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.
“A sudden encounter with a large, angry bull snake in the wild can be an awesome, even frightening experience for the uninitiated. Almost everything about the reptile’s defensive behavior looks or sounds menacing.”
– John Werler and James Dixon, Texas Snakes
A defensive bullsnake from near Menard, TX. The vertical flap of tissue (epiglottis) can be seen toward the back of the mouth.
The bullsnake is a large snake, growing to lengths greater than five feet and occasionally approaching nine feet, according to Werler & Dixon. When threatened, this large snake generally pulls itself into a coil, vibrates its tail, and with head and neck held high and ready to strike, it hisses loudly. The snake’s mouth is open at least partly. A vertical flap of cartilage at the opening of the windpipe amplifies that hiss so that it is loud and has a little rattling quality, suggesting the high buzz of a defensive rattlesnake.
If the source of threat is very close, the bullsnake will then strike at the offending animal or human with a dramatic hiss. Occasionally it is just a bluff; Clint King and I picked one up off a road one time to keep it from being hit by a car, and it hissed but never tried to bite. More often, bullsnakes are willing to bite. Their rows of sharp teeth leave nothing more than scratches, as the teeth are small and the snake has no venom.
A few bullsnakes have more timid or calm temperaments, especially those bred in captivity. Knowing how intimidating they can be when frightened, a calm bullsnake can seem like a gentle giant as its big, powerful body moves across your arms or shoulders. A snake like that is my favorite choice for educational presentations, hopefully adding to participants’ appreciation for native species.
A young bullsnake from near Weatherford, TX.
A bullsnake’s neck has dark brown rounded or irregular blotches which gradually become spaced further apart. There are dark blotches and spots on the side of the body as well, on a sandy or yellowish-brown ground color. Near the tail, the dorsal blotches become darker and the tail is nearly ringed by these dark blotches on a yellowish-tan ground color. The head is a light caramel or yellowish color with some dark freckles, and a darker brown band crosses the snout just in front of the eyes and runs diagonally through each eye and back toward the jaw line. Where most of our nonvenomous snakes have two prefrontal scales on the top of the head just in front of the eyes, the bullsnake (and the pine and gopher snakes) have four.
The four prefrontal scales can be seen just at the front of that dark band across the head.
Let’s talk just for a moment about that name for the genus – Pituophis. Where does that name come from? A book from 1974, Snakes of the American West, claimed that this name translated to “phlegm serpent,” but this appears to be an error. I’ve seen a similar claim made in a self-published book on Amazon. I went looking for the real etymology of the word.
The second part of the genus (“-ophis”) means snake, but the first part derives from a Greek word for pine (“pitys”). An earlier synonym for the genus was spelled “Pityophis,” but you have to look through the research literature from many years ago to see that spelling. No matter how much the hiss sounds wet and rattling, it is not a “phlegm serpent.”
Where are they found?
The bullsnake is one of several species of Pituophis in the U.S. that range from coast to coast and from Canada to Mexico. In the eastern U.S., they are called pine snakes, and in the western U.S. they are gopher snakes. In the middle, reaching from northern Mexico up through central and west Texas, stretching out in the Plains states and up to southern Canada, is the bullsnake.
In Texas, the bullsnake is found west of a line that runs approximately through the DFW metroplex down through San Antonio to around Victoria, according to Dixon. Around the Pecos River, it transitions into another subspecies, the Sonoran gophersnake.
A juvenile Sonoran gophersnake (perhaps an intergrade with the bullsnake) from near the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas.
Natural history accounts of the bullsnake usually mention their preference for prairies and grasslands. A study from southwestern Wisconsin showed that they preferred bluffs with open spaces between trees and did not use closed canopy forest or agricultural lands (Kapfer and others, 2008). Werler & Dixon mention the bullsnake’s fondness for agricultural fields containing rodent prey. I don’t know how to reconcile the statements about agricultural lands.
