Texas Mountain Laurel

The cave’s protruding edge allowed only starlight from the east to illuminate his painted face. Dyes of red and yellow masked his cheeks with singular zig-zag streaks of charcoal carefully drawn on both sides of his nose. He sat now without moving on the buffalo hide staring into the mesquite fire. The residue of pulverized mescal beans was smeared around his lips and hands as water flowed below him between the steep canyon banks of the river.

The Texas Mountain Laurel tree, also known as Mescal Bean and scientifically as Sophora secundiflora is indigenous to the Trans-Pecos. Its beans may have been used as ceremonial sacrament by paleo Indians for thousands of years.

The Mescal Bean is an evergreen shrub with waxy leaves that prefers limestone soil. Like many plants growing in limestone, they are slow growing but can reach heights of 20 feet. Lavender flowers are produced in spring and have a grape aroma. The beans are mature when they reach a red-lacquer and come in kiwi-colored fuzzy pods.

Archeologists from the University of Texas excavated a site near Langtry in the 1960’s.Bones from a now extinct species of Bison, spear points known as Folsom projectiles and residues of Texas Mountain Laurel beans were found. Using radio metric carbon dating, the scientists estimate these items were in use 12,000 years ago by some of North America’s earliest humans.

The recovery of Sophora secundiflora, a nitrogen fixing legume, in the context of these items along with rock paintings suggest the beans were used as a phyto-chemical religious enhancer. Secondary compounds found in the beans include cytistine, an alkaloid related to nicotine and known to cause visions, convulsive fits as well as respiratory failure.

Ceremonial use of the mescal bean by these early American aborigines seems to have come to an end about 1000 AD which may coincide with the transition of the people from hunter-gather to farmers or may suggest a replacement plant was found.

Dragon and Damsel Flies

The sidewinder slithered down the steep dune. Clouds of sand whipped in the air. Bye and bye a sheet of plywood came tumbling out of the sky. It struck the snake severing it in half. Melbourne watched from the lee side of the hill as the snake momentarily paused, each half wiggling. Then a blue dragonfly came and hovered over the snake until the wiggling became unison and the two halves joined. Melbourne scratched his head. “Texas Joiner Snake,” he said. Joachim nodded. “Yep, with help from the snake doctor.”

Dragonflies and Damsel flies are insects from the order Odonata. Characterized by two pairs of transparent wings, six legs and an elongated body these predators diet includes mosquitoes and their larvae, flies, bees, ants, wasps and occasionally butterflies. Dragonflies are some of the fastest insects in the world and an Australian dragonfly, the Southern Giant Darner has been clocked at 60 MPH.

Both dragonflies and damsel flies have multifaceted eyes, but the damsel’s are separated. THe damsel also holds its wings, when at rest, parallel with the body whereas the dragon’s wings are perpendicular. The largest damsel fly, the Forest Giant in South America has a wing span of 7.5 inches.

There are over 250 species of damsel and dragon flies in Texas. The Common Blue Damsel fly is common in the Trans-Pecos and can usually be found in spring and summer near tanks, cienagas and rivers. These insects undergo a three stage metamorphosis; egg, nymph and adult. The nymph or larvae stage is an aquatic being.

In some places of the world, dragon and damsel flies are eaten. For example in Indonesia, they are caught on poles made sticky with glue and then fried in oil. In China and Japan they are used in medicine and in the southern USA they are known as snake doctors, watching over all serpents and nursing them when they get sick.

Ocotillo

Bina tapped the scarlet buds growing from the gray spiny stalk. She stripped the seeds, crushed them against a rock, and then added nopal cactus generating a gooey supper gruel. As the evening sun set she laid against the slope of the arroyo and watched the shadows in the thin forest of spiny stalks disappear with the night.

The Ocotillo plant also known as the Devil’s Walking Stick, Jacob’s Staff, desert coral, candlewood and coach whip is native to the Trans Pecos and the desert southwest including Baja California. The scarlet blossoms that grow from the slender spiny branches have been used by natives for food and beverage. The Cahuilla soaked the blossom in water for drink and the seeds, crushed into flour, have been eaten as cakes and mush. Hardened nectar from the blossoms was consumed as rock candy.

