A recent mid-August Sunday was the hottest so far in 2024, with a high of 104F. When Kat and I walked up the trail at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve to the sandstone ridge, the stone was quite warm to the touch. Regardless of the day’s heat, we wanted to experience a summer sunset there, and we arrived at the ridge about 8:00pm with the sun still glaring yellow through the leaves of oaks. Those trees grow immediately below the sandstone ridge, a curtain that hides the Fort Worth skyline and offers some shade.
Kat, making a few notes in her journal
We sat on the stone ledge with water bottles and notebooks at our sides. Looking behind where Kat was sitting, there were tall stems of little bluestem reaching above our heads, and with each little breeze they waved as if they were the tops of trees. The breeze was welcome, of course, but for the most part the air was still and with the humidity at 50%, it felt sticky. Turning back to the west, the disk of the sun peeked through branches and leaves in yellow-orange sparkles, as if coming from the facets of a jewel.
The constant nearby traffic sounds dominated, but at 8:10pm a wave of insect calls moved through the area and then stopped. Although at some point the Merlin app picked up the call of a northern cardinal, I could hear no birds. After a few minutes another wave of insect sounds lasted several seconds and then abruptly stopped.
Meanwhile, a pastel yellow sky at the horizon filtered through the trees, silhouetting leaves and branches. I reclined on the still-warm rocks to be able to see the whole field of the pale blue sky, watching for birds or insects and hoping to see the first star become visible. I saw none of those. At 8:26pm the temperature at the ridge was still 92F, with humidity dropping a little. The western horizon was a deeper orange.
Sandstone, little bluestem, and sunlight in the blackjack oak
Behind us, the canopies of blackjack oak were dimly lit by the remaining light from the western horizon, almost glowing with a yellow tint that contrasted a little with the surrounding vegetation. And when we looked lower down in those blackjacks, through bare branches we could see the bright, round full moon rising.
It was about ten minutes later that we could see the first glimmers of a couple of stars. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,” but these tiny bright pinholes in the not-yet-dark heavens did not seem bright. Kat’s younger and more perceptive eyes could soon make out four stars.
Moonrise through the trees (photo by Kat Oliver)
Shortly after that, we started walking back in the relative darkness, much darker under the trees. But in open areas, the full moon had risen higher and provided enough light for walking. When the moon is bright enough to light your way, and you walk along a path just visible, it may bring to mind childhood adventures in back yards or campgrounds. Something about it makes it seem special, a moonlit faery world much different from the bright daylight colors.
And what is the attraction of sitting with the sunset, riding that transition between day and night? The world rides along with us as we notice the settling of birds, the emergence of insects or frogs, the way any clouds transform the last light of the sun. Most days we declare our independence from the rhythm of the Earth, turning on our lights and continuing whatever we are doing while the sun disappears and gives the night to the moon and stars. Sitting outside with the sunset is a way of reconnecting with that rhythm. Through such a connection, perhaps we synchronize ourselves with something important.
It has happened several times – driving out in the grasslands or desert, I pull up on a long, slender snake that sees me before I see it. Perhaps its head and neck periscope up a foot or more for a better look at me. If I get out and creep slowly toward it, the snake keeps a careful watch on my distance and speed. At some point I cross a line in the snake’s calculation of risk, and decides it is time to go. It bursts into agile and athletic motion that carries it unerringly around rocks and through brush piles. In my younger years I sometimes chased but rarely caught them. The only realistic opportunity to catch one was to surprise it, lifting a log or discarded piece of plywood and finding the snake hesitating for a moment.
The western coachwhip seen in 2006 at LBJ National Grasslands
Occasionally I caught a coachwhip when it believed itself to be concealed or camouflaged. I once surprised one on a gravel road in the LBJ National Grasslands, and it quickly slipped off the road. I pulled over and investigated a grassy area where I last saw it and found four feet or so of tan scales blending very well in the dappled sunlight along the ground. I grabbed the snake and then worked to calm its thrashing body so that I could take a photograph. After a short time the snake was calm enough for me to put it on the ground, covering its head and restraining its body just enough so that it did not struggle.