What do they eat?
Most of the bullsnake’s diet is made up of small mammals such as mice, rats, gophers, and ground squirrels. They spend considerable time exploring burrows and tunnels to find their prey, according to Werler & Dixon. The snake is very well adapted for such behavior. The bones in the snout are more rigid than those of most snakes so that in sandy soil it can use its head to dig. The bullsnake’s skills as an excavator were described by Carpenter, who tested eight bullsnakes in an enclosure with sand substrate. The snakes generally began prodding the sand next to a stable object and began digging sand with sideways movements of the head. Then, the snake bent its head to the side to scoop loosened sand and move it away. A loop of the neck continued to push the sand backward. In further testing, bullsnakes were seen to excavate tunnels up to a meter long. Additionally, Carpenter examined whether bullsnakes would recognize pocket gopher mounds, and showed that these snakes actively explore and excavate pocket gopher burrows in attempt to eat the gophers.
Once they locate a gopher or other prey animal, the bullsnake grabs and constricts it with powerful coils. What about rodents discovered in burrows? There may not be space to wrap around the rodent, and so the bullsnake uses a portion of its body to press the animal against the side of the burrow, ultimately having similar effect to constriction.
Bullsnakes are also reported to be fond of eating eggs, raiding the nests of ducks and other birds.
How do they reproduce?
Bullsnakes mate “soon after they leave hibernation,” according to Werler & Dixon, in “late April or May” (page 235). A study by Iverson and others in the sandhills of Nebraska found courtship and mating to occur in May and egg-laying to occur in June or July. Bullsnakes lay very big eggs in protected, moist locations and they hatch around two months later. The babies are a little over a foot long.
As our climate changes, winter dormancy may end earlier. Could this result in a shift in reproductive timing? And will hatchlings emerge into a hotter, drier environment here in Texas and find it difficult to thrive? I suppose we do not know.
What conservation challenges do they face?
In the Iverson study in Nebraska mentioned above, the authors stated, “At the most intensive site of removal, where every bullsnake observed along a 1,100-m drift fence was removed or relocated for 8 consecutive years (Gimlet Lake), number of snakes captured during the same period each year did not decrease” (p. 59). That may be encouraging news about the potential for these snakes to withstand collection. It is not clear whether they can withstand other threats like habitat loss.
NatureServe shows the bullsnake as a species of “special concern” in Canada because of habitat loss and road mortality, while it is “secure” in the U.S. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers bullsnakes and gophersnakes (Pituophis catenifer) a species of “least concern.”
Carpenter, C.C. 1982. The bullsnake as an excavator. Journal of Herpetology, 16(4), Pp. 394-401.
Dixon, J.R. 2013. Amphibians and Reptiles of Texas, 3rd Edition. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Iverson, J.B., Young, C.A., Akre, T.S.B., & C.M. Griffiths. 2012. Reproduction by Female Bullsnakes (Pituophis catenifer sayi) in the Nebraska Sandhills. Southwestern Naturalist, 57(1), 58-73.
Kapfer, J.M., J.R. Coggins and R. Hay. 2008. Spatial ecology and habitat selection of bullsnakes (Pituophis catenifer sayi) at the northern periphery of their geographic range. Copeia 2008(4), Pp. 815-826.
Shaw, C.E. & S. Campbell. 1974. Snakes of the American West. NY: Knopf.
Werler, J.E. & J.R. Dixon. 2000. Texas Snakes: Identification, Distribution, and Natural History. Austin: University of Texas Press.
— “Crawling Kingsnake,” John Lee Hooker (and The Doors & others)
Speckled kingsnake from southeast Texas
Even among people who don’t like snakes, kingsnakes get a certain respect and even liking. They are able to eat rattlesnakes and have considerable immunity to the venom, and some people assume that the kingsnake prefers to hunt them down. Most people recognize that the kingsnake is not venomous, and so they may grudgingly call it a “good” snake.
