Sweet Relief

It's drizzly, breezy, and cool this morning in North Texas, after a dry, blistering August. Rain fell most of yesterday. Just after sunrise I heard the distant popping of hunters shooting at, and probably missing, the few resident mourning doves that didn't head south when the cool front arrived. No worry. Migrants from Oklahoma and Kansas will arrive in a few weeks.

Cate and Maggs are soaking wet and feeling fine, treeing backyard squirrels, barking through the wrought iron fence at cottontails in the neighbors' yards. For the first time since May, I can imagine following a dog through the woods or across prairie.

Looking out my office window at drizzle falling on erstwhile prairie reminds me of the effect of rain on Blackland clay. Which, in turn, reminds me of this little Corb Lund tune:

It's Getting Colder

My Blackland Prairie piece, published in the February issue of Texas Parks & Wildlife, is now online. Meanwhile, even in our current recession or economic downturn or whatever it is, subdivisions and strip malls continue to crawl over the North Texas Prairie and creek bottoms. Where are all of these people coming from? What happens to the homes they're leaving? My part of Plano is full of empty strip malls.

I've been thinking a lot about Matt's recent post about "letting the cold in." That idea has stuck with me since I first encountered it more than twenty years ago in Vance Bourjaily's The Unnatural Enemy.

Warm spots are getting awfully scarce in northcentral Texas.

Prairie Remnants

I spent a morning last week exploring a small parcel of unplowed Blackland Prairie with Matt White,author of Prairie Time: A Blackland Portrait and Birds of Northeast Texas.

I've lived in the Blacklands, in the Dallas area, for the past 25 years, but this was the first time I had ever seen virgin Blackland Prairie. I've seen many working pastures with little bluestem and and other natives that provide decent habitat for grassland birds, but nothing like this.

Unplowed Blackland Prairie is far and away the most endangered habitat in Texas if not all of North America. Of the original 12 million acres, only about 5,000 remain, mostly in the form of small patches on private land. This particular patch survived only because it was set aside as a hay meadow and was spared the plow. Even when the cotton and corn crop failed, you could feed yourself and your family on a piece of prairie with a milk cow and a few hogs or other livestock. Matt had an interesting theory on these remnants. He said, "The very best of the old Blackland farmers had a practical conservation ethic that's rare today. They knew that they had to plan for contingencies because they couldn't just run out and buy whatever they needed, like we can today."

Prairie Rose - Blooms April-July

Blue Sage

Gayfeather

Chest-High Big Bluestem

In 1848, upon arriving at the edge of the Blackland Prairie, Dr. John Brooke, an emigrant from England, wrote,

“It was the finest sight I ever saw; immense meadows 2 or 3 feet deep of fine grass and flowers. Such beautiful colours I never saw…”

Later, after settling in Grayson County near the northern edge of the Blackland Prairie, he wrote,

“I can sit on my porch before my door and see miles of the most beautiful Prairie interwoven with groves of timber, surpassing, in my idea, the beauties of the sea. Think of seeing a tract of land on a slight incline covered with flowers and rich meadow grass for 12 to 20 miles…”

Keep that in mind if you ever drive through the Dallas area.

I just finished a feature article on the Blacklands for Texas Parks & Wildlife. I believe it's scheduled for the February issue. It was interesting, worthwhile work but very depressing.