Then it tried a different strategy that suggested some form of death-feigning. Coachwhips have occasionally been described as feigning death to discourage an attacker from continuing whatever it is doing. After all, there is no need to attack a dead snake. This one went limp but turned its head and neck to the side. A hog-nosed snake will flip over in death-feigning, as if the only way to be properly dead is upside-down, and this snake seemed to be doing a much less dramatic version of “playing dead.”
The coachwhip’s headWhen released
I posed the snake in a more normal position, took a couple of photos, and then encouraged it to be on its way. I positioned the snake in something closer to a straight line and backed away. In a moment it came back to itself and took off, crossing back across the road at typical coachwhip speed.
What are coachwhips?
One or another species or subspecies of coachwhip is found all across the southern U.S. In the east, including in parts of east Texas, much or all of the eastern coachwhip’s body may be velvety black. In central and west Texas the subspecies is the western coachwhip, with light brown or tan colors, often with a darker head and neck that may be rusty brown. In parts of their range, some of these coachwhips may have a banded appearance, with long, broad bands of a little darker color alternating with broad lighter bands. In the Trans-Pecos region, some of the western coachwhips are pink or reddish. Traveling with friends, we found one in Big Bend National Park that propelled itself off the road nearly in a blur, and I described it as looking like a snake with the world’s worst sunburn. (We stopped, but never found the snake.) Western coachwhips usually reach four to five-and-a-half feet, sometimes longer. Coachwhips are related to racers and whipsnakes, all of which are active by day, visually alert, and very fast.
Eastern coachwhip seen in the Big Thicket region
The name “coachwhip” comes from the color of the dorsal scales. Each one is light-edged as it emerges from under the previous scale, then becomes darker until it is dark brown along its trailing edge. This highlights the edges of scales, and toward the tail it gives the appearance of a braided whip.
Where do they live and what do they eat?
Coachwhips are, even in East Texas, snakes you expect to see in patches of prairie, openings in woodlands, or rocky hillsides. In the rest of Texas, they are well-adapted to open arid or semi-arid regions where they take advantage of openings beneath rocks, rodent burrows, and such refuges. They are able climbers and may take refuge in shrubs or lower tree branches when escaping predators. Within the Chihuahuan Desert they are seen in dry arroyos and desert flats, with desert shrubs and clumps of cactus offering shelter, along with mammal burrows.
As witnessed recently by my friend Rosealin Delgado, they are able climbers and may take refuge in shrubs or lower tree branches when escaping predators. She was at the edge of a pond at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve and saw one emerge from the water’s edge (where the snake may have been getting a drink), periscope up and take note of her, and then climb up in low trees. The snake watched her for the better part of ten minutes before she left.
The coachwhip’s diet can be quite varied, depending on the prey available where they live. They readily eat lizards, spotting them and chasing them down. In some places they are reported to sit at the base of plants such as mesquite and wait for prey such as a lizard to dart into the shade to cool down. Coachwhips will eat smaller snakes, and they may poke around in crevices or burrows where they may find and eat mice. Around bat caves, coachwhips sometimes find and eat bats that are injured or stranded on the ground. They eat large insects such as lubber grasshoppers.
Having no venom to subdue prey, and not using constriction to kill the mouse or lizard before eating it, the coachwhip relies on strong jaws and a strategy of pinning prey against the ground. After catching a lizard and holding onto it with sharp little recurved teeth and a powerful bite, the snake points its snout toward the ground and pushes its prey against rocks or soil to help prevent escape and then begin swallowing. In our book, Herping Texas, co-author Clint King described watching a western coachwhip catch a Great Plains skink and beat the lizard repeatedly against the ground. Some of this might have been to dislodge the lizard’s biting the snake in a counter-attack, but it also appeared to be to stun or disable the lizard before swallowing it.
Reproduction
Coachwhips mate in the spring, typically in April or May. Within a month, the female lays a clutch of eggs in some place where they will be protected from drying out or overheating, and hopefully where predators will not find them. Such a place might be an abandoned burrow or under a rotting log. By August or September, the brightly marked babies hatch, measuring 12 to 14 inches long according to Werler & Dixon (2000).