The plant’s spiny branches have been found in pre-historic wattle and daub structures in the La Junta region of the Rio Grande providing structural support for the earth plaster. The Seri tribe also used the Ocotillo for their brush houses. The branches are still used today to fashion fences that can become living hedges when posted in the earth with sufficient rain.

Heights of thirty feet have been recorded with widths approaching 10 feet. The Ocotillo blossoms produce nectar with the flavor of honey and are favorites for hummingbirds.

To survive in the hot harsh environment of the desert southwest the Ocotillo sheds its leaves during low water periods thereby reducing the energy and water requirement to survive. Most of the year the long stems of the plant are bare showing only a dead waxy gray with rigid spines but it can generate enough photosynthesis to produce new leave buds within five days after receiving water. In five weeks these leaves turn yellow and drop. These quick life cycles may occur 4 to 5 times a year and produce sufficient sugars needed for growth.

Bluebonnets

“Nothing quite like a field of Blue Bonnets against the white hide of a Brahma,” a Texas Representative was said to say during the 1901 debates of what bloom should be the state’s flower.

Representative Phillip Clements of Goldthwaite suggested instead the cotton boll, calling it the “white rose of commerce.”

Rep John Nance Garner of Uvalde begged to differ suggesting the prickly pear cactus bloom was far more beautiful and the plant itself symbolic of the rugged state. Although Cactus Jack went on to be Vice-President of the United States he lost this debate.

The Texas Bluebonnet actually comes in five species of the genus Lupinus. The Big Bend Bluebonnet, Lupinus Havardi which bloom in spring throughout the Trans Pecos, have violet flowers with a yellow stamen.

The Lupinus Subcarnosus also known as buffalo clover, was the official species selected by the House of Representatives in 1901 for the state’s flower. These smaller flowers are deep blue, but occasional random genetic mutation color them white. The flowers have a central greenish-yellow center that, with age, turns red. This species grows in the southern and eastern parts of Texas near the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1971 all five lupus varieties in Texas were deemed official.

Lupinus, which is a Latin word meaning wolf, was perhaps chosen by Swedish taxonomer Carolus Linnaeus, because bluebonnets or lupins were thought to devour the soil. In fact they enrich it.

Bluebonnets are part of the legume family which includes mesquite, clover, alfalfa, beans, and peanuts. All legumes are nitrogen fixers, meaning these plants are able to take nitrogen out of the atmosphere and convert it to a nitrogen form usable by the plant. Through a symbiotic relationship between the plants roots and microorganisms known as rhizobia, atmospheric nitrogen is converted to ammonia compounds that help the plant grow and compete with other plants. In return, in a form of classic mutualism, the plant supplies the bacteria with carbohydrates, proteins, and sufficient oxygen so as not to interfere with the fixation process. This is known as diaztrophy and occurs inside nodules growing on the roots.

Lady Bird Johnson convinced the state of Texas to seed wildflowers including bluebonnets across the state’s highways. It is legal to pick the state flower, but watch how you park.

Monahans Sand Dune Field

Bina laid in the shadow of the dune feeling the sand sift down her shoulders collecting in the damp of her stomach and forming yet another dune. The wind above blew more sand down the ridge creating tiny furled rows that avalanched in a steamy wave like sea foam coming off a breaker. She pushed her hand through the taupe, brown and red grains and marveled at their uniform size.

The dune field north of Ft Stockton, known as the Monahan’s Sand Dune field is a recent geologic phenomenon. Formed in the last 12,000 years as the Trans-Pecos became more arid, the windblown sands pile up against the western edge of the Llano Estacado and fan out west across the Pecos plains in a 60 x 20 mile swath to New Mexico.

Sparse vegetation and wind couple to shape these mobile sands into dunes. Constantly changing in shape, these elongated mounds are the result of the Aeolian process. Aeolia is the Greek god of wind. In science the Aeolian process is about how the wind shapes the surface of the earth through erosion, transportation and deposition of unconsolidated sediments in an area.

Wind erodes the surface by lifting up fine grained particles. Known as deflation these particles are transported often to nearby places but occasionally these particles reach the stratosphere and are sent far away. The turbulent eddy action of the wind also acts to change the shape of the surface sand. Abrasion is a third component of the Aeolian process whereby particles rub against each other changing their individual shapes.