Kingsnakes constitute a big group, found across the U.S. from coast to coast. They are medium-sized to fairly big snakes with muscular bodies and relatively small heads. Here in Texas you can find the speckled kingsnake, the desert kingsnake, and the prairie kingsnake.
A fully grown speckled kingsnake may be three or four feet in length, but a few individuals reach greater lengths. Speckled kingsnakes are black or very dark brown with yellow to cream-colored speckles down their backs. As you travel across Texas from east to west, the speckled pattern gradually shades into the desert kingsnake’s pattern in which a series of dark blotches runs down the snake’s back. Those blotches interrupt the otherwise speckled pattern of the desert kingsnake. The scales are smooth and often give the snake a glossy appearance.
On the belly, the scales of speckled and desert kingsnakes may be yellow with black blotches or (especially in desert kingsnakes) mostly black with some areas of yellow.
Where are they found?
Speckled kingsnakes often choose habitat that is near water and has plenty of low vegetation and ground cover. Along the upper Texas coast, speckled kingsnakes may live in coastal prairie and on barrier islands near marshes, according to Werler & Dixon. In other parts of east and central Texas, they may be found in woodlands, prairies, and old fields as well as in the vicinity of marshes and other wetlands. In Arkansas, Plummer studied a population in an area that included irrigation ditches and levees, bottomland forest, and agricultural fields. The snakes mostly used shrubby areas on the levees and did not make use of agricultural areas. The kingsnakes were radio-tracked and when found they were usually concealed or underground (such as in an old mammal burrow).
What do they eat?
Speckled kingsnakes make use of a wide variety of prey, including small mammals, lizards and other snakes, frogs, reptile eggs, and the occasional bird. The kingsnake bites the prey to get hold of it and then wraps several coils around the animal’s body. Kingsnakes are powerful constrictors, and the pressure of those coils kills not just by making breathing impossible but apparently also by stopping circulation. Researchers studying boa constrictors found that constriction quickly and dramatically reduced blood flow and heart rate.
In at least one study, mice were the principal prey, but these kingsnakes are able to subdue and eat our native venomous snakes as well as nonvenomous ones. A snake that is as long as the kingsnake is swallowed and becomes kinked or folded in order to fit in the kingsnake’s lengthy stomach.
Other reports show that kingsnakes in this group are very fond of turtle eggs and have even been observed watching and waiting while a female turtle laid eggs (reported in Werler & Dixon).
How do they defend themselves?
These snakes cannot make an especially fast escape and they have no venom and only small, recurved teeth. Their best defense is to avoid being seen, and most of their time in spent concealed in low vegetation and leaf litter, under tree stumps or flat rocks, or underground. These places not only offer concealment, they are great places for them to look for prey. As temperature increases, speckled kingsnakes become more nocturnal.
If confronted or captured, however, speckled kingsnakes often pull back in a striking position and will bite, often hanging on and chewing with strong jaws. If grabbed, the snake thrashes and expels feces as well as a bad-smelling musk, making it an unpleasant experience for a human captor and maybe taking away from the appeal of the snake as a meal for a raccoon or coyote. It must be emphasized that for a human who discovers a speckled kingsnake and simply observes it, there is no danger whatsoever.
How are they related to other kingsnakes?
For years, speckled kingsnakes were part of a group called “common kingsnakes” that ranged across the southern U.S. from coast to coast. They are generally dark snakes with some sort of pattern – for example, black and white bands or stripes in California, the speckles of the desert and speckled kingsnakes, and a light chain-like pattern along the east coast. The snake was scientifically known as Lampropeltis getula, with different subspecies. The speckled subspecies was (or is) Lampropeltis getula holbrooki.
In recent years, researchers using genetic analysis proposed that these snakes are not all one species, and only the most eastern form is the species getula. The speckled kingsnake was said to be its own species, Lampropeltis holbrooki. The desert kingsnake is L. splendida.