Juvenile western coachwhip found by Meghan (photo by Meghan Cassidy)
On a walk at LBJ National Grasslands in September of 2020, my friend Meghan Cassidy found a hatchling coachwhip and she took a number of beautiful photos of this little reptile. As is typical, its eyes were large (as befits an active, visual snake such as this) and it was slender and fast. Its coloration was bright, verging on orange along its neck. There were a number of thin crossbars of darker scales that would likely fade as the snake grew. I described our encounter with this snake in Mindfulness in Texas Nature.
The head and neck of the juvenile coachwhip (photo by Meghan Cassidy)
Human perspectives and tales
No matter what your grandpa told you, a coachwhip is not going to wrap around you and whip you, regardless of its name and appearance. It seems likely that those old stories might have begun when someone caught a coachwhip and its long body wrapped around the person’s arm and, as it thrashed and tried to escape, whipped its tail against its captor.
Fewer people seem to have heard such stories, and we usually think of that as a good thing. After all, we don’t want people believing misinformation such as hoop snakes that roll down a hill and sting you, or milk snakes that will suck the milk from cows in a barn. But I worry that the disappearance of tall tales is not because people today are more savvy, but instead that they have so little contact with nature that there is no experience that would give birth to the tales. Stories about writhing balls or nests of cottonmouths arise when people see something and struggle to understand it, and they fill in missing details with fanciful explanations.
So I hope that you and your friends and family will be out in the field enough that you notice coachwhips and other things in nature, and come up with stories to account for what you saw. Read and listen and learn what you can so that your stories are mostly based on accurate understanding. But I would gladly live in a culture that is connected to nature enough so that we have stories and legends about the natural world, such as the coyote as a mythical trickster or the snake that will whip you.
Smith, M. 2024. Mindfulness in Texas Nature. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Smith, M. & C. King. 2018. Herping Texas: The Quest for Reptiles and Amphibians. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Werler, J.E. & J.R. Dixon. 2000. Texas Snakes: Identification, Distribution, and Natural History. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Yesterday my copies of Mindfulness in Texas Nature arrived. It’s now available through the publisher, Amazon, as well as bookstores. If you can join me tomorrow at Interabang bookstore in Dallas, I will be there at 6pm for discussion and book signing.
Meghan and I have looked forward to this day for a long time. It was the very end of 2019 when I got the go-ahead to write this book, with Meghan on board to be the photographer, and we got started just before the pandemic arrived in 2020. But we began with Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge and kept on traveling as much as we could. Each of those trips was magical as I look back on them. We visited Big Bend, Caddo Lake, LBJ National Grasslands, The Big Thicket, and multiple other places.
Photo from the Big Thicket
Meanwhile, I wrote about mindfulness in nature and how a person might go about practicing it. I discussed the documented benefits of time spent in nature along with the benefits of mindfulness and the related practice of Shinrin-Yoku or “forest bathing.” The lower blood pressure and stress hormones, the boosted immune functioning, the decreases in anxiety and ruminative thinking, and other good things that happen.
Mostly the book consists of narratives of all those trips, the adventures and quiet moments without gadgets or agendas, just being there among all the grasses, woodlands, and wildlife in those wonderful places. What I wrote brings those days back, and Meghan’s photos make them even more vivid.
Pedernales River
Our trips were done and the manuscript completed by late 2021, and now the book is here. I think readers will feel some of what we felt in those trips and get ideas about “ways to be fully present … freed from the distractions and restlessness that can let the sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations slip past us before we really notice” (Introduction, p. 1).
Mindfulness in Texas Nature, 2024, Texas A&M University Press
I just got back from a couple of days in the Rolling Plains with three wonderful friends. We saw Texas horned lizards, snakes, and a beautiful springtime landscape out there past the city of Vernon. This note is a “heads up” that my friends and I plan to collaborate on the story of our visits to Copper Breaks State Park and Matador Wildlife Management Area. Stay tuned and consider subscribing to Rain Lilies on Substack.
Texas horned lizard
Road trips alone are OK, and there can be a wonderful quality to solitude out in some natural place. For me, going with like-minded friends is probably the best. There were times when we were the eyes and ears for each other. If I’m more focused on the ground where lizards skitter off the trail and Kat is attentive to a more distant view where Mississippi kites soar and buntings perch, we complement each other. Alaina is particularly attuned to the insect and spider life, and Sheryl takes in the birds but also those miniature worlds of flowers, fungi, and insects. One of us commented that together we’re like one organism, because we are closely attuned to each other while focusing on different aspects of our surroundings.