Dunes are generally longer on the windward side. On the lee side the angle of repose is steeper making for a shorter slip face. The trough between dunes is called a slack.

Many specialized animals have evolved to adapt to the ever changing topography of a dune field. Most dunes form in arid and semi arid regions of the world but often water can be found several feet below the sand in the slacks of the dune.

Creosote Bush

With leathery hands, the shaman laid the creosote twigs across the corpse then placed the male cadaver in the prone position. Facing north in the shallow grave, fired clay jars of seeds and dried venison for the afterlife were sealed by creosote lac and tucked up next to the dead dark skin of the La Junta Warrior.

The creosote plant covers over 120 million acres of land in Mexico and the southwestern USA. Native people of this region used the plant medicinally from birth to death for centuries in its raw form, as tea, and smoked. Perhaps as common as penicillin today, the creosote bush or greasewood remedied rheumatism, menstrual cramps, coughing, sore throats and poisonous bites. Today the federal government considers it unfit for human consumption, but some people still use it for the treatment of lyme disease and the melting of kidney stones. Modern medical experimentation includes using the plant to combat fatigue in patients undergoing chemo-therapy.

Scientists believe that a creosote plant seed was deposited in North America from South America by birds during the last ice age some 10,000 years ago. A descendant of one of these early bird droppings lives in Johnson Valley, California. At 9400 years old it is thought to be the oldest living organism in the world.

Like pine, the creosote bush is a bodega of resins suspended in an amber syrup rich in flavinoids, oils and waxes. These resins shield the leaf from the strong UV light and heat of the desert allowing photosynthesis to go uninterrupted inside the leaf. Three hundred and sixty chemicals have been isolated in the oils of the creosote bush including forty-nine types of volatile oils.

After many days of drought, a fresh rain in the Trans-Pecos brings out the smells of vinyl, camphor, and methyl ketones from the washed leaves of the creosote plant that many still call hediondilla or “little stinker.”

Blue Grama Grass

In the cloudless sky the September sun burned the land with its fiery ring, branding all living things in the desert whether capable of conscious thought or driven only by the instinct of survival. The rains had stopped weeks ago and now Bina trudged an unmarked path between bald earth and the occasional carpet of the flag like blue grama grass.

Blue Grama is a perennial grass native to the Trans-Pecos. It grows in the hot lowlands of the Chihuahua Desert to the high forested areas of the mountain peaks. It grows throughout North America from Alberta and Manitoba to the Rocky Mountains, Great Plains and Midwest, thriving in a broad range of topography and soil types.
The plant height rarely exceeds 15 inches but the roots can grow as deep as five feet and outward as much as 16 inches, watering and aerating the soils as it burrows. The grass is graze, drought and cold resistant. It offers high protein for livestock tends not to freeze and uses water extensively when available but is capable of going dormant during low or no water conditions.

One way the Blue Grama propogates is with seeds and does best when they are dispersed by wind, birds, insects or mammals beyond the root reach of neighboring adult plants, as adult plants tend to exploit moisture in the seedling’s root zone.
But more often, Blue Grama propagates via a process known as vegetative reproduction. Tiny stems at the base of the plant known as tillers can produce multiple stems and thick tuffs with bushy seed heads from a single seedling indefinitely.

Vegetative Reproduction is more an expansion of biomass of the individual plant rather than the creation of a new organism. The tillers at the base of the plants are new individuals except they are clones, new in every aspect, except genetically. How this process appears to reset the aging clock remains a mystery.

Santa Elena Canyon

Bina and the River that Saved Her

They called her Bina, the Apache name for music maker. She had been playing her flute under a cottonwood tree when they muscled her on the bare back of the palomino. She remembered the taught flank muscles of the horse flexing between her legs as a dark arm wrapped around her, finger nails piercing her side. They galloped across the moon lit desert south toward the river and now three years later she glanced one final time at the mouth of the canyon and the raging waters that had set her free.

The geography of the Big Bend region of Texas over the past 250 million years was formed by a series of compression, volcanism and tension events that created mountain terrain which lent itself to a high degree of erosion. Rapid run-off and flash flooding after thunderstorms is the strongest form of erosion but erosion by way of naturally occurring corrosive chemicals like carbonic acid is also a powerful agent in the geological formation of the area. Calcite which forms the bulk of the limestone in the Big Bend is especially susceptible to break down by carbonic acid.