Most readers will not want to go into the biology and genetics of these decisions, but let’s just say that not all biologists agree, and have pointed out flaws in the methodology used to split these snakes into their own species (such as relying too much on mitochondrial DNA rather than nuclear DNA and failing to consider how they are not reproductively distinct – where their ranges meet, they breed and produce intermediate forms). If you are interested, read the 2020 paper by David Hillis.
Speckled kingsnake seen at Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge on the Texas coast
How do they reproduce?
When male speckled kingsnakes search for females in the spring, they may engage in combat with other males. It is termed “combat” but it really does not result in harm to either snake; it is more like wrestling in which the dominant snake forces his opponent’s upper body to the ground. Kingsnakes mate in spring and females lay a clutch of eggs in early summer. Werler & Dixon report that there may be 2 to 17 eggs, laid in a moist location such as within rotting vegetation or in an abandoned burrow. Within 2 to 2.5 months, the eggs hatch. The babies are a little under a foot long and the speckles are initially fused across the back into squiggly crossbars.
What conservation problems do they face?
NatureServe rates the speckled kingsnake as “secure” in Texas. While habitat loss may reduce some populations, overall there are no major threats listed.
It is worth adding that as a group, our reptiles and amphibians are in serious trouble, with some species in greater decline than others. Several factors are serious threats to both reptiles and amphibians: habitat loss, pollution, climate change, invasive species, overcollection, and disease or parasitism, as described by Gibbons, et al.
Plummer, M.V. 2010. Habitat Use and Movements of Kingsnakes (Lampropeltis getula holbrooki) in a Partially Abandoned and Reforested Agricultural Landscape. Herpetological Conservation and Biology 5(2), 214-222.
Werler, J.E. & J.R. Dixon. 2000. Texas Snakes: Identification, Distribution, and Natural History. Austin: University of Texas Press.
We may feel big, like the most important thing in the Universe, re-shaping the planet and living in worlds of technology and invention. We have been to the moon and back; we could, in a fit of international rage, make the planet unlivable (we came close during my lifetime, and might again). We have created an industrial system that is currently making the planet unlivable, but being like gods, we are sure that we can continue to live anyway.
But some of us don’t feel so big, at least on a collective level. Sure, we sometimes make the mistake of grandiosity as individuals, but we aren’t convinced that we have special rights to convert our world into the exclusive garden of Homo sapiens. We feel a relationship with the living things around us that includes respect and relatedness. We may be consumers, but we’d rather it not be in the industrial sense of consumer and product.
Many of us seek connection with something bigger than we are. Sometimes we sit and look at the heavens and see something so big that it reminds us of our true size. We might experience awe and gratitude. At such times, we might have a desire to relieve suffering or add to the goodness of the world. Could we describe those feelings and that intentionality as prayer?
Practitioners of forest therapy sometimes ask the woods for permission to enter a particular spot. Treating trees, rocks, or rivers as sentient, as beings whose wishes need to be considered, also appears in some Native American cultures and in ancient Japanese Shinto practices. A person might wade into a stream and say “thank you for your cool, clear water.” They might silently say, “May my presence here cause no harm.”
Are such things prayers? I don’t know the answer, but I do greatly value our experiences of awe, of gratitude, of stepping outside of ourselves to connect with something greater. I wish that those things, along with humility and acceptance of the limits of our understanding, were more common.
Like many of us in the U.S. I grew up periodically attending a Christian church and learning the basic stories. I was of course taught it as outright history, not as myth and metaphor. No one questioned how Noah collected pairs of all the world’s animals or got them all on a handmade boat. We learned that praying was talking to God, imagined as an old man like in the Renaissance paintings. Maybe talking but usually asking – for forgiveness or for rescue from danger and disease. Or maybe for stuff we wanted.
