Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Drought

Lessons for humans from the drought
January 30, 2000

Stimulated by our recent rain of six-tenth’s inch and the ensueing foggy mornings, hopes, illusions, dreams, and fantasies are rampant. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this year was a wet one? Can you imagine two or more inches of rain every month of the year?

After suffering years of drought, a foggy morning moves a person to slide a hand over dew-covered metal and to pat the moisture onto the face. Such behavior may seem strange, but, hopefully, no stranger than this: attempting to squeeze moisture from leaves mulching the ground. Drought-stricken people need to touch moisture, to revel in the softness of humid, foggy air, and to delight in shoes drenched by dew-covered grass.

The winds of early winter sandstorms scoured the soil between yucca clump and mesquite trunk, leaving a warty, bumpy hardpan. Awakened by our January rain, the new growth of wild onions broke through that concrete-hard crust. Chunks of soil were lifted and split into flakes by the pressure. In a wet winter, soil swells with moisture, and new growth tills the ground.

This winter’s mild temperatures have not yet frozen back all of last year’s growth. Plants in protected areas are still sending forth blooms and growth. At the Gone Native Arboretum, a Pink Desert Mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) offers a dozen blooms daily, not far from a yellow Angelina 4-nerved Daisy (Hymenoxys acaulis). A Chuparosa Beleperone (Justicia californica) with orange tubular blossoms adorns another south facing wall. In the Arboretum’s irrigated areas, some perennial plants are forming green rosettes two months before they usually appear.

In the Arboretum’s non-irrigated pasture, Spiny Yellow Aster, Paper Daisy, Rabbit Tobacco and White Sleepy Daisy are the only plants which have shown signs of life before the tidbit of rain we received this month. No annual wildflower rosettes have been visible anywhere. Emerging onions represent only a faint hope for wetter, greener days.

“There are no winter weeds,” a West Texas rancher would say, as he or she grits teeth and sets shoulders in determination, forecasting yet another season of feeding what few stock remain after six years of drought.

“Townfolk are lucky. Drought is torture – slow, and infinitely painful, torture. Another sunny day is pleasant for most people. But for us, it is another brick added to the load on our backs. A person becomes old before their time, worrying about livestock, family, and land. Will the ranch survive? It is gut-wrenching to drive past places where grass was belly-deep to a horse just a few years ago and to now see bare hardpan. It wasn’t our fault. That bluestem died after four years drought. Then, another two years of drought has caused the stalks to crumble, turn to dust, and finally blow away.” Ranch owners and managers have suffered unheard and unnoticed. It is their way – not to complain or draw attention to themselves.

“When will the drought end? We pray every night. We started praying every morning, too, last year. Now, we pray at noon during the dinner break. We have faith it will end. The ‘50s drought ended after seven years. Drought forces a dialog with a force greater than humans. Drought becomes personal if a person’s livelihood comes from the land.”

“It is a cliché that being tied to the land deepens a sense of spirituality. People assume it is because a country person sees beautiful mornings, beautiful animals, beautiful wildflowers, and beautiful scenes of a bucolic Arcadia that enriches the soul. Until a person endures a drought, it is impossible to know how the land can touch a person’s soul. The world’s major religions began in areas prone to drought. That fact is no surprise to a country person enduring a drought.”

“Water wells are pumping less water, and the water is saltier and gyppier. That is not a function of the drought. That is a function of time. Groundwater on the Llano Estacado is fossil water, and only a small percentage of rainfall ever makes it to the aquifer to replenish it. With only a well or two per section, a ranch does not use up the groundwater within a lifetime, as has happened in some housing developments in West Texas. If we have a good rainy season, we ranchers will be back in business, as we have been the last hundred and twenty years, and will be the next hundred years.”