Cowboy Poetry - Yee-Haa!

“West Texas in Spring has its Sunday britches on…” - Sam Watson

That was a line from one of the poems recited at the Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Alpine, Texas on Friday, February 25.  Cowboys, ranchers, and Western poets and musicians came together for the 25^th year of the gathering, and Doug (my co-worker at the Entrance Station) was kind enough to swap days with me so I could attend. 

I joked that I was going to rope me a cowboy and drag him home, but the truth is that as much as I love horses and the romance of the Westerns of my childhood, I stuck out like a sore thumb there.  (I stick out like a sore thumb no matter where I am.)  I mean, I was dressed in my usual artsy fartsy garb - a chartreuse t-shirt from the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, multi-colored baubles on neck and ears, and equally multi-colored belt and socks (those distinctive purposely-mismatched Sole-Mate socks so popular in New England.)  I did have on jeans, but they were black, and I wore New Balance running shoes instead of pointy, well-tooled boots.  Denim was the predominant color among attendees, along with lots of those lovely Stetsons.

“Moral to this story, never judge by what they wear…” (Marty Robbins- Cowboy in the Continental Suit)

So anyway, I was late arriving as it took for-damn-ever to get breakfast in Terlingua thanks to a dirt biker rally, and I wasn’t sure when the gas pumps opened there, so I didn’t leave at 6 a.m. as I had planned.  (Gas $3.51 Terlingua, $3.39 Stripes in Alpine.  Ouch.)  I got to the Sul Ross University auditorium in the middle of a set by Jeff Gore and Washtub Jerry, singing Marty Robbins’ Master’s Call, followed by El Paso.  I don’t know why, but I found myself tearing up a little.  I mean, I used to hate country-western music as a kid.  Yet we all knew those songs, even if we listened to the Top 40 Pop station.  This was real singing.  A rich masculine voice singing words you could actually understand, instead of growly voices drowned out by electronics, or unsingable drivel about dysfunctional love on today’s pop charts. 

Chuck Wagon Coffee Pots keeping warm

Of course, now that I live in Far West Texas for half the year, I figured I’d immerse myself a little in the culture.  Like many of the old ways, even the cowboy lifestyle is changed.  There was a sea of gray in the large audience, and most of the poets and storytellers were likewise old fellers and gals.  The bunkhouses are empty, lamented one.  Technology, off-road vehicles, whatever the reason, there are fewer guys punchin’ cows in the backcountry.  And with TV and the internet, fewer of them are creating their own stories and tales.  The “tribe” needs new blood.  Many of the poems recited (often from memory) were written by cowboy poets who have passed on - stalwarts such as J.B. Allen and Buck Ramsey. 

Matter of fact, I was most impressed with the juxtaposition of the “effeminate” Literary and the epitome of Manliness.  I never saw “Rawhide’s” Rowdy Yates pen a poem on the back of a fruit can label (J. B. Allen, Medicine Keeper) or Gil Favour pluck out a tune while on night guard to keep the “dogies” quiet.  Roy Rogers just seemed like an anomaly, but I guess he was more representative of many of the old-time cowboys than I understood. 

Stage during Cowboy Poetry Gathering performance

I’m listening now to the CD by Rod Taylor, whose CD was playing in the sales room when I hunted for the Marty Robbins tribute album I mentioned above.  It has such sweet melodies - reminiscent of a couple of Lyle Lovett’s tunes (This Old Porch being one.).  I’d call it Western Folk, but what do I know?  I’ve always considered songs to be poetry set to music.  And my poetry instructor at the University of Maine agreed, since we were allowed to do a presentation on a favorite poet or songwriter.  (I chose folk singer/songwriter Richard Shindell.) 

Cowboys love their horses.  They love their cows too.  Their poetry and songs are often about these critters that fill their lives, even the ornery ones.  I’ve been horse crazy since a little girl, and I’ll watch any movie and read any book about a horse.  So I very much appreciated the poem about The Company Horse, who never knew what kind of cowboy was going to ride him, just as a cowboy always hoped for a good string of cow ponies when he worked for “the company.”  I cried at “La Rose” (I think that's the name, sung by Jill Jones) whose