I’m not promoting that, and I would go along with those critics who point out that throughout the ages, organized religion has been a great source of misery for many (and a malignant source of personal power and enrichment for quite a few). Jesus’ teachings described a radical love for all, envisioning a society turned upside-down, with the high and privileged brought low and the poor and humble elevated. All this was quickly transformed into a religion in which the right beliefs allowed us to escape eternal torture. Popes dressed in splendor and wielded immense power; so much for the privileged being brought low.
And now we have prosperity gospels claiming that being rich is a reward from God (and therefore being poor must be a sign of failure). So much for elevating the poor. Christian Nationalism is a movement seeking essentially to turn the U.S. into a theocracy, welding the beliefs of the church onto the power of the state. No wonder Christianity is losing ground. A Pew Research Center study finds that fewer people in the U.S. identify as Christian, and 29% say that they are atheist, agnostic, or “nothing in particular.”
So should we throw away the idea of prayer, along with the rest of religion? Even when the prosperity preachers and dominionists have gone away, our capacity for awe and our tendency to believe that there is something bigger than us will remain. Many of us will still seek a connection beyond ourselves.
Some might consider prayer to be very abstract, a process of opening oneself to the beauty and symmetry of a flower or the immense dome of the sky overhead. There is awe and gratitude in those moments, transcending oneself and feeling a part of such things, of all of creation.
Others may pray in a very direct and personal way, such as Willie Nelson describes in one of the songs from the album, Spirit:
“Remember the family, Lord?
I know they will remember You
And all of their prayers, Lord
They talk to You just like I do”
– Willie Nelson, “Too Sick to Pray”
A famous prayer of St. Francis, the “Canticle of the Sun,” expresses gratitude to the Lord for Brother Sun and Sister Moon, as well as for the wind and air, the water, and Mother Earth. There is also gratitude for those people who forgive and endure trials in their lives. He saw all of creation as a wonderful gift, and all the parts of it – including ourselves – related like siblings.
That brings to mind the Thanksgiving Address of the Onondaga Nation of Native Americans. Some of us first encountered it in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Braiding Sweetgrass. Is it a prayer? (Kimmerer says it is not.) From the descriptions I have read, it is a powerful way to affirm the group’s identity and values, its gratitude and the relationship of reciprocity between the people and the rest of nature. Participants in a meeting or students in a classroom recite words beginning with these:
“Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Now our minds are one.”
Subsequent portions of the Address express thanks to the Earth, to the waters, the plants, animals, and ultimately “to the Creator, the Great Spirit.” Each time, there is the refrain, “Now our minds are one.”
Chanting, singing, or reciting something in unison can be a powerful way of transcending oneself. Joining our voice with those of others, we are more than just our individual selves, and perhaps we become something greater. And perhaps that is like prayer.
“To whom do you pray,” some might ask, wanting to know what deity we recognize. But there is more than one way to conceive of the divine. One can have a spiritual life without personifying God as a human-like figure modeled after fathers and kings. Neither does God have to be personified as a mountain or a flower; maybe the Creator need not be personified at all. Maybe it’s all much more abstract than that, and maybe it’s unknowable.
It’s not like I have answers. I’m just thinking out loud, into the keyboard, pulling in the bits and pieces that I’ve read and heard and imagining that prayer is broader than what most of us heard in church as we grew up.
I have been walking a lot at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve lately, and maybe it is still winter, but everything that is alive seems to know that it is spring. Some count the beginning of spring according to months, starting with March. Others mark the start of spring when the length of days and nights becomes equal (the “vernal equinox,” March 19th). For wild things that grow and breathe, spring is about temperatures and the length of daylight, and it is also about everything else around them. Spring is a team effort, so that new plant growth and flowering, the awakening of insects, the migration of birds, and lots of other things need to happen together for everything to work right.