The formative period of the Santa Elena Canyon likely began about two million years ago, a relatively short period in Earth’s geologic time. The cliffs of the eight mile long, 1500 foot deep canyon run along a fault line. The effect of running water, carbonic acid and the oxygen of water corroding the iron sulfate in the igneous rocks of the canyon, coupled with fault line mechanics eroded and cut deep into the earth’s crust and formed this canyon segment in the watercourse of the Rio Grande.

A series of basin and range topography existed along the future Rio Grande corridor and once the erosion sediment of the higher lands filled the basins, a single flowing conduit linked the Rocky Mountain run-off with the Gulf of Mexico, creating a 1950 mile long waterway and our country’s youngest major river system.

Evidence of pre-historic human settlement in the Santa Elena area date back 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. More recently in the 16th century when Spanish explorers came to the area, they filed written reports with the Spanish Monarchy describing a group of hunter-gatherers known as the Jumano. These tribes may have been related to the Puebloan civilization of Arizona and New Mexico.

Mescalero Apache and Commanche became dominant in the area in the 18th and 19th century. These tribes crossed the Rio Grande both in trade and in warfare with the Spanish and the Jumano.

Mammatus Clouds

One week into October a line of thunderstorms formed in the Del Norte Mountains of the Trans-Pecos. Dark anvil shaped thunderheads obscured the tops of Mount Ord and Cathedral Mountain. The slanted penetrating rain sheets could be seen from the town below and then as the late evening sun broke though the thinner clouds in the west a blanket of strange sagging gray puffs of laden visible moisture reflected oddly in the dying light and descended into the town’s valley as if a symbol of some new world chaos.

Mammatus or Mammatocumulus clouds are a rare pouch-like cloud structures that form in sinking air usually in the aftermath or on the underside of a thunderstorm where distinct temperature gradients, moisture and wind shear are present and most often when cumulonimbus anvil clouds have formed. The name is derived from the Latin word Mamma meaning udder or breast as some believe these clouds resemble a woman’s breast.

The opaque and lumpy lobes cluster and can cover the sky for miles and each lobe last an average of ten minutes before evaporation dissolves them. They are usually composed of ice crystals or a combination of ice and water.

Inside the cumulonimbus storm clouds, updrafts carry heavy wet air to the top until the momentum is lost and this subsiding air spreads horizontally and accumulates at the base of the cloud. Sagging with water or ice these air-suspended bosoms dangle and cluster in the sky and occasionally form the rare Mammatus cloud.

At least ten theories exist on exactly how they form but because of their rarity and chance sightings observational information remains thin. Much knowledge on micro-physical cloud processes lie on the unknown outside edge of the scientific frontier.

White Thorn Acacia

Bina lowered her head. The blisters on her feet ached and she guided her finger across the bubbles of skin. Her stomach growled. She followed the run-off contours of the dry arroyo with her eyes down the bare banks and across the browns of the desert into the setting sun. Clusters of red-green bean pods dangled from the limbs of the white thorn acacia that shaded her. She looked up. Food she thought. Good food.

Acacia Constricta also known as White Thorn Acacia or Mescat Acacia is a native plant in the Trans-Pecos region of Texas. The red-maroon barked shrub tree can grow to heights of 15 feet and to keep grazers at bay, grows one to two inch white thorns from its gray colored branches. Often when there is no grazing or pruning the plant will not grow thorns as it is expensive in materials for the plant to manufacture.

The Acacia is part of the legume family and thus a nitrogen fixer. Legume family root nodules host bacterias known as diazatrophs that convert nitrogen in the air (N2) into ammonia (NH3) which is secreted into the soil and used by plants to biosynthesize nucleotide for DNA and amino acids for proteins. Farmers often plant legumes like soybeans and alfalfa as one of their rotational crops to recharge their field soil.

The bi-pinnate compound leaves of the white thorn acacia fall in drought and occasionally in winter. The plant usually flowers in spring and again in late summer after the monsoon season. It produces a bright yellow fluff ball as its flower and clusters of green-red seed pods with high protein beans contained in a sweet fibrous seed sheath. Oddly though, the plant produces little nectar or pollen and thus has few visiting insects.