Where we went, the Texas horned lizard is doing well, and we saw six or seven of them. At night, we found three massasauga rattlesnakes along with other snake species. The landscape is thick with blooming thistles and basketflowers as well as (in places) skeleton plant, lemon beebalm, firewheel, and other flowers. It was a beautiful trip, and we’ll have more of the story – and lots of photos – at Rain Lilies soon.
Last September, after flipping over to Substack for a while, I came back here as the home base for my writing. I did not want to get too caught up in trying to get paid subscriptions, which is Substack’s business model. Anyway, there were several factors which I won’t bore you with. Now, embarrassingly, I find myself flopping back. Again, there are several factors in the decision, but I guess the bottom line is that I’m a flip-flopper.
I have created a Substack newsletter and called it Rain Lilies, with a focus not so different from this blog. I wrote, “I hope that what you will read here will be like those beautiful flowers that suddenly emerge after a rain, offering what might be a moment of unexpected wonder. Maybe it could offer a bit of insight into how we are a part of the natural world around us. Rain Lilies also takes a bit of inspiration from our wonderful granddaughter’s name.”
At Rain Lilies I plan to keep writing about nature and our place in it. I also have in mind a continuation of the “Letters to Nature Kids” idea, as well as news or comments about my books and related activities.
I do hope you will give Rain Lilies a try. You’ll have the opportunity to be a paid subscriber, and I’ll offer some things to make that worthwhile. However, most of my stuff will be available to free subscribers. This site will continue for now with the pages of information and downloadable materials, particularly in the area of herpetology.
On May 5th I started the latest round of The Wild Lives of Texas Reptiles & Amphibians, a four-part training that I offer with slides and discussion in class as well as time in the field. The idea is to dig down a little deeper about herp (reptile and amphibian) natural history, more than I’m able to when training incoming Master Naturalists. And the people participating get several sessions in the field, which is both fun and important when learning about how to find and interact with herps.
And so I got to meet several new people, one of them a 15-year-old who is new to all this and one a Master Naturalist in her 80s. They were all delightful. I covered some very practical issues like watching out for bull nettle and how wild snakes, including venomous species, usually respond when we encounter them. I also gave a quick overview of taxonomy and scientific names, though the discussion about why some of these names keep changing might have gotten a little thick – but it was brief.
An eastern river cooter basking in the warm sunshine
At 3:00 it was time to take a walk; the rain clouds had parted and it was a sunny and beautiful day at Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. We walked up the Cross Timbers trail along the Trinity River for a while, with the long, torpedo bodies of gar easily visible and the big scales and reddish fins of carp breaking the water’s surface. Our first herps were the turtles swimming or basking on branches of fallen trees. I am used to seeing more red-eared sliders, but today the river cooters were more common.
Witches’ butter, a type of jelly fungus
Meanwhile our group of 8 or 9 people were captivated by everything around us. After all the recent rain, the fungi were proliferating. Sheryl told us about some of the mushrooms as well as the jelly fungi like witch’s butter and wood ear. Soon, Caleb found a little brown skink. Those words serve as the actual name of the lizard as well as a description of it; they’re small and have a broad, coppery-brown band down the back, edged with a darker brown band on each side. They are sometimes described as “elfin,” perhaps because they are woodland creatures that are sometimes glimpsed for a moment as they make their way through the leaf litter.
Sara gently restrains the little brown skink so we can get a good look before releasing it
Across the river channel along the opposite bank, I spotted an American alligator that we estimated to be a bit more than five feet long. This one was half-submerged and presumably basking in the afternoon sunshine. Sometimes people are surprised that we have alligators in the DFW metroplex, thinking that they belong in the swamps of Louisiana or Florida. But the American alligator has made a significant recovery from the days when it was hunted to near-extinction.
American alligator
Our ‘gators are generally found in secluded spots in or near the Trinity River. They are mostly shy around humans, though people on Lake Worth sometimes see them basking out in the open, seemingly without a care in the world. What I had shared with the group is that alligators should be admired from a distance (Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept. advises staying 30 feet away), and that alligators can run faster than we can for short distances. And yet, there are no records of people in Texas being killed by alligators and relatively few injuries.