A sulphur, probably the clouded sulphur
In the middle of the day on February 20th at the preserve, it was 81.1F in the shade, and insects were on the move, including grasshoppers, wasps, and butterflies. As I walked down the trail, a small sulphur butterfly flew ahead of me to a new place to land among the emerging green plants. It found another sulphur and together they rose, circling each other, and flew away above the treetops. Along the boulder trail I could see six or eight of them at any one time. One would encounter another and they would briefly chase each other in a twirling pattern before separating.
The white flowers of crowpoison, also called “false garlic.” It may be toxic to people, and maybe to crows as well?
On the 26th at midday it was 92.8F in the shade near the north pond, and I heard a few cricket frogs calling for the first time in months. Turtles basked in the sun. High above me, altocumulus clouds were arranged like balls of cotton in a patch of sky. Birds called from nearby trees – Carolina wrens, northern cardinals, Carolina chickadees, and a white-throated sparrow. Further along the trail was a spot with scattered white flowers of crowpoison and the yellow blooms of a plant called golden corydalis. Sometimes people call it “scrambled eggs.”
Golden Corydalis, sometimes called “scrambled eggs”
And then March arrived, and suddenly the plum trees were covered in clusters of white flowers. From a distance, other tree branches mostly looked gray and bare, but here and there you could see a slight green haze of budding leaves. Elbowbush was flowering. On the way to the north pond, when I looked closely I could see that most of the trees and shrubs were budding.
Clustered flowers on a plum tree at the preserve
On March the 2nd according to the calendar it could barely be spring, could it? I sat in my back yard and made a few notes:
Here in this false spring, the tree blossoms are bright white. The winter sun, still low in the sky, makes the day look like perpetual morning. The sun-warmed air moves and is a soft breeze against the skin. It is the morning of the year, the beginning. The flowers and bees know it, and the birds announce it in the trees. What does the chickadee and the cardinal know that the calendar does not?
I sit and look at the sky, the blue canvas where wind, sun, and water scribble and paint. There are dabs, streaks, and lines, white images and symbols in a language familiar but still a bit mysterious. Thin brush strokes make a big heart with a few lines of text, maybe wishing us peace and well being. And then the wind moves it to the east and the canvas is cleared.
In my yard, when I looked down, I found a forest of little blue flowers among leaves of various shapes. In the midst of this two- to four-inch “forest,” the yellow sun of a dandelion shone. A honeybee visited the flower; dandelions are among the first flowers to feed the hive.
The ground was filled with such a beautiful jumble of green shapes. There were bigger, taller ones with leaves like umbrellas with notches and fingers. The appeared to be clusters of about four frilly leaves right at the top of the stem. There was chickweed with long, branching stems and arrow-shaped leaves. Nearby were plants with delicate stems with leaflets off to each side, in the way we think of ferns.
Bird’s eye speedwell
Scattered among these was bird’s eye speedwell, a beautiful little flower that some say was considered a lucky charm, speeding travelers on their way. The flowers are white in the center and have four baby-blue lobes with tiny darker blue pinstripes. Another little plant is called “henbit deadnettle,” with tubular purple flowers. Some of these plants have amazing names, don’t they?
HenbitCommon chickweed in the center, with a four-lobed flower of field madder just to the right
All these leaves and flowers made a tiny jungle inviting us to lie in their softness and explore smells and colors as if it was a tiny world all of its own, separate from streets and sidewalks and the things we normally notice.
And so, never mind the calendar – it is spring. Good morning! May the year treat us well.
Sitting beside the Trinity River, on the Crosstimbers Trail, I wrote, “The place is so big that it makes the voices of the occasional human visitors seem small.” On a warm Friday in February, there were quite a few people at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, making bigness an important quality if the trail was going to live up to the name “refuge.”
This is a big place, as nature centers go. Its 3,621 acres are loved by many, and that is partly because it is big enough for a little solitude. The Crosstimbers trail borders the river for the first half-mile or so, and that’s a popular walk for people who want to see the water and maybe hope to see a ‘gator. Once the trail bends back into the woods, there are fewer people, and once you get pretty far back on that loop trail, you might be on your own for a good while.
