Goodbye, Winter

March 20, 2022March 20, 2022 / Michael Smith / 2 Comments

At LBJ National Grasslands yesterday, new green growth emerged from the soil everywhere. In this ecotone, this blended margin between prairie and woodland, what had been the sandy brown floor was now turning green. In some places it was hidden beneath last year’s grasses, and in other places around trees and shrubs the scattered green was unmistakable. In areas that were recently burned, where the soil now had the most contact with the bright, warming sun, the new growth was strong.

It was March 19, the last day of winter. Tomorrow the Northern Hemisphere would be angled toward the sun just a bit more, reaching the vernal equinox. It would be the first day of spring. I spent most of the day at LBJ National Grasslands to say goodbye to winter in the biggest, quietest place I could wander through.

It was bright and sunny, as if the weather had already passed the equinox and was intent on spring. I soon shed the hoodie I started my walk with, as the breeze warmed a little and the sun was higher in the sky. By the end of the day I would have a mild sunburn and no regrets for having walked and sat in so much sunshine.

*Limestone shelf at the top of an arroyo*

I started up on a ridge where limestone lies beneath shallow soil. In places, erosion exposes the limestone from an ancient sea bed filled with small oysters. I walked around one spot where water had exposed a small limestone shelf and eroded back under it. This was at the top of one of those places where the land drops away from the top of the cuesta or ridge and forms a long arroyo down the hillside. Big junipers, hackberries, and woody shrubs fill these places where the land concentrates rainfall.

On the top of the cuesta, prairie grasses grow where the soil is deep enough. In shallow soil, even in areas with bare limestone, you can find clumps of cacti such as the grooved nipple cactus with stems like rounded domes covered with spines. There are also prickly pear cacti whose pads in winter are colored in shades of faded brick red and pink. Elsewhere up on the ridge there are clumps of compass plant. I love those long deeply notched leaves that feel as if they were cut from stiff sheets of sandpaper.

A couple of hours later I was in the Cross Timbers woodland below the ridge, visiting a small pond. The breeze stirred ripples on its surface. The sunlight glittered brightly from the tops of those ripples, so that the pond’s entire surface seemed covered in sparkling jewels. When I let my focus soften, it was like a very fast twinkling of a field of stars. Even in simple places like this, the rest of the world drops away and there is only the pleasure of this moment in this spot. How we all long for such a refuge, and here it was.

*The stars in the water, only poorly represented in the photo*

Throughout the winter the sulphur butterflies persist and dance across dormant prairies and sunny glades, but today more insect life was awakening. In one spot I began to see orange butterflies. At the edge of a clearing, two of them encircled each other and seemed to catch an updraft, swirling straight up to the crowns of the surrounding trees. When one landed, I saw that it was a goatweed leafwing. Their deep orange wings are scalloped, edged in ashen gray and the forewing and hindwing come to points. Their interesting name is based on description and natural history. The host for their caterpillars is “goatweed” or croton, and when closed the wings look just like a dead leaf.

Finishing in this part of the grasslands, the practical but unimaginatively named unit 71, I drove to a couple of units near Alvord, including one of the beautiful and fragrant pine groves, and ended up in unit 30, one of my favorites. I let myself in through one of the green Forest Service gates and looked across the prairie and savannah toward the oak-juniper woodland.

*The prairie in “unit 30,” looking upslope*

Here was that wonderful down-sloping prairie with little bluestem, Indiangrass, and flowering plants scattered throughout. Then the trail reaches the trees and turns sharply, losing itself in junipers, post oaks and other trees. The woods frequently open into little prairie patches as well as a few little ponds. I know the features of this part of the trail and I enjoy each walk there. I thought about why the places within LBJ National Grasslands have such an attraction for me, these “same old” trails. But the affection for the place holds. Walking here is visiting old friends, so why would I tire of it? And when I walk through spots in the grasslands that are new to me I usually see familiar landscapes, just arranged differently. Some of the appeal for me is the sense of being able to spread out, to be unconfined in grasslands and woods that keep on going.

*A nine-banded armadillo, oblivious to my nearby presence*

So goodbye to winter, and welcome spring! I’m ready for frog calls and purple coneflower, and those spring evenings with distant thunder. And eventually I’ll come to miss the earth tones of dormant vegetation and quiet winter afternoons. In time I will welcome winter back again.

Ready for Spring

March 11, 2022 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

As I drove through a northern part of LBJ National Grasslands, last year’s grasses were burned off along with some of the low growing brush. At the ground, some tree trunks were blackened, but the bark of the bigger trees protected the living tissue underneath. The trees will be fine. So will the grasses. The living roots below ground were already starting to send green shoots up within the charred clumps of little bluestem and Indiangrass. After all, what burned was just the dead stems and leaves of last year’s growth. What was pushed back was, hopefully, the growth of woody shrubs and tree seedlings. These ecosystems were built with periodic fire as an important ingredient. Without it, the shrubs and seedlings would grow into thickets, closing off open areas and replacing the meadows and pockets of prairie in this place.

The Forest Service had done well, lighting fires that would move across the land quickly so that it did its job with little real damage. Larger wildlife would move out of the way and most smaller animals would shelter in burrows or climb higher in trees. They would plan the burn when fuel loads would not be too high and wind conditions were right, keeping the fire within certain boundaries. With a well-planned burn, the fire would not linger long enough to become very big or hot.

I walked a trail northeast of Alvord through areas cleared out by fire and looked at the green shoots beginning to emerge here and there where fire had burned last year’s growth to black stubs. Not only were grasses re-growing, along the surface of the soil – much more exposed than usual – new green growth was beginning everywhere. Spring is just days away (or already started, by meteorological reckoning).

