Essays

Moseying: Outdoor Recreation Activities

Observing the landscape from 30,000 feet
June 1, 2005

“Don’t go telling me you can identify wildflowers from an airplane!” teased Sharla Hotchkiss. She and I were walking down the loading ramp to a plane so we could fly to Austin on May 23rd to judge projects for Keep Texas Beautiful awards. I had just told her I always get a window seat so I can look out.

“No, but I like to try to figure out what we are above, to look at the landscape patterns – the drainage patterns of the watersheds, the bands of different colored soil, the bands of rock ledges in hilly country, and the patterns of human use of the land.” I had never flown to Austin before, so I was excited the skies were clear. Well, sort of clear – there was definitely a haze in the air, and some of it was the ever-present layer of smog that covers the world in these modern times. A person can always see a brownish tint when in a plane at 30,000 feet.

Sharla sat with Rosie Lopez, the executive director of Keep Odessa Beautiful, and chatted merrily all the way to Austin. I got a crook in my neck peering down. As the plane banked east and we reached higher altitudes, I thought of a similar perspective to which I had recently been introduced. Earlier in the spring, while giving a College Classics course on the Llano Estacado at Midland College, one of my students had gotten us into a room with computer projection and showed us a site where we could look at satellite photographs. Many of the satellite images we could zoom in for closer examination.

“It is hard to believe there is a location for a new oil well anywhere in west Texas,” I later told my wife Deborah. “So much of the landscape has wells spaced equidistant – I saw hundreds of square miles with an almost perfect grid of service roads and well pads.” After giving me a hard time about my use of the word equidistant, Deborah noted that the company that she works for does as much reworking of old oil wells as it does drilling new wells.

From 30,000 feet the landscape seems filled, but then I thought of a murder case where the victim’s remains were unnoticed for several years within a few hundred feet of one of those service roads. The landscape may seem “tamed,” or even dominated by the hand of man, but much of the area between the roads rarely is underfoot to a human.

Very few animals cannot adapt to those conditions. In Wyoming some researchers are trying to determine how pronghorn antelope react to a developing oil field after behavioral changes were noticed and concerns were raised. I still see dozens of pronghorn in eastern New Mexico in the oilfields. A couple of years ago Chris Scharbauer told me that the population on the Scharbauer ranch south of I-20 had declined in recent years, but felt that it was more from the effects of drought than any other cause. Javelina, deer, porcupine, ringtail, and even mountain lion have moved onto Midland County ranchland in the past two decades, so they must not be “terribly disturbed” by the oilfield grid.

As we passed over southern Midland and Glasscock Counties I picked out the watershed of Centralia Draw. The patterns of rockier and shallower soils formed regular bands of “fractal patterns” like the lobes of oak leaves. As we neared the mesas along the north Concho, the patterns stood out in even more detail. (On the way home later that day, I was amazed to notice that those same patterns were still visible on the surface of the southern Llano Estacado in the Sprayberry area, on land with no discernible relief.)

As an avid amateur botanist I noted certain areas that might have a more diverse or different plant community than the surrounding landscape. At such places I often find plants “out of range,” fifty to a hundred miles further east or west from where they are common. I have found creosote bush east of the Colorado River, for example, and mountain laurel as far north as Howard County, in such areas. Such places that harbor such “relict” populations illustrate varying facets of ecological history. That easternmost creosote bush population reveals that sometime in the distant past the region was much drier and hotter than it is now, while the mountain laurel indicates that Indians must have transported the seed. I noticed a southfacing cliff face just west of the mouth of Centralia Draw that intrigued me. I would love to examine it someday! I might find the western most population of some Central Texas plant there, or a species brought by Indians who used it for protection from the cold blasts of winter.
Brush control was easy to spot as the plane sped along. In a number of places, strips of mesquite and other brush had been removed, while on other ranches, all of the landscape had much less brush. Mesquite and cedar (juniper) have spread away from their original habitats (mesquite along the draws and cedar from rocky steep slopes) with the control of fire and prairie dogs. The brush sucks up groundwater, drying up streams, and limits grass for cattle, so brush control is a constant battle for ranchers. David Bamberger’s Selah Ranch near Johnson City is a sterling example of the benefits of brush control, renown nationwide in the conservation community – check out the Selah Ranch website!

The western hill country (from Christoval to Fredericksburg) is remarkably “empty” of much evidence of human use of the land. The area is sparsely settled and there are few oil wells. Even ranch roads seemed to be few and far between, although at 30,000 feet I might not have been able to spot the two tire-lane tracks. Unlike the eastern hill country near Austin with its plethora of “ranchitos” of retired folks wishing to live removed from the urban hustle and bustle, the western reaches of the Edwards Plateau remains in the hands of ranchers. (Coming back, however, I was amazed at how much of the region north of the Colorado River was under cultivation (or in the Conservation Reserve Program, with old farms turned back to grassland.)

I did identify some wildflowers from the air! As we landed in Austin, pink evening primrose, phlox, and engelmann daisy were identifiable before the wheels of the plane touched ground. It made me wonder if at the peak of the wildflower season in April if I would have been able to see (from 30,000 feet) the incredible swatches of color that carpeted so much of the west Texas landscape.