Fog

The morning sun warmed the moist air rising from the melting snow of the Stockton Plateau. Particulates not usually found in this region had been swept in by the storm. Now the particulates enhanced condensation of the air just above the ground as the snow lost its whiteness in a great gray blanket that covered the land.

Fog is a cloud that touches the ground. Water vapor, a colorless gas, becomes visible when it condenses and forms tiny water droplets. The gas turning into liquid or the water vapor becoming water is the visible spectrum that the human eye detects. The density of this air and water combination is the key to determining whether scientists consider it fog or mist. Fog reduces visibility to less than 1km while mist reduces visibility to I KM or more.

The temperature difference between the dew point or condensation point and the ambient air temperature is usually reduced with colder temperatures. Fog most often occurs when this temperature differential is less than 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

The process of water vapor turning into water droplets occurs in saturated air with a relative humidity of 100 per cent but can be less when particulates especially hygroscopic or water seeking particles like carbon emissions produce a condensation nuclei that enhances water vapor to condense at a lower relative humidity.

The foggiest places in the world are not found in the Trans-Pecos, but occasionally when storms or fronts sweep in wet cold air along with particulates from pollution sources such as vehicles and smoke stacks, together with other naturally occurring aerosols like soil dust lifted up from wind, the combination can increase the possibility of fog.

Fog on the California coast in Marin County occurs an average of 200 days per year where cooler dry land air meets the wetter warmer air above the Pacific Ocean. It is now believed that the sea weed known as kelp emits iodine particulates producing the condensation nuclei that enhances fog to form in air with less than 100 per cent relative humidity.

Pitaya Strawberry Cactus

Bina Heads North

Bina wiped the tears from her cheeks and tried to remember now her family name: Johnson, Mayfield, Grosse, Simmons. She turned away from the canyon at the river and walked knowing somewhere north and a long day’s horseback ride the adobe house that her parents settled in 1862 was still lying in the cut between the mountains they called Green Valley. She remembered the day they arrived on the horse and wagon and the frigid cold with the wind pitching dust in the air. Madrid, Hernandez, Leyva, she stopped and picked a red fruit from a cluster of cactus tubes.

Pitaya, is the fruit of the strawberry pitaya cactus species that grows in loose ribbed spiny cylindrical clusters of 3 to twenty inches tall in the hot low desert region of the Trans-Pecos. The bright green plant, wrinkled-looking in the dry season is a perennial meaning that it grows and blooms over the spring and summer months and then dies back in winter, returning in the spring from its root-stock rather than seeding as an annual plant does. Most perennials live longer than two years and almost all trees are perennials.

A favorite of hikers in the Trans-Pecos, the pitaya is rich in Vitamin C, phosphorus and antioxidants and contains very little saturated fat. The aroma and taste of the fruit is similar to strawberries. It also has powerful laxative properties and can cause pseudohematuria, a harmless reddening of the urine and feces.

The strawberry pitaya is a vascular plant having lignified tissues for processing water, minerals and photosynthesis. Throughout the warm season it blooms in a variety of flower colors primarily red, pink and purple. It is considered a succulent, a shrub and is a native plant. The latin taxonomy name is Echinocereus enneacanthus meaning hedgehog candle.

Mormon Tea

“Howdy Charlie, Reno. Come on in,” Kate said. She held the door open and the two dusty cowboys walked in. Reno fingered the brim of his hat and Charlie looked around the large appointed room finally holding his gaze on the chandelier. “Would you fellers like some tea, while you wait?” Kate asked. “Tea?” Charlie asked. “Yes, tea, Jack Tea, Jack Mormon’s tea."

The Mormon Tea plant, also known as Pocotillo, Cowboy Tea, Tuttumpin, Ephedra and scientifically as Ephedra Viridis is a perennial shrub that is common in the Trans Pecos. Growing up to four feet tall, the branched broom like plant flowers in March and April. It is a vascular plant meaning that it has lignified tissues allowing the conduction of water, minerals and photosynthetic products to circulate within the plant tissue. These basic minerals and nutrients remain in the plant while the water is transpired through the stomata and into the atmosphere. Circulating resources allows the plant to grow larger than most non-vascular plants. Trees, ferns, moss and flowering plants are vascular.