A little movement caught my eye. A small wolf spider was scampering over soil and bits of wood on the trail. “Welcome, little survivor,” I thought. A fluttering spot of yellow bounded along the ground. The little butterfly, perhaps a clouded sulphur, had also made it through the fire or the wind had carried her in from nearby fields. Altogether in my walks in two areas of the grasslands today I saw sulphurs, variegated fritillaries, and a very dark swallowtail. At another point on the trail a small insect flew ahead of me, always landing back on the bare sandy soil of the trail. Sure enough, it was a tiger beetle with a metallic green head and thorax and a brushstroke of iridescent red on the wing covers (the elytra). It appeared that the invertebrates were doing pretty well after the burn.

Somebody else may have noticed how well the invertebrates were doing. As I came around on the trail, I saw an armadillo about thirty feet away, busily rooting into the soil looking for anything edible. These tough, chunky mammals have a sort of leathery armor over their hips and shoulders, connected in the middle by nine bands of the same stuff (thus their name, “nine-banded armadillo”). Bony deposits are embedded in this modified skin, even on their foreheads and tails. They are very strong, as anyone who has tried to pick one up can attest.

Armadillos need these attributes, because they are not gifted with strong eyesight or attentiveness to their surroundings. I approached the little beast quietly and downwind, moving mostly when he had his snout in the ground. Periodically he stopped to look around and sniff the air and then returned to the search for insects and grubs. I got within six feet or so, with no intention of doing anything more than taking a photo. At some point he figured out that I was present and ran off, sometimes bounding into the air with all four legs like a deer. It might seem like a parody of gracefulness, but he was fast and had a sort of armadillo-style agility.

Like Texas’ national forests, the national grasslands in our state are maintained in the belief that many different uses of the land are appropriate. These uses include mineral extraction along with recreation, hunting and fishing. We can walk and study nature on what’s left. I got my first reminder that this is a “multi-use” area when the path opened on a big cleared area with gas storage tanks and some sort of building. Nearby, a wide, bulldozed corridor led into the distance with signs saying, “Warning, natural gas pipeline.” Oil and gas extraction sometimes seems like the pre-eminent use of this place.

The other reminder of the multiple uses of the grasslands happened as I finished the walk back to my car. From the pine grove camping area came several loud shotgun blasts. Hunting is allowed on the grasslands, although what I was hearing seemed unlikely to represent hunting in any competent sense, as the shotgun was discharged sometimes four to six times in rapid succession. After a pause, more shots. I wondered if it was safe to get to my car. I decided that I must be hearing some sort of target practice and chose to believe the target was not in my vicinity. I have not had this experience before, but I have passed hunters with shotguns on the trail. When visiting, we should all keep in mind that hunters (and I suppose wild target shooters) may be present.

My last hour in the grasslands on this day was spent a little distance away, in a unit that had not been burned. I wrote this in my journal:

“I’m sitting at the top of a big rise, under a blue sky with a half-moon above and to my right. There is a light breeze, a little cool and a perfect balance to the warm sun behind me. It’s such a nice spring warmth that it’s hard to believe that in twelve hours it will be blustery, cold and raining. In my shade it is 68.9ºF and 59% relative humidity.

“It’s quiet and peaceful – a sunny refuge with post oaks, butterflies and cardinals for companions. There’s a post oak in front of me with a trunk so thick that I was reminded of the baobab tree. A cardinal flew into it and is in the high branches – “cheer, cheer, cheer” – and when he faces me there is a bright crimson dot in the branches.

“To my right is a huge oak with twisted arms, right out of a scary story. Along the trail a pair of small sulphurs, swirling together in figure-eights nonstop across the ground.”

I’ll be back soon, watchful for armadillos and butterflies and curious about the new spring growth of grasses and flowers after the burn. Frogs will be calling soon, especially if we get some rain. There’s a lot to look forward to.

In the November Woods

November 16, 2021 / Michael Smith / 4 Comments

Hardly anything is finer than a green Forest Service gate opening onto trails that lead through the grasslands and oak woodlands of LBJ National Grasslands. Those meadows and woods change throughout the seasons, and each of those changes is beautiful. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be autumn (but ask me again in the spring). The low-angled sun highlights details of light and shadow, the colors of leaves and grasses are wonderful, and afternoons can be sun-warmed but cool at the same time.

Yesterday I opened one of those green gates that was new to me and walked a trail back through rust-colored little bluestem grasses and oaks with leaves now tinged with yellow and caramel, and a little red here and there. Much of it was familiar, like the way the sun makes little bluestem sparkle when it shines through the little tufted seeds tucked away along the stems. What made it wonderful was that it was more of the things that are always on the verge of being lost. Ranches are sold and turned into houses and lawns, and so a walk through a new patch of Cross Timbers felt reassuring.

*A sulphur visiting a bitterweed flower*

Along with the taller prairie grasses were areas with lots of croton (“prairie tea” for some folks), western ragweed, and bitterweed. I love this last plant, whose yellow flowers bloom so late in the year. Clusters of yellow bitterweed blooms were visited by bees and butterflies. Grasshoppers jumped in front of every step I took, taking advantage of these last warm days to nibble at the remaining vegetation.

“Me and my shadow.” A harvestman (daddy longlegs) and its shadow, wandering the prairie

After about an hour, I went down the road to another of those green gates, this one opening onto a trail that Meghan Cassidy and I walked a year and one week ago. After crossing a nice patch of prairie that very gradually slopes down to a line of trees, the trail turns and traces its way through oaks, junipers, and prairie openings.

I stopped at the same post oak where we had stood and watched leaves drop, the air so quiet that I could sometimes hear a leaf bump into a branch on the way down. And then we would hear a wave of breeze approach through the treetops, stirring the top branches and releasing a few more leaves to pinwheel down to the growing carpet of leaves on the ground. Although not many leaves were falling from that tree yesterday, there was some of that sense of solitude and peace in the quiet of the woodlands.

Further down the deep sandy trail some of the same young oaks were turning, with leaves glowing scarlet when backlit by the sun. The woods were full of shade behind the trees which really had yet to lose many leaves. In other places the low mid-afternoon sun struck grasses and leaves with bright, warm light. The sunlight seemed that much brighter for the contrast with the shaded and darkened places deep among the trees.