The razor-backed musk turtle
One of the turtles basking over the water was clearly not a cooter or slider, but my camera lens was not pulling in enough detail. Caleb took a look and said he thought it was a musk turtle, and with the head and neck more visible in his photo I agreed. It appears to be a razor-backed musk turtle, a small turtle with a carapace (top shell) a little like a peaked roof. Such turtles are on the menu for lots of other animals, including that alligator we had seen. As a result, they are pretty wary and I’m a little surprised that this one didn’t drop into the water before we could take a photo.
Sheryl (right) investigates a cluster of wood ear fungus, swollen and rubbery from the recent rain
While I checked the local temperature and humidity (87.6F and 45%), Eleanor brought me the first snake, a rough earthsnake. These small snakes are found in leaf litter and under logs, as well as under boards or rocks in old fields and in gardens. In those places they find earthworms and small, soft-bodied insects that are their food.
A pallid spiny softshell, pulled mostly out of the water to bask
Meanwhile we continued finding lots of caterpillars as well as a variety of spiders. When the trail led us away from the river and into the woodland there were little refuges to investigate, in the form of fallen branches and logs. Could we find a frog or toad under one? Alaina did spot a leopard frog and chased it but it was soon lost in vegetation. The best things to turn over are bigger pieces that offer a larger area of shelter. Those are the ones that might conceal a ribbonsnake or cottonmouth (I brought a snake hook to insure that nobody turned a log by sticking their fingers under it).
I talked about the absence of small-mouthed salamanders in these places at the refuge. Intermittently flooded bottomlands are where I would expect them, and some persist along the Trinity River floodplain in Arlington. There are 93 observations in iNaturalist (55 of them just since the year 2020), all clustered in that area, but no observations are in the vicinity of Lake Worth and Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge. Why would that be the case? What difference in microhabitats, predators, water quality, or something else would account for it? That would be an interesting puzzle to solve.
Everyone seemed to enjoy the walk and all that we found. This class is off to a great start, and I’ll post updates after future meetings. The next session is about amphibians, and we will look for frogs and toads around sunset and listen for frog calls. I think it will be magical!
So far this year, Tarrant County rainfall is about 3 inches above normal according to drought.gov. At Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve, the plants have responded with an explosion of growth and flowers.
Walking up the switchback trail to the bluff, I have never seen so many spiderworts, their blue-purple flowers dotting the trail’s edge and the openings in the woodlands. Engelmann’s daisies grew in a few of the sunny spots, and the brighter yellows of chickory were common.
It was cloudy, and an Arlington weather source said that it was 61 degrees. The next day was predicted to be full of rain; I could imagine tomorrow’s shining raindrops on the leaves and the water soaking into the sandy places and forming pools where there is clay. But during my walk it was cool and dry.
Firewheel
At the boulders the green stems and leaves of vetch are overflowing and the bees and butterflies are feasting on clusters of purple flowers. And there were a couple of patches of firewheel (Indian blanket).
Question mark butterfly
The butterflies scattered up from the trail as I walked, including sulphurs, red admirals, and question marks. This last butterfly has a small mark on the underside of the hind wing that is said to look like a question mark, but for the most part with wings folded it looks like a dead leaf and the opened wings are a beautiful study in smudged and burnt orange.
It’s remarkable how different plant species have their time and then move on. The year progresses in a “kaleidoscope of color” as each one has its appointed time. There was no sign of toadflax blooms, even though only recently they seemed like the prominent flowers of the hillside. Near the trailhead, Maximilian sunflower was getting started, although we won’t see their blooms for some time.
Change is constant; nothing stays the same. The woods, prairie openings, and ponds change from season to season, and even within a season everything is in motion. And yet it’s the same place, a constant familiar presence even as it constantly shifts. How wonderful is that!