Natives of the Trans-Pecos used the dried and powdered twigs in poultices for burns and ointment for sores. The tea was used for stomach and bowel disorders.

The plant contains ephedrine a stimulant and has an effect on the body similar to adrenaline. Ephedrine has been found in other plants related to Mormon Tea around the world and the chemical has been used in modern pharmacology as a diuretic, decongestant, appetite suppressant and to treat hypotension associated with anesthesia.

In 1885 a Japanese chemist was the first to isolate ephedrine. It has been used in Chinese herbal medicine for centuries and may have been the substance known as Soma as mentioned in the Hindu sacred text Rig Veda.

Early white settlers in our country used the plant to treat venereal disease and was sometimes served in houses of ill repute.

Giant Yucca

She stood under the Giant Yucca, a sliver of shade in the mid day sun. The chard of her deer hide garment rippling lightly in the breeze. It had been seven days since she had slipped away from the tribe. Three winters she had slept in the mud wattle, three years since she had seen her mother. And now at 13, she stared into the bush of the Yucca in the gravelly soil of the desert scrub and wept.

The Giant Yucca also known as Yucca faxonia, Giant Dagger, Spanish Bayonet and Palma Samandoca is the largest of the yuccas and grows prolifically in the Trans-Pecos. The upright single trunks can reach a circumference of six feet and some thirty feet tall. Sharp pointed leaves protect the terminal stalk and the creamy white bell shaped flowers attract a wide variety of animal life including, big horn sheep, bees and humming birds.

Indians roasted the young flowers and the reddish fruit pods for food. Vaqueros and cowboys have cut the trunks during droughts in parched lands to let cattle chew on the inner stalk.

Giant Yuccas generally grow in elevations above 3000 feet and prefer desert scrub or grasslands. The Dead Horse Mountains near Black Gap Wildlife Management Area provide an ambitious display of the Giant Yucca plant community. Associated species in this part of the Trans-Pecos include gramas, mariola, lechuguilla, sotols, cenizos, acacias and mimosas.

Recently the City of Alpine, Texas was awarded a Champion Tree Certificate for the Giant Yucca growing at the southeast end of City Hall. The plant measured over 23 feet high, a crown spread of 10 feet and a trunk circumference of six feet. It is the largest know Giant Yucca in Texas.

Stink Gourd

“Ti-ah pi-ah” which means in Kiowa, “Ready to go ready to die,” is the preamble of the Gourd Dance. The men form an inner circle and the women an outer circle. They shake painted gourds and the Pow-Wow begins.

The Kiowa Gourd Dance was outlawed by the federal government in 1899. By the 1930’s it was only a memory but later the Kiowa tribe began to practice again and today along with the abundance of wild gourd, the Gourd Dance is back.

Although there are many varieties of gourd, the Wild Gourd also known as Stink Gourd or Buffalo Gourd abounds in the Trans-Pecos. A member of the cucumber family and related to pumpkin, squash and melons, the stink gourd emits a strong smell when its leaves or vines are crushed. Some have likened the smell to strong body odor with a touch of garlic.

A yellow orange 5-lobed bell flower blooms from June to August adding an amber palette to the triangular gray-green leaves and hairy trailing perennial vines. Underground a taproot finds nourishment from the soil and produces green-striped baseball size fruit that eventually season to a pale yellow-crème. The gourd fruit is poisonous to humans and toxicity varies by season. The plants also absorb pesticides and herbicides and therefore should never be eaten.

Gourd art involves painting the dried gourd shells. Pointillism is a common gourd painting technique. Gourd decoration by pyrography or the use of hot tips to burn designs into gourds has been practiced for hundreds of years in Africa, Asia and by Native Americans.

Along with being an object of art and the principle instrument in the Gourd Dance, medicinally the Stink Gourd has been used by Native Americans in tea to speed labor at childbirth, crushed leaves mixed with saliva as a poultice for headaches and the peeled dried root to induce vomiting and as a laxative.

Checkered Garter Snake

The sun burned now across the Rim Country. Sanchez lay quiet. His partner walked back from the tree line to the flat hard dirt near the smoldering fire. “Ponga la pie,” his partner said. He thought to kick his feet, but saw they had not moved since daybreak. “Wake up Sanchez,” Nothing. “You’re either dead or there’s a snake in your bag.” He noticed a slight movement from Sanchez’s covered toes. “You’re not dead.” He waited then pushed the brim of his hat up, took the pistol from his holster and in one quick movement grabbed the sleeping bag and pulled. He shot once, twice, three times at the snake slithering across the earth then realized it was only a garter. Sanchez sighed.