Two red-eared sliders – an old melanistic male and a younger one on the log below him
I got started at 10:40am on a day when thin clouds could not hide the sun and you could walk comfortably in a t-shirt. I watched a great blue heron fly over the nearby marsh and said hello to the cooters and sliders basking on fallen logs and branches in the water. There were plenty of American coots swimming nearby.
Three American coots swimming in the river
The bottomland forests beside the river were full of stately old trees – cottonwoods and other species – and they are often entwined with one or another climbing vine including poison ivy. One old cottonwood tree has huge vines braiding around its trunk.
Bare woody branches of shrubs frequently contained a spray of bright red berries where a kind of holly called possumhaw grows. And around me in the woods were the calls of many birds, including Carolina chickadee, tufted titmouse, and northern cardinal (identified by the Merlin bird ID app). My thermometer showed that it was 71.8F at 11:25am.
Then it was time to follow the trail back into the woods. There are plenty of oaks; big bur oaks with big notched leaves and the post oaks that are a signature species of the Cross Timbers region. There is ash, cedar elm, and some hackberry trees. Here and there the woodland opens up to a little glade or pocket prairie with native grasses. I took a few photos on the “pano” setting because today the place seemed so big that only a very wide photo might do it justice.
The trail leads through galleries of old trees and the land slopes away to the north toward a wetland. On the other side, the woodlands and open grassy patches gently climb toward a high place. On my walk, the winds seemed to shift around 11:35am and become cooler.
At what seems to be the highest point, there is a bench, perfect for sitting and taking in the wonderful forms of the trees, the carpet of dropped leaves, and the birds. Today it was very quiet and peaceful.
I started back, and as I walked the breeze scattered leaves ahead of me on the trail. That breeze was strengthening and making its voice heard through the tangle of trees. The branches shredded the current of air. Sometimes it was a whoosh and sometimes a soft roar, falling away to silence.
As I got further along, at one point I looked down the trail to see two deer looking back at me. They were silent and still as statues, sizing me up and deciding if I was a source of trouble. After a moment, the group took off, with those white tails flashing a warning to the rest of the group.
Two white-tailed deer froze on the trail as I came into view
When I reached the river and sat on a bench, there was the chatter of a belted kingfisher somewhere nearby (though I could not see it). Merlin also identified the call of a northern flicker. The thin clouds were pulling apart, and when the sun shone down it felt warm. The temperature had fallen a little to 67.6F, but in the little nook where I sat on my bench, the sunshine felt good.
The kingfisher clattered persistently. Another bird came in for a dramatic fast landing, wingbeats skimming the surface of the river. The bird then paddled around as if nothing had happened, sometimes diving down into the water. With the lens on my camera I got a good enough look to see that it was a pied-billed grebe.
Pied-billed grebe
The relatively thick bill with a dark ring around it was a giveaway. The Cornell website gave more information about what I observed about its diving: it was hunting. This bird likes crayfish and also eats small fish, dragonfly larvae, and it would not mind a leech or a small frog.
In that last hour I was grateful to have seen no one along the trail, and was happy to be by myself. I do like walking with others, but on some days like today, the solitude was peaceful. I am so thankful that Fort Worth has one of the biggest urban preserves in the country – and that it “feels” big.
I’ve just uploaded a “Letters to Nature Kids” issue. These are free, short pdf documents written for young people and anyone else who is still a little bit in touch with that kid they used to be. Most of them focus on some place or some species worth learning about, and some of them have a bit of a holiday theme. This one touches on Groundhog Day, National Send a Card to a Friend Day (obscure, but we should try it!), and of course Valentine’s Day and the various ways that love graces our relationships with friends, spouses, or even nature. I hope you’ll go have a look at it here.
Our Lives In Nature 