Engelmann daisy behind new growth of Maximilian sunflowerRipening dewberries
In her book, Wild DFW, Amy Martin says that people like her and me are “creek kids.” Each of us spent some formative years wandering nearby creeks. In my case the creek was my second home from about age 12 until high school, sometimes going with a friend or two and sometimes spending most of the day there by myself. For Amy and for me, the creek played a part in creating a lifelong love of nature. What would have happened, had we not had a creek, or a woods, or a prairie? I strongly suspect that if childhood slips away before we have had a close acquaintance with some place in nature, it might be too late. If there had been no creek, maybe I would have an intellectual or aesthetic interest in nature, but I don’t see how it could ever feel like home. For a creek kid, the attachment to places in nature and the things that live there is visceral. It’s like a beloved sibling, not a casual acquaintance.
The creek in early April of this year
My creek was and is in western Tarrant County in what originally was prairie with black soil above white limestone. It sometimes filled up and ran like a raging river, but mostly it flowed quietly in a small stream from one pool to the next over that limestone. Under overhanging tree branches the water was sometimes crystal clear and cool, and mostly I had sense enough not to drink it. It was, in the early 1960s, full of wildlife, enough to keep me coming back day after day during the summer. My passionate interest was herpetology, but I was learning to love the armadillos, herons, and sunfish along with the reptiles and amphibians.
The creek is still there, but much has been lost in the 60 years since I first walked and waded it. The spaces between pools, those broad gravel bars and broken slabs of limestone, were inhabited by greater earless lizards in colors of pale gray and chalk white. They would run ahead and stop, waving their tails to expose black bars underneath (perhaps meant to confuse or disorient a predator). I haven’t seen one at the creek in many years. Ribbonsnakes used to thread their way through stream side vegetation, hunting for cricket frogs. When spooked, these slender harmless snakes would swim across the pools with bright orange and cream-colored stripes glistening in the sunlight. They seem mostly to be gone as well, at least at my creek. As populations of wildlife disappear here and there, younger generations know of them only through the memories of us older naturalists, or they may never know what is missing (see the article on shifting baseline syndrome).
I keep coming back, though the city’s development has forced me to find access points further upstream. Occasionally I will bring someone, but it’s a little like in Mary Oliver’s poem, “How I Go to the Woods” – those who smile and talk too much are kind of unsuitable, and if I do take someone, it is a person with whom I feel comfortable and close.
Fleabane growing on the banks of the creek
In particular, my visits there with Elijah have been important to me and, I think, to him. He is not quite a grandson but I’ve known him since he was born, so he’s family. I first took him to see the creek when he was six, and we’ve visited on and off since then. I described one such visit in an issue of “Letters to Nature Kids.” Giving kids time in nature, introducing them to the turtles and fish and other things that set the engines of curiosity and wonder in motion, that feels like part privilege and part responsibility. Taking my granddaughter for a walk to see birds and draw in the sand on the path through the woods is a great pleasure, and I think it is more than that. It is planting seeds that might, if she chooses, grow into a source of joy and connection with the world around her.
Blackstripe topminnows at my creek
So my creek is still there and has not been swallowed up by the city. I imagine kids playing in that creek and exploring it as I once did. I imagine it, but I do not see it. I have not seen anyone who appeared to be playing or learning about the life of that creek in a long time. Is this part of the cultural trend that Richard Louv wrote about in Last Child in the Woods? He documented the increasing tendency for children to play inside, to spend their time in front of screens, with little time in woods and fields. As parents, we may worry that no place out of our sight is safe. For a child to be outdoors for an extended time away from contact with a parent seems neglectful to many people. Yet I survived and thrived at the creek with no cell phone, just a watch and a rendezvous time for mom to pick me up.
I hope you have a creek, and that you take your kids or somebody’s kids there. I know that it might not be a creek; it could be a woods or a pond or some other place in nature. I would love to hear about it in the comments – either a place in your memory or some place you can visit right now. And I hope that you can visit it, for an hour or a day.
A near-perfectly camouflaged cricket frog, hoping that I’ll walk on byBlue water-speedwell, according to iNaturalist, growing along the creek
Meet on the ledge, we’re gonna to meet on the ledge If you really mean it, it all comes ‘round again
Richard Thompson, “Meet on the Ledge”
It is Easter, and spring is returning. The woodland in the nearby preserve is dotted with flowers, and oaks are leafing out. Days are getting longer and warmer. Additionally, the jelly beans that Lilly planted yesterday have sprouted into candies that she harvested today. She’s found all the bunny’s eggs, too. Easter is the most profound holiday in the Christian calendar, and its themes touch on renewal and resurrection. We are encouraged to believe that what is important does not die forever, instead “it all comes around again.” For children, we find simple ways to celebrate renewal and new life in ways they can enjoy.