Garter snakes, named after their resemblance to garter belts, are the most widely distributed reptiles in North America with a range from Nicaragua to Alaska. There are many species of garters but the Checkered Garter Snake is most common in the Trans Pecos. They are easily recognized by their long yellow back stripe, fainter side stripes and symmetry of black blotches.

Garters are carnivorous and eat a wide variety of any animal they can subdue including slugs, toads, rodents, leeches and lizards.

Garters are gregarious and hang out in cool dark communal dens during brumation. They communicate through hormone transport also known as pheromones, odors which activate behaviors such as reproduction.

Males are known to emit both male and female pheromones during mating season. Intense mating rituals include snake balls that can have as many as one hundred males and one female wrapped into a Medusa-like orb.

Garters emit a musky smell when alarmed and recent discoveries suggest they produce a mild neurotoxin known as three finger poison. Unlike pit vipers, the secreting gland and the rear fangs lack an efficient delivery system. A garter snake bite rarely causes pain or inflammation.

Bois d'arc

The yellow wooded bow was pulled half its length back and with the arrow centered the deft hand released the string propelling a shaven flint rocket through the air catching the rabbit almost instantly below the soft puffy head in the hard heat of the Solitario in west Texas.

The Bois D’arc tree also knows as the Osage Orange or the Horse Apple, because of the softball size chartreuse fruit that horses, cows and squirrels love, grows gnarly and strong throughout the Trans-Pecos region. Perhaps its first use among humans came among the Native Americans who found its strong yet pliable limbs excellent for bow making. French traders first encountered the weapon in the middle Mississippi Valley and gave the wood of the arc its name. A trading post in the nearby mountains was known by Frenchmen as Aux Arc, which later transmogrified into English as Ozark.

Years before the invention of barbed wire, Bois d’arc trees were used as fences as they grew thorny and thick and were described as horse high, bull strong and hog tight. By 1850 Kansas was said to have more than 50,000 miles of Bois d’arc hedges.

Researchers at Texas A&M University have recently isolated high concentrations of antioxidants in the Isoflavones found in the Bois d’arc fruit. Antioxidants may help against heart disease, cancer, ease menopause and improve bone health. The particular isoflavone found in both the soybean and the horse apple are believed to protect neurons in the brains of Alzheimer patients from the toxic effects of amyloid beta peptide which may be the triggering agent for Alzheimer’s Disease.

Soybeans contain less than one tenth of one percent of the isoflavone compound, while the Bois d’arc fruit contains nearly 10 per cent.

To date, the precise chemistry of why the isoflavone protects neurons against the peptide agents of Alzheimer’s and how the bois d’arc fruit evolved to produce such hi quantities of isoflavones is unknown.

Texas and the Gray Wolf

The man moved across the rock floored porch and pulled the door open. The spring stretched and screeched and he took a step in, then back out, as his spurs jiggled. He spit across the porch, then walked back inside. The merchant behind the counter of the Castelon Trading Post studied the man, his leather hat and the drool of tobacco running down his unshaven chin.

“Paying two bits for Mexican grays,” the Merchant said.

“Good, I got a 110 on old Jack out there,” the trapper replied, as he nodded toward the burro tied outside at the post.

One of the last sightings of a Gray Wolf in Texas was near Castelon in the Big Bend National Park in 1971. The gray wolf also known as lobo or Mexican Wolf are the largest sub-species of the wolf family.

Their extermination in the continental United States was considered a victory by those who saw the animal as a threat to livestock.

Heavy trapping in the southwest in the first half of the 20th century kept the wolves population in check but the animal's innate ability to find dead things made them vulnerable to an even more efficient form of lupidide - strychnine poisoning. The heavy use in the 1960’s of this deadly crystalline alkaloid sprinkled on carcasses was the final blow to this once thriving species.

Their population exploded in the second half of the 19th century as the hunting of buffalo by European immigrants left thousands of carcasses to rot on the Great Plains.