I reached a place where the soil is cut by erosion and drops, exposing red and pale sandy soil in an irregular set of steps and furrows down to a small pond. Meghan and I sat here a year ago on a stretch of slightly damp sand tilting down to the water. I was entranced by a play of the light in which the late afternoon sun was reflected by ripples, sending squiggles of light up onto a shaded bank under a juniper. The very same thing was happening yesterday, with a tiny light show playing on the shaded bank of the pond. It was a very small thing, and also an example of something that seems important to me: Nature is so often a consistent, stable presence in a world that can seem chaotic. Places in nature can be anchors in our lives to which we can return over and over for reassurance that some good things persist in spite of all the changes around us.

On the way back there was movement in the leaf litter a small distance off the trail. It was a nine-banded armadillo, snuffling along the woodland floor, oblivious to the human standing nearby. Once again last autumn’s walk was being repeated, as we saw an armadillo on the return walk on that day, too. This one kept searching for insects and grubs to eat while I took a couple of photos. I shifted and made a little noise and the little armored one stood up to look around and sniff the air. I coughed, and he crashed off through the brush.

It was getting near sunset, and my walk was done. It is hard to put into words just what this time of year, this quality of light, this quiet woodland feels like to me. In the “Autumn” section of the book Meghan and I have been working on, I wrote this: Things come to an end / Be still in the golden autumn light / And consider how to make a good end of the year / With affection and acceptance. This season does feel like an ending of the year, and it seems like a good idea to spend some time being still and quietly reflecting on all that the year contained. This November walk at the LBJ National Grasslands had been perfect for that.

Quiet, and Then Storms at the Grasslands

September 29, 2021 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

At 3:30pm I was sitting in a chair in the shade, looking out at a field of little bluestem and Indiangrass waving in the gentle breeze. Scattered in with the grasses were a few violet spikes of dotted gayfeather, a smallish prairie plant whose flowers grow in clusters along upright stalks. A little further away were some little white puffs on thin, gangly stems, the flowers of false gaura. A couple of butterflies visited the area.

The sky was powder blue toward the horizon and a deeper shade of blue overhead, and cumulus clouds floated by. They were just big and dense enough to be flattened and gray along the bottom. Their puffy cauliflower tops were bright in afternoon sunshine that brought the temperature up to 90ºF on the shaded ground at the edge of a stand of post oak.

It was, for the most part, very quiet in this spot. There was the occasional passing airplane, but usually there was nothing to mask the sound of grasses moving in the breeze. It was wonderful to be out in a patch of prairie with no roads, no buildings visible, but what brought real solitude was the ability to hear breezes, birds and insects in a sound field with nothing else present. Real immersion in nature involves multiple sensory modalities, not just a pretty view.

I’m not the only one who needs occasional doses of solitude, or for whom absence of mechanical sound is important. In temperate rainforests and other remote places, Gordon Hempton has been championing – and recording – places where there is the least man-made noise and therefore the clearest experience of natural sounds¹. Probably nowhere in North Texas is free of noise completely or for long, but this day in the LBJ National Grasslands was close enough.

From the west, a hazy line of clouds approached, darker near the northwest horizon and much higher than the clouds I had been watching. The breezes picked up a little and the sun was filtered through the clouds. There was the potential for rain and lightning, at least toward the north. I decided to shift to a nearby ridge where I could watch the storm come it. This had the additional advantage of getting up a steep caliche and gravel incline while it was dry.

I got to the ridge, and by this time the high cloud deck brought the temperature down, helped by a fairly steady breeze. I sat looking through the waving stems of big bluestem at a western horizon that was enveloped in rain. About three feet in front of me, a bumblebee was visiting the purple spikey flower heads of Leavenworth’s eryngo, that prickly plant that people often mistake for thistle. At this time of year the leaves and flowers are a beautiful purple color.

So I sat and watched the dark blue-gray bruise of a thunderstorm that spanned nearly half the horizon. There were places where the smudged gray of heavy rain connected cloud and ground. Distant thunder was somewhere between soothing and invigorating. As low rumbles, thunder’s effect on me is soothing, but now it was part of a nearby heavy storm with occasional bolts of lightning dropping from the sky. It was powerful and fascinating, and I was grateful to be able to sit and watch this storm system progress toward the north. The outer clouds streamed blue-gray across the sky, with a tinge of blue-green behind them. The clouds were like dark cream that someone started to stir, pulled across the bowl of the sky in long, thick streaks in front of the main part of the storm.

Suddenly, what was breeze became wind – steady and strong, cooler and smelling of rain. This was the outflow from the storm, putting me on notice that although the storm seemed mainly to be tracking north, it was also spreading out and coming to me. Blowing across the dry grasslands, the wind picked up a little stinging dust and carried cool little droplets from the rain. I stood for a little longer, wondering if I might see a curtain of rain march across the treeline toward this ridge. That didn’t happen, but the cool wind became laden with big, cold drops of rain as I walked back to the car at 6:00pm. According to the car’s thermometer, it was now a much cooler 67ºF.I was thankful for whatever rain fell on the grasslands where the end of summer has been very dry, and for the chance to experience the transition from sunny afternoon to revitalizing storm.

Moore, K.D. 2008. Silence Like Scouring Sand. (online: https://orionmagazine.org/article/silence-like-scouring-sand/)

At LBJ Grasslands, the Evening of May 27

May 28, 2021March 20, 2022 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

(A writing experiment, with country cemeteries, beautiful prairie, a copperhead, and distant storms. On this visit to the grasslands, I did not take a camera. I intended to experience it without trying to “capture” it in images, although I did have my phone so I suppose I did have a camera. I also did not take a field notebook, but today I wrote some notes. It seemed like the sort of thing that would have, once upon a time, been sent back home as a letter, and so I offer my notes as a sort of letter from the grasslands, with no photos to augment whatever mental images and stories the words might manage to convey.)