In childhood rituals of colorful eggs, maybe we’re re-creating a little bit of Ostara, the pagan holiday that pre-dates Easter and celebrates the spring equinox and renewal of life and fertility. Celebrations often involved eggs and planting seeds. We may not be thinking of Ostara when our kids hunt for Easter eggs, but there is a connection (if you are interested in the origins of the Easter bunny story, have a look at this).
I’m not trying to recruit new pagan or Christian believers, just pointing out how strong is the undercurrent of our belief in this idea: that which is truly important, truly good, cannot be lost forever but finds a way to return. Perhaps some things are so fundamental to who we are, so much a part of us, that our faith and our need for them brings them back. “If you really mean it, it all comes ‘round again.”
I don’t mean to wring too much meaning out of that lovely Fairport Convention song, written by Richard Thompson when he was still a teen. I’ve read that “Meet on the Ledge” is sometimes played at funerals, when people very much want to believe in things coming ‘round again (and there’s that line, “When my time is up I’m gonna see all my friends”). He has been quoted saying that he was not intentionally writing a very deep song, but it seems that some very meaningful words wrapped themselves around him as he wrote.
I would love for our granddaughter to find her way of marking the seasons and transitions of this world and celebrating ideas and values like standing up for love and compassion no matter the cost. Today the ritual was about the sweet taste of spring and things that grow again as the season begins, and spending time delighting in things you find in the grass and the soil. There are so many things to learn about and celebrate in the coming seasons and years.
Spring is fully underway and it’s not yet April. Things are green and growing, and the insects – the beetles, flies, dragonflies, damselflies, skippers, and butterflies – are busy. On March 27 I wandered the trails at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve, up the hill to the bluff and over to the boulders. There were filmy high clouds but it felt sunny and the breeze was cool. A nearby weather station reported that it was 65 degrees and felt like 74.
Spiderwort
Many of the oaks were leafed out and a few stragglers were still putting out small leaves tinged in red. Along the trail’s edge there were some spiderworts with their deep blue flowers, three petals surrounding a cluster of yellow anthers. And everywhere I looked in the sandy soil of the hillside, it seemed that I saw Texas toadflax. I’ve really looked forward to this!
Texas toadflax
Last year, toadflax really captured my imagination. I wrote:
“To tell the truth, part of the reason I’ve focused on them … is that name – “toadflax” – which immediately made me think of The Wind in the Willows. A plant with such a name surely belongs in an old children’s tale centered on the English countryside with animals such as the toad.”
Even if it had a completely unimaginative name, I would think this delicate-looking plant was worth paying attention to with its tall stems and pale violet flowers.
Near the top of the hill there is an area with plenty of southern dewberries, and on one of the flowers was a pretty black-and-white moth called the “mournful thyris.” That’s just the kind of name that gets me wondering about how it was named, and an internet search or two did not yield much. Thyris is part of the name of the family – the group of moths – to which this one belongs. The word is said to be a Greek reference to “window,” and they have a spot on the wing that is translucent, like a sort of window. But why is this one mournful? I looked for a window into its grief but could find nothing. If any readers know the origin of the name, please share with us in the comments.
Mournful thyris moth on southern dewberry
I walked the rest of the way to the bluff, along the way seeing beautiful yellow woodsorrel in a few places, with leaves reminding me of clover. Up on the bluff there were places with groups of what appeared to be leastdaisy, with tiny white flowers. It can be so rewarding to pay attention to little things like this, just stopping and maybe getting on hands and knees to get to know something small and magical.
Some leastdaisies at the bluff
There were plenty of butterflies – skippers, sulphurs, and a couple of beautiful tiger swallowtails. And the soundtrack to this lovely spring day was provided by a Carolina wren’s calling, with a blue jay heard in the distance. There were cardinals, too, and it sounded like an ideal spring day. I’m waiting for that first Texas spiny lizard on a tree trunk, which will add that perfect touch to a delightful day. I’m sure I’ll see one soon.
Our Lives In Nature 