The gray wolf has 42 teeth, an almost four inch square paw print with teardrop toes and generally weighs 85-100 lbs with large jaws. The force of their biting pressure has been measured at 1800 psi.

Wolves have the greatest range of any large mammal. Their heritage is pre-historic and tales of this animal can be found in Russia, China, Peru, India and all of Europe. The first domesticated dogs came from wolves.

In 1996 Canadian wolves were released into the Yellowstone National Park as part of the Environmental Protection Act 10J rule which finances the reintroduction of endangered species.
Today they can also be found in the White Mountain area of Arizona and western New Mexico and one was recently found north of El Paso, dead on the side of a highway.

Candelilla

They only boiled at night. The smoke trail easily seen on a windless day. Tomorrow they would break camp and move the factory again. Ricardo dumped another basket of candelilla into the hot vat of water and acid. The fumes stung his nostrils and his eyes blurred. “Hold it right there,” they heard the voice in the darkness say. “Los Rinches,” Ricardo yelled and the team of four quickened for the river.

For over a hundred years the candelilla plant, a shrubby blue-green spurge with a dense cluster of erect leafless stems has been harvested for wax. Native to the Trans-Pecos and Northern Mexico, attempts at farming the plant has failed. Only the wild candelilla produces commercial quantities of candelilla wax. Smuggling of the wax across the Rio Grande to capture the higher price in this country prevailed for years until cheaper synthetic waxes displaced most of the demand for pure natural candelilla.

Up until the 1970’s, because of over-harvesting in Mexico, illegal wax factories operated in the Big Bend National Park and were the object of raids by park rangers who set out to enforce the illegal gathering of the plant in Texas.

On both sides of the river, the small mobile factories were targets for raiders and law enforcement alike. In 1914 Poncho Villa raided an American camp in Glenn Springs, prompting the US to send a 100,000 soldiers to the region.

Cererros gathered the wild desert plant and loaded their cargo on burros transporting it to candelilleros, the wax makers who boiled the stems usually at a remote cleft in the desert, skimming the wax from the top of the hot acid, cooling it and cutting it into squares for on transport to the dealers located in Presidio, Chihuahua and Alpine.

One of the few large scale candelilla factories operated in Presidio during WWII and produced 25 tons a day.

Candelilla wax consists mainly of hydrocarbons and is still used today when a high quality natural wax is needed. It has a melting point of 184 degrees. In Europe it is used as a glazing agent and food additive. Lipstick and chewing gum manufacturers worldwide pay top dollar for it, importing the product from Mexico, where gathering of the wild plant is still commercially feasible.

Aplomado Flacon

Under a blue sky a white dove glides, its wings fixed and round head arc, the legs stretched out and thin talons split the air as it approaches the branch of the yucca. Then a flash of lead-like color zooms in from above knocking the dove to the ground. A blur hovers then drops to the downed dove and clinches it between its claws rising now in the swirling wind where it joins its mate in the thin air of the Trans-Pecos.

The Aplomado Falcon has returned to west Texas after a long hiatus. 1952 was the last sighting of a mating pair up until the recent revival. Finally listed as an Endangered Species in 1986, few were seen until captured Aplomados from Chihuahua were released in south Texas in the 1990’s. Another substantial release of Aplomados occurred in west Texas on private lands in 2002. Today the Peregrine Fund has documented six mating pairs in the area, most of them in Jeff Davis County.

Aplomado is a Spanish word meaning lead color, but along with the bird’s blue-gray back are splashes of dark orange on its head and belly with yellow rimmed eyes.

Aplomados often hunt in pairs and their long tails make for agile rudders allowing for quick changes in direction. These hunters, who eat both insect and small vertebrae including smaller birds like the dove and the meadowlark need wide open grass land to survive.

Over-grazing and erosion to the land, a by-product of the cattle industry that dominated this part of the world over the past 100 years, changed and reduced the habitat of the aplomado forcing the bird south into the lesser developed region of Chihuahua,Mexico.

But today environmental factors are reversing as Chihuahua becomes more developed, through increased mono-culture farming practices in the Mexican desert and grasslands that deplete water reserves and eliminate habitat. An increased awareness in west Texas led by conservation minded ranchers and other land owners are restoring the great grasslands and providing another chance for wildlife like the Aplomado Falcon.