Getting to Know the Place

Wendell Berry urges us to know the land. He means by that a particular piece of property. What has Nature been doing here? What does Nature permit here? In what will Nature assist here? What would violate Nature in this place? I have been getting to know this particular place for more than fifty years. I walked these fields as a child, played in the sand, chunked the red sandstone rocks at prickly pear cacti, avoided rattlesnakes, scorpions, and tarantulas, and shot .22 rounds at tin cans on fence posts. In the last three or so I have focused my efforts at knowing the place around the soil, the weather, and the wildlife.

Sunday morning began like Saturday – dark and cool (though warmer and damper than the day before). I was a bit stiff from the work on Saturday. Melinda prepared scrambled eggs and toast to go with our coffee. Lance and Andi were sleeping in. After breakfast we retired to our separate corners to read. I opened the Book of Common Prayer to the Daily Office Lectionary and identified the readings for the day – Psalm 8, 24, 29, 84, 1 Corinthians 12, and Matthew 18. When I’m at the farm I read from a New Revised Standard Version Bible I keep there alongside my BCP. At home, I read from the New English Bible these days. This was part of my worship this Reformation Sunday morning.

Lance and Andi were stirring and Melinda was back with Hopkins, so I put on some walking shoes and went out into the beauty of another Fall morning. I cleaned up some loose branches I’d neglected to pick up the day before, took a rake to some gopher mounds in the yard and leveled them out, and then walked into the mesquite woods next to our property to look at what used to be a stock pond (in Texas that’s called a “tank.”) It is dry now and belongs to my neighbor. Although it once held water, it would take some major bull dozier work to remove the trees that fill it now and restore it. I walked the perimeter of the field beside our house, first parallel to the road along the fence covered with Muscadine grapevines, then left along the fence line that separates our property from the Jung’s place, then left again along the back fence line until I came to the snake-like berm that winds through the fields, directing the flow of rainwater to the old tank. Then I walked atop the berm, covered with thick Bermuda grass, back to the house.

Along the way I stepped through the cleared circles, six feet or so in diameter, created by the hard working red harvester ants. These insects were around here when I was a child, but the imported fire ants practically eliminated them. I was glad to see them back. Since the red harvester ants were a primary food source for the Texas Horned Lizard (horned toad, or for you TCU people, horned frog), that critter has declined in about 30% of its native habitat. We don’t see them around here any more.

After lunch we four spent a bit of time identifying various butterflies, spiders, moths, and birds around the place. We saw a yellow garden spider, one of the few left this season. They were prolific all summer. A little hairy, green-eyed jumping spider walked across the ceiling of the front porch. A Black Widow protected her egg sac under the eave in the back of the house. We saw butterflies: a Monarch, a yellow Clouded Sulphur, an Alfalfa butterfly, a Goat Weed, a Spicebush Swallowtail, and a Giant Swallowtail. We think we identified one of the many black hairy caterpillars on the place as that of a Giant Tiger Moth or a Giant Leopard Moth. Not really sure about that. Our resident Texas Rat Snake had left his three and a half foot shed skin hanging on the lower branch of the oak tree in the back yard. Mexican Eagles, Turkey Vultures, Red-tailed Hawks, and an American Kestrel patrolled the fields from above.

In an effort to know this place, I have acquired a stack of field guides. I want to know, as best I can, the name of every species of mammal, spider, scorpion, insect, bird, tree, and grass on the place. I want to know the names of the six or eight different soil types that make up the land. I want to recognize constellations in the clear, dark South Texas sky. That’s a goal of mine I am working on. Being married to a curious amateur naturalist helps a lot.

Sharon came over from across the road. She’s Herb’s mother. I suspect she may get lonely living out here. Whenever she sees our vehicles at the house she comes over for a visit. Sometime she brings vegetables or homemade tamales. This time she just brought the lens cap to a camera one of our friends had lost up here this spring. Sharon stood for an hour on the front porch, refusing to take the chair we offered, and talked of gardening, pests, rain, drought, and plans for the future. This is part of getting to know the place as well. Sharon, with her Germanic-Texas accent, describing her efforts at growing tomatoes is part of this place as well.

I suspect that my full acquaintance with these 88 acres may take a while. There is much to know.