is running with water. Rain falling in Odessa drains into the draw, which runs parallel (a few miles south) of I-20. It takes a lot of rain to have it run as far as FM 715.. On October 27th the area looked like a swamp. Just past the south edge of the salt cedars choking the draw, Deborah hollered for me to stop, so I pulled off on the shoulder. She was bouncing in the seat and hollering, “Look!Look!”

Seven hundred sandhill cranes stood in or near the shallow water covering a part of an old CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) field. Two hundred of the cranes were in the water, poking their beaks into the goo, hunched over like old ladies in gray dresses. Their red caps glowed in the sun when they turned toward the road. The rest were spread along the edge of the salt cedar and up the slope in the direction of a pumpjack. The ones in the water were as close as 100 feet.

Deborah “rolled down” the window (pressed the button), so we could hear their wonderful voices. Deborah grabbed her cell phone. “Call JoAnn Merritt. She will want to know about them, and about all the sandpipers poking in the mud, too.” JoAnn was one of my late mother’s best friends, and is one of the most optimistic, cheerful, full-of-life ladies in the world, and is one of the most active (going to the field) of Midland’s 25 active amateur naturalists (known as Midnats.) Until recently, she did programs for the Sibley Nature Center, developing three wonderful shows on butterflies, horny toads, and wildflowers that she took to the local schools and garden clubs. She was not at home, so I left a message. (The Midnats need feederwatchers for their Christmas Bird Count on January 1st – so if you want to keep a list that day, call Sibley at 6.30 p.m. on that day with your list. The birders will be busy totaling up at that time. If you want to join one of the field teams give me a holler and I will give you a phone number to call.)

Chance led us down the Salt Lake road towards Midkiff. Past that salt playa we decided to stop to take a look at some dodder. A half dozen people have called the Sibley Nature Center this year wanting to know the name of “that bunch of yellow string crawling over plants alongside the road.” Deborah had grabbed our collection of southwestern medicinal plant identification books that we always carry in the car when she first saw it, and after asking me the Latin name, found it in several of the books.

“Should we have it at Gone Native?” Gone Native is our garden of 700+ species of drought adapted and medicinal plants. “Or will it become a pest, since it is a parasite?” She had reason to worry, for at times it can severely stunt the plants to which it becomes attached. I told her it was within a few hundred yards of the property along the county road, and might appear on the property on its own. “But what the heck, let’s test out the old folk tale.” I pulled over on the shoulder, again.

Dodder was once known as lovevine, for a young person in the “old days” of settlement throughout the southern and western United States used to pick a handful of the plant and toss it over their shoulder. If the strands attached to a plant and survived, that meant their sweetheart really loved them and they should marry. I hopped out and gathered enough to fill a small plastic jar like those I use at Sibley with children catching insects. (If your child has been to Sibley – ask them about the activity!)

A number of small clay playas can be seen from the Salt Lake road, and each had some water. Not much water, but some, easily seen sparkling among the plants that like that specific habitat. Johnson Draw had a big pool of water, too. “We have not these pools of water since the big April 2000 rain, when five thunderheads in four hours dumped over 10 inches of rain in this section of the county.” In each we could see a few dabbling ducks gone tipsy-turvy, feeding on plant roots and fairy shrimp, heads under water and tails to the sky.

The pastures were full of the winter rosettes of wildflowers, promising us a wonderful wildflower spring in 2005. We spotted a flock of wintering lark buntings. For years, Midland’s annual Audubon Christmas Bird Count would get the nation’s high count of the species, but in recent years our wintering population has dropped drastically. Perched on a mesquite above a big clump of horehound surrounded by beautiful golden wild zinnia I spotted a Sage Thrasher, an uncommon winter visitor in west Texas. We found a Harris's Hawk, too, which made me happy, for with the drought and poor rabbit production, their numbers dropped in the 1990s.

All by chance we circled the southeast part of the county. Busily talking about our sightings, we missed the “Blue Barns” road (at Midland’s sewage farm.) We went on to Sprayberry, but after turning at several junctions just to the west, the flip of the coin caused us to circle back the way we had come, and by chance, we went down the Blue Barns road. It was if we had been “supposed to” go down the road. We were cackling about such “predestination” as we crept down the road watching birds fly. As we idled down the Blue Barns road, a winter flicker undulated across the road, and a Say’s Phoebe diving into a mesquite thicket brought us to a stop. We grabbed our cooler and stood at the hood of the car and had a picnic lunch. Not far from us a pool of water had several hundred ducks, including a handful of Pintail Ducks, another species whose national population has dropped in recent years. A pair of dragonflies hooked together zoomed by – mating dragonflies in late November – how unusual!

We could hear more Sandhill Cranes, but could not see them – they were just out of visual range above us – but finally, they magically appeared in the range of our eyes. Three deer ambled across the road, and then jumped a fence on a ridge along the road – jumping six feet or more in delightful grace. As we finally started the car, the Say's Phoebe came to a mesquite near us. Another quarter mile down the road, a rattlesnake, its head and upper body smashed flat, lay writhing. A dead rattler can twitch for an hour, you know.

The flip of the coin led us to Stephenson’s Corner. JoAnn had gone to the country school there as a child, but the building is long gone. We idled along the wrong side of the gravel road, looking for the only Midland County population of a species of artemisia. I had decided I wanted to dig up another clump of it, for it has proven to be a wonderful gray ground cover for the xeriscape landscape. We could not find it on our first pass, but the flip of the coin led us back down the road again, and this time we did find it. I grabbed my spade and plastic pots we keep in the car and dug up four of them, leaving plenty.

Chance led us back to the Monahan’s Draw crossing on FM 715 again, after we spotted two coyotes sprinting across the road. 1200 cranes stood in the field this time. Wow! What a day!