I traveled to Wise County to see how all the rain has affected the prairies at LBJ Grasslands, and I also hoped to sit in the quiet darkness and watch lightning from the line of storms coming in from Oklahoma. In between those things, perhaps I would see a few snakes or frogs crossing the roads after sunset.

On the initial drive through the oak woodlands and patches of prairie, I looped around Ball Knob, a little hilltop and ridge. Tucked away among the oaks, prairie grasses, and wildflowers is a quiet little cemetery, a resting place for people who lived there in the 1700s and later. It is a beautiful place, dotted with oaks and a couple of junipers, with some of the headstones weathered beyond reading. It is comforting to think that they have rested here for hundreds of years in the peace of the cycling seasons. Who knows what it might mean to those who have passed, but for those who remain it is a reassuring reminder of eternal rest. For those who are buried here, each spring sees the return of Texas paintbrush and purple coneflower and each autumn their graves are kissed with a scattering of golden and scarlet oak leaves. The place is circled with an unassuming chain link fence, and there is a small, modest pavilion for anyone who wants to sit for a while. There is a historical marker, but no signs and nothing to disturb the peace. It is perfect.

I drove on, past the historical site of the settlement of Audubon and past the pine grove with its campsites and little ponds. From that pine grove, the road drops down to a broad, mostly open prairie that I walk year after year, following trails across fields of prairie grass and flowers and through post oak and blackjack woodland. Today, after the extended rains that have fallen, the fields were green and dotted with flowers. Red-orange Texas paintbrush pushed up through the green, and meadow pink flowers were tucked away near the ground. Big flower heads of antelope horn milkweed dotted the meadows.

Butterflies and bumblebees visited these and other flowers. The first ones I saw were sulphur-yellow butterflies that fluttered near the ground, stopping at the yellow coreopsis and nervously moving on if I stepped closer. The buzz of the bees is very pleasant to me; I associate it with flowering and the expansion of life, and not at all with pain since these bees will gladly coexist and work around us if we just leave them alone. Everywhere the calls of northern cardinals and other birds made these meadows and woods all the more exquisite. To walk through the grasses and among the flowers, surrounded by bird song and the occasional bee, brings a peace and contentment that I find in few other places.

I wandered for some time, soaking it all in. White-tailed deer peeked at me attentively from below a rise, bolted back a short distance as I continued walking and looked back at me again. Crows scolded me from a nearby line of trees. On a milkweed plant, a monarch butterfly moved among the flowers, took off when I got too close, and then circled back to the plant. The air was laden with moisture and felt warm and close, and the sky was hazy with thin clouds. Cricket frogs began to call, a soft and distant ‘grick-grick-grick’ from a pond somewhere.

Eventually I returned to my car, just prior to sunset. I started to get in and was interrupted by the graceful and acrobatic flight of a couple of birds very close to where I was. They had narrow wings that suggested a swallow, made for maneuvering rather than soaring. The tail feathers were cut into a fork rather than a broad fan, but these birds were too big to be swallows. They swooped and climbed, then one would rapidly pivot, diving down to catch an insect and then pull up and shoot across the meadow, flying out of range only to re-emerge a few moments later. Others joined, until there were five or six birds, each one putting on an athletic show for the earthbound human below. My friend Carly identified these as nighthawks based on their size and the big white spot under each wing.

I drove the little back roads nearby, and at some point came upon a fairly large broad-banded copperhead. I always stop, both because they are beautiful and because they cruise very slowly across the road, very vulnerable to being run over. The glare of my flashlight showed the broad dark and light bands that give the snake its name, dark cinnamon alternating with sandy shade of tan. The finely-sculpted, wedge-shaped head had some of that cinnamon color in the back, divided from the lighter color of the face by a fine diagonal border. Like virtually all copperheads, this one held his head angled up, motionless for the moment, waiting to see what I would do. At such times they are balanced on the edge of a knife, between utter stillness (which would serve them well when camouflaged in dead leaves and grasses) and exploding into frantic attempts to escape. When I slid the snake hook under this one’s head and neck, he bunched up a little, maybe surprised and unsure what to do with this unexplained touching. He then decided it was time to leave, crawling quickly but not frantically off the road.

That was an exciting encounter, despite my having found and interacted with a great many copperheads. I drove down the road with the satisfaction of seeing this beautiful snake and moving it so that it would survive this night. A few miles further, and another snake came into view. This one was a plain-bellied watersnake, dark and sullen but nonvenomous. I took a couple of photos with my phone but did not pick it up. At my approach, the snake pulled itself into a protective coil and lashed out with a quick jab. Watersnakes have no venom but usually do not hesitate to bite if they feel threatened. They leave small scratches, briefly painful and perhaps startling enough to make a coyote, a raccoon, or a human let it go. I nudged him off the road with my shoe and wished him well.

Soon, lightning could be seen along the northern horizon. An oncoming storm front and barometric pressure drop often sets the stage for snake activity, and that was a plus. However, when the clouds get close enough to watch the flashes of light and hear rumbling in the distance, I’m ready to stop and enjoy the experience. Maybe it is a contradiction that I respond to distant storms as gentle and soothing while at the same time representing immense power. Which part appeals to me, or is it the idea of such a powerful thing being capable of soothing? In any case, the faraway thunder is a lullabye and the flashes of lightning no more threatening than the moon or a shooting star. I pulled off onto a Forest Service road and stopped the car so that I could stand in the quiet darkness and watch.

It was very dark behind the tree line and then a flash appeared from within the clouds and rolled from one to the next. Then it was dark again until nearby clouds were briefly lit by what seemed like an internal fire, outlining the clouds in front of it for an instant or two. It was completely quiet. Radar showed the front still had not crossed the Red River; it was too far distant for thunder to be audible. Earlier, the air had felt warm and saturated, but now some cooler breezes were stirring. I stood in the darkness for a while longer, watching the random flowering of distant lightning and enjoying the quiet.

Be well and happy. Visit the grasslands when you can.

Michael Smith

Summer’s Snakey End

September 25, 2020September 27, 2020 / Michael Smith / 2 Comments

It was September12, with ten days of summer left to us before the autumn equinox, and so we decided that the last outing of summer ought to be spent at the LBJ National Grasslands, in Wise County. It was some combination of work on this book I’m writing about spending time in nature, and just enjoying one more day of summer.

Meghan, Paul and I started at one of the pine groves, those patches of ponderosa pine brought in by the Forest Service long ago and planted here in the Cross Timbers. The series of ponds beneath this grove support huge numbers of cricket frogs, leopard frogs, and a couple of other species. In turn, the frogs help support a community of snakes, both the harmless watersnake and the venomous cottonmouth. We walked along, hearing frogs plunk into the water and seeing a few frogs that did not disappear fast enough.

Beyond the pine grove is a gently rolling landscape of prairie patches and oak woodland dotted with small ponds. Among my prairie favorites are little bluestem and Indiangrass, creating a fine vertical texture of straight stems reaching waist-high or even head-high. The flowering tops and seed heads of Indiangrass remind me of candle flames on impossibly skinny candles. And while the Cross Timbers is dominated by oak trees, there are plenty of junipers scattered through the clumps and belts of woodland. Late summer flowers – goldenrod and various asters – add beautiful colors to the mix.

*A green layer of mostly western ragweed beneath layers of little bluestem and Indiangrass*

Something scaley was spotted – a snake of some kind – around a big fallen tree branch. We searched intensively for a few minutes, but the tall grasses and the tangle of other plants and tree branches concealed the serpent well. My guess is that it found a deeper place of concealment such as a burrow underneath the vegetation, or else made a quick unseen getaway while we were looking elsewhere.

On the walk back, I spotted something stretched across the damp sandy trail. It could have been a stick or an irregular ripple of soil, but that didn’t look right to me. As I approached, twenty feet away or so, it seemed to draw up into some kinks. I walked up on a fairly dark spotted snake that turned out to be a prairie kingsnake.

I gently picked it up, anticipating some thrashing or even a bite, which would have been briefly uncomfortable but of no consequence. Our nonvenomous snakes mostly have small, very sharp needle-like teeth that make small punctures or scratches but need no special treatment. This kingsnake, however, never thrashed, just moved her body as if trying to crawl away. She never offered to bite. We spent several minutes admiring her (judged to be a “her” because the tail tapered fairly quickly, as opposed to the thicker and longer tails of male snakes, whose reproductive organs are kept inverted inside the first part of the tail), and then released her.

When placed on the trail, she immediately moved to the edge of the leaf litter, nosed down just beneath the thin layer of leaves and vines, and began to disappear under it. The amazing thing was how she gradually disappeared under the leaves without moving them in the slightest or making any sounds. The snake simply dissolved into the prairie!

A little further down the trail, Meghan was determined to find another snake, and her attention was drawn to an area beside the trail with some old fallen branches that offered some cover. Sure enough, she spotted a small snake, fast and agile and therefore hard to get a good look at to verify that it was harmless. I hurried to where she was, and she wanted me to identify whether it was safe for her to pick up. I got a glimpse of scales and said “yes.” Together we lifted a piece of wood and as the snake took off in her direction, she restrained it and picked it up.

This was a baby western coachwhip, a snake that can grow to around six feet in length, although most are not quite that long. Babies are born in late summer and measure a little over a foot long. Based on time of year and length, this little snake had not been out of the egg very long. A coachwhip’s big, piercing eyes hint at its daytime hunting strategy, visually locating lizards or even big grasshoppers and chasing them down. It is hard to imagine winning a race with a determined coachwhip, not because they are so fast in miles per hour but because of their agility in weaving through branches and around rocks.

On the final part of our walk, back through the pine grove, we spotted a watersnake slipping over the banks of one of the ponds and into the water. I got enough of a look at its body shape and especially its movement to know that it was a harmless watersnake. While cottonmouths can move quickly, they never seem to have the grace and speed of a watersnake. While this one immediately slipped beneath the water, a cottonmouth would typically (not always!) ride along the water’s surface, more focused on looking around it or simply sitting still. A watersnake fleeing danger usually swims at high speed, along the bottom, until it finds a place of concealment where it can wait for danger to pass.

We visited other places and stayed until sunset, admiring things like eryngo, that beautiful, prickly purple plant found at the end of the summer. Sunset was subtle but beautiful, offering a wonderful way to say goodbye to summer.

A Walk in the November Woods

November 18, 2019 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

(I’m very fortunate to be able to use some photos by Meghan Cassidy in this post. The captions identify which ones are hers, but basically the way to tell is to look for the really good ones – they’re hers!)

*A patch of prairie at the LBJ National Grasslands*

On a visit to the Lyndon B. Johnson National Grasslands in Wise County, we walked a long trail through straw- and rust-colored grasses and through the stands of oak trees that are the signature of the Western Cross Timbers. Sunny days like this in autumn are perfect for walking in the woods and prairies. The slanting sunlight and the colors of grasses and leaves (even when they are mostly shades of straw and brown) result in the landscape having a kind of warm glow, which seems like a comfortable complement to cool or even cold temperatures.

It wasn’t cold, not even a little bit. The high temperatures reached the middle sixties out in the grasslands, and the bright sunshine felt wonderful as we hiked past post oaks and junipers. Juniper is no friend of the grasslands, because without a combination of grazing and periodic fire, these trees can spread and take over. Juniper is invasive, but here is the positive side: the junipers at LBJ Grasslands are beautiful trees and really come to the foreground in winter when they remain green amidst the bare branches of oaks. And the berries! Those little blue berries give a refreshing taste when you chew a couple of them – there is a little sweetness and that aromatic juniper flavor from camphor and other aromatic oils.

The berries, we are told, are really modified seed cones and not true berries at all. Sort of a blue, tasty variation on the pine cone theme. But it’s only a little taste; much of what lies under that blue coating is a seed, so there is not much to eat. Some junipers produce berries while others produce pollen. In winter, some of those male junipers take on a golden cast from all the pollen just waiting to be lifted by the breeze and carried to the female plant.

*Meghan Cassidy’s photo of the jumping spider*

My companions made the walk that much more enjoyable. Meghan Cassidy and Paul Mendoza are good company and knowledgeable about the natural world, particularly insects and arachnids. And those little jointy-legged critters came out to greet them in numbers greater than we would have expected. They discovered a little jumping spider on the trail which Meghan took great pains to get lots of photos of. All of us enjoyed seeing harvester ants out, and we wondered about the ones emerging from holes without the bare circle that usually marks the entrance to a colony. Lots of harvestmen were on the move. These might look a little like spiders but are only cousins. Everyone is familiar with “daddy long-legs” – the little dot of a body surrounded by eight long, impossibly delicate legs. None of them can spin webs and none have a venomous bite.

*Another of Meghan’s photos: this is one of the harvestmen we saw*

Despite being mid-November, a couple of herps graced us with their presence. Cricket frogs were out at a pond and even in some small, scooped out pools where rainwater had collected. And along one trail, a young ribbonsnake slipped among the leaves, just long enough for me to see those beautiful stripes but not long enough to capture it for a closer look. Happy cricket frog hunting, my friend!

*A cricket frog, hiding under the water (photo by Meghan Cassidy)*

Several times we heard a little commotion in the leaf litter and were able to see an armadillo digging for invertebrates. They stop and probe the leaves and soil, sometimes scratching a short, conical excavation into the soil as they look for insects, worms, and any other animal matter that they may expose. After a short, snuffling exploration of one spot, they move a short distance and try again. David Schmidly’s The Mammals of Texas (Revised Edition) reports that much of their diet is larval and adult scarab beetles, followed by termites and ants, and then caterpillars, earthworms, millipedes, and other invertebrates. A few reptiles and amphibians are taken occasionally, probably examples of small herps being in the wrong place at the wrong time. An armadillo snuffling through the leaf litter can’t be too particular about what they turn up.

*Meghan’s photo of one of the armadillos*

We enjoyed our opportunities for a little armadillo watching, and sometimes we were able to get quite close. They cannot see well, so if you are quiet and stay downwind so that they cannot detect you by smell, you might get very near to one. Once they do detect you, they may jump in surprise and then crash off through the underbrush, protected from thorns and branches by their bony armor.

We talked a good bit about Blackjack Oak and Post Oak and marveled at the variety of leaves that we saw. Some looked like hybrids and there were other oak species scattered here and there. I recalled that Blackjack acorns were said to be bitter, while those of the Post Oak were more tasty and sweet. We put this to the test, as Paul cracked a Post Oak acorn and Meghan trimmed the dark husk away. A little sample of the nut was delicious.

*Near a limestone ridge at LBJ National Grasslands*

*A last blaze of grasses and oaks before sunset*

At the end of the day, we visited a limestone ridge a few miles away but still within LBJ Grasslands. Instead of Little Bluestem, the grasses here were dominated by a shorter, uniformly straw-colored species surrounding the scattered oaks and junipers. Numerous Grooved Nipple Cacti were scattered on the ridge top, growing in small mounds in the thin soil barely covering the “walnut shell” limestone. Here, we sat and watched the sun set, looking out across an area of woodland and ranch land stretching into the distance. I sat on that limestone, a conglomerate of ancient oyster shells cemented together into gray slabs, and watched the sun make a nearby oak sapling glow red-orange and then darken as the sun was obscured by some bands of clouds. When the sun re-emerged, those beautiful oak leaves glowed brighter. Gradually nature turned down the lights, and those leaves dimmed to dull red. The horizon, however, was still a glowing ember, holding on for a time and painting the undersides of the clouds red and then pink, and then they all faded to blue-gray and closed a very beautiful day in the woods.

Orb-Weavers and Quiet Conversation

August 27, 2019 / Michael Smith / 1 Comment

*Spotted Orb-weaver, trying to hide under a leaf*

In August, mornings are the best times to take a walk, although that advantage begins to disappear not long after 9:00am as the bright burning sun rises to a nice, hot angle overhead. Add a little overnight rain and it’s like wearing a hot, wet sweater in the sunshine. But what’s a little sweat and discomfort when there are woods and wildlife to see? My friend Barbara, her two kids, and I hit a trail through part of the LBJ Grasslands Saturday morning with no regrets. Or only a couple of regrets, maybe!

This trail threads its way through oak woodlands and small openings that people call “pocket prairies” because the Little Bluestem and other native grasses make miniature prairies tucked away among the trees. A wild profusion of flowers hung on this year until the Fourth of July (when Jo and I visited – see the earlier blog post). Some are still tucked away in these pocket prairies, including lots of bitterweed, the beautiful little scarlet pea growing at ground level, and other flowers. On the way out, we saw a few Snow-On-the-Prairie, a favorite of mine.

*Snow-On-the Prairie, a lovely plant with an irritating milky sap*

However, if you walk along the trail looking for flowers, you’re apt to run smack into the web of one of the Spotted Orb-weavers that spin silk into concentric rings suspended between nearby tree branches. These chunky spiders are extremely common here, so bumping a web is pretty much unavoidable. Most of the time we saw the silken orbs and could dodge around it or duck under it, but not always.

Nick, who is eleven, is the shortest of the group right now (just you wait until he hits a growth spurt!) and so he had the easiest time. He’s also got good eyes for such things, and often warned us when we were about to face-palm into one of the webs. Nick’s keen vision also got us our only reptile sighting, a very small lizard skittering through the leaf litter. He described it as gray and said it did not look like the Little Brown Skink we saw on our last trip here, so perhaps it was a hatchling Texas Spiny Lizard. Nick also came up with an earthstar (a “False Earthstar” to distinguish it from a related fungus), which I always think of as a magical sort of thing to find. False Earthstars are fungi with an outer cover that splits into rays and opens in response to humidity, exposing a sac rather like a puffball, full of spores. Great find, Nick!

*An Earthstar, this one seen at the Gus Engeling Wildlife Management Area early last year*

Dani liked to walk ahead of the rest of us. She’s a friendly, smart thirteen-year-old who said she tends to either go ahead or lag behind, even when she enjoys the group she is with. However, walking ahead down spider web alley means you’re going to plow through the webs – and she did, numerous times. She would smack into it, hands desperately clawing at her hair and face to clear the silk away, and run back to have her mom check her for stray spiders. After a moment’s recovery, off she would go to risk further entanglement! I share that same reaction when running into a web, and so I responded with empathy the first time – “Oh, no, I hate when that happens.” But after a time or two when she took the lead again, I had to chuckle when the inevitable happened. No harm done; like her brother, she said she enjoyed the walk (except for the part about the hot, muggy, sweaty morning … and the getting up early to come here). And, I’m pretty sure the kids would want you to know that I had my own freaked-out, sputtering moment when I ran into a web.

*A Spotted Orb-weaver holding a prey item caught in its web*

We stopped at a pond and looked for Red-eared Sliders poking their heads above the water’s surface, but this time did not see any. We did see plenty of Cricket Frogs, and a young American Bullfrog that ducked under the water before I could get a photo. Compared to the crowds of leopard frogs we saw on our walk on July 28, this pond was nearly frog-less.

*The pond where we saw Cricket Frogs and an American Bullfrog*

As we walked, Barbara and I talked about old times. She’s the founder of the DFW Turtle and Tortoise Club and we’re both veterans of the DFW Herpetological Society. However, going out into the field with her is a recent thing, and part of her motivation is seeing Nick and Dani spend more time in wild (or semi-wild) places. We both see time spent in nature as physically, psychologically, and spiritually nurturing. I don’t mean “spiritually” in anything more than what happens when the “built” world is stripped away and we have the chance to feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, something grand and beyond our comprehension. Of course, the various parts of the natural world are comprehensible through the science of biology, and we have some understanding of how the parts work together through the science of ecology. But without picking it apart into food webs, species, and ecosystems, on one level the whole thing seems bigger than our scientific understanding. And being wrapped in it, walking through it, feels good!

After a while, the kids declared that maybe we had walked enough, and so we sat in the shade on the cool, sandy trail, drinking water and talking quietly. We talked a little about what we were seeing, but we also talked about other things: how “paying attention” works and the things that can interfere with it, what it’s like to navigate different peer groups and how we can have different styles to match different groups, and such things. Sitting in the shade of the Post Oaks after a walk is the best way to have such conversations. The woods quiet the mind, relax the spirit, and invite calm reflection.

The walk back was warmer and went more quickly. Before long the car came into view, but for me there’s always a little bit of reluctance to leave. There were still so many kinds of flowers tucked away in the grasses, and in a little bare patch of wet, sandy soil a group of small yellow butterflies was fluttering around, looking for the best place to land and pull a little moisture from the damp sand. So much to see and experience!

At the Grasslands, With Bug Nerds

July 14, 2019July 14, 2019 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

I’m seeing more of the LBJ National Grasslands this summer than I have in a while, and it’s been wonderful. The rainfall over the past eight or nine months have resulted in a bonanza of plant life, which leads to a bonanza of bug life, and so on down the food chain. Yesterday, I visited again with a couple of “bug nerd” friends (shorthand for “people who know a lot about invertebrates and other stuff I don’t know”).

*Prairies and oak woodlands of the Western Cross Timbers*

Actually, Meghan and Paul are all-around fans of the entire natural world, which is just my kind of folks. We talked about the Post Oaks and Blackjack Oaks which are the signature trees for this ecoregion, and Little Bluestem grass and Partridge Pea and what the difference might be between Meadow Pink and Prairie Gentian, and bent over to look at a hundred different plants. Meghan suggested it would be fun to come back and try to inventory all the diversity of grasses and forbs in a one-meter space, which we all agreed would be a long list.

But just as I am first and foremost a “herp nerd,” these guys are “bug nerds” and more specifically, Meghan specializes in spiders. It’s an interesting and probably helpful collaboration, as I still have enough residual arachnophobia that I won’t handle spiders (though I can examine and photograph them with no problem). As the sun neared the horizon after 7:00pm, we started noticing lots of the orb-weaving spiders that cast their nets between branches and across the trail. I admire the concentric lines in their webs, but hate running into them.

Then, as we talked about the three-lobed leaves of Blackjack Oak with the little spine at the end of the lobes, I spotted a favorite amphibian, resting quietly on one of those Blackjack leaves and waiting for night to fall. It was a Gray Treefrog, currently showing the mottled green color that they can assume when they are not mottled shades of gray. There was no telling which species of Gray Treefrog we were looking at, as Hyla versicolor (sometimes called the “Eastern Gray Treefrog”) and Hyla chrysoscelis (Cope’s Gray Treefrog) are just about indistinguishable except by their calls and their DNA. H. versicolor has a second set of chromosomes, so that they have twice the number of chromosomes as Cope’s Gray Treefrog. Cope’s also has a more rasping and less musical trill than the Eastern Gray Treefrog.

*Little Bluestem in the lengthening shadows of evening*

I’ve noticed that I didn’t take photos of the spiders we saw, but I did take a couple of photos of grassland insects. One was a stick insect we came across, and the other was one of the thousands of grasshoppers (and a few katydids) that scattered as we passed through.

*Grasshopper, with an ant disappearing behind a leaf at lower left*

The grasslands were beautiful as sunset approached and a nearly full moon took its place in the sky. We were privileged to be able to visit this place.

*Sunset on the grasslands, near Alvord, TX*

But we weren’t done yet. Some evening road-cruising failed to turn up the usual Broad-banded Copperheads, but we were treated to a couple of Western Ratsnakes. These snakes are harmless – or let’s just say that they are “non-venomous.” Completely mild-mannered when left alone, they are pugnacious when picked up. I picked up each one so we could examine these beautiful animals, and Meghan wanted to interact with them, too. Knowing they could not hurt her in any important way, she said that she was unconcerned about being bitten. The second one was more than willing to put that to the test, and promptly bit her. After we admired and then released the snake, we looked at the pattern of little punctures on her arm, and she was delighted to see how these snakes have two rows of palatine teeth (fixed to bones in the area where the palate would be in the upper part of the mouth) between the usual rows of maxillary teeth. Four rows of teeth! And being able to discuss and enjoy that little bit of natural history based on the bleeding evidence of your arm, that’s the sign of a real naturalist!

This Is Our Land

July 5, 2019August 25, 2019 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

When the sun comes shining, then I was strolling
In wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling
The voice come chanting as the fog was lifting
This land was made for you and me
– Woody Guthrie

Bang! It’s the Fourth of July.

A day when we might celebrate the founding of this country, and what that meant. We refused to live under a tyrant and were determined to go our own way. What amazing possibilities there were, as expressed in words like, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ….” Many of our dreams are noble, even if we stumble sometimes.

But Jo and I could not stay home and watch on TV as tanks rumbled through Washington, D.C., even if they were our tanks. We decided to celebrate what Woody Guthrie celebrated, that we share a beautiful and extraordinary landscape, some parts of which belong to all of us. It is our collective inheritance, unless we give it away or destroy it.

We decided to visit the LBJ National Grasslands up above Decatur, mostly in Wise County. It is a patchwork of over twenty thousand acres scattered among small farms, ranches, or homes. Most of it is mixed oak woodlands with little pocket prairies or big open areas where native grasses like Little Bluestem and Indiangrass can flourish. The soil is mostly sand or clay, and in places the loose sand has eroded around the streams and ponds. The Grasslands is located within the Western Cross Timbers ecoregion and seems pretty typical of the Post Oak and Blackjack Oak forests and patches of prairie.

My visits to the Grasslands started in 2001, with an afternoon and evening spent finding reptiles and amphibians with Steve Campbell. Multiple kingsnakes, ratsnakes, watersnakes, greensnakes, copperheads, turtles, frogs and toads later (all in one day!) the place was a favorite. Over the years since that first trip, I have tried to educate myself about some of the other plants and animals there. It is a work in progress, and I have a lot still to learn – and what a pleasant task that is! “Which juniper is that? Is that a Gulf Fritillary butterfly? What is that flower?” The questions just keep coming, along with a few answers.

One trip to the Grasslands happened on a really hot day in late May last year when I led some members of the Friends of the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge in search of herps. The first part, which we will call the “heat exhaustion” portion of the trip, failed to turn up the Texas Spiny Lizards and Western Coachwhips that Clint and I anticipated. However, at 7:30pm (with the sun low and late afternoon shading into evening) we spotted an Ornate Box Turtle, a species that is no longer seen nearly as often as it once was. Then, exploring around a small pond just after dark, we saw a couple of ribbonsnakes, a watersnake, and we watched a baby Northern Cottonmouth swim across the water to avoid us. My attempts to get a good photograph of it clearly demonstrated how nonaggressive these snakes usually are, as it kept trying to get away without ever attempting to bite. Finally, at the end of our visit, we were able to gather around a beautiful Broad-banded Copperhead on the road, another potentially dangerous snake that really just wants to be left alone.

Today there were no box turtles, although I did think about that possibility when we arrived early enough in the morning that the temperatures were very moderate. We didn’t see any snakes, either, but there were plenty of flowers, and the landscape was green and lush after all the rain we have had this spring and early summer. The season of basketflowers and thistles is winding down, though we did see some in places. A metallic green bee was visiting one of them.

We both love Little Bluestem, and today there were plenty of pocket prairies and fields with the blue-green clumps of this native grass among the other grasses. The little bunches of bluish leaves are gorgeous, but as they send up those straight, tall stalks they really stand out.

In one of those bluestem prairies I spotted a few White Rosinweed, a species of compass-plant. This one is a Texas endemic – that is, found nowhere else but in the central part of Texas, in prairies from near the Red River down to Austin. Its leaves are big, with long and narrow lobes, with a stiff, sandpapery feel. The white flowers are beautiful.

We also saw lots of Spotted Horsemint (aka Spotted Beebalm). Jo is a particular fan of this plant, which is taller and less colorful than Lemon Beebalm, but its whorls of tiny-spotted flowers (in layers alternating with leaf-like bracts that may be tinged purple) are beautiful when examined close up.

There were also patches of what I imagine were Black-eyed Susan and Meadow Pink, making a beautiful carpet of yellow and pink in some open areas. We saw them at roadside and in open areas near stands of oak, and the flowers made a gorgeous tapestry.

We are also both big fans of Silverleaf Nightshade, a plant with beautiful violet flowers with yellow stamens. The stems and leaves are somewhat hairy, making them look rather pale. They are related to the tomato plant, but the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center describes Silverleaf Nightshade as an “aggressive, poisonous weed.” That doesn’t discourage us in the slightest in our appreciation of this plant. In one location, we found several beetles crawling on these plants, a sort of velvety-tan insect with little or no markings on the wing covers or elytra, but black antennae, legs, and black-bordered segments of the abdomen. Best I can tell, these may have been some sort of blister beetle in the genus Epicauta (thanks, Meghan Rose, for suggesting this identification).

Grasshoppers were everywhere, ranging from the slender, slant-faced grasshoppers to big lubbers. I took a photo of a beautiful katydid, which iNaturalist suggests was one of the round-headed katydids.

In one little roadside puddle, I spotted a young bullfrog with his head angled up out of the water, but he retreated before I could get out of the car and I didn’t dig through the caliche mud to try to find where he was hiding. The same little spot had several cricket frogs. We weren’t sure where these frogs will go when the puddle dries, but I’m confident they will find their way. We were just grateful that they provided a few sightings of herpetofauna while we were out.

And that was our Fourth of July celebration. No fireworks, no “blowing stuff up,” and no parades. Just an appreciation of one spot among the public lands shared by all of us.

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LBJ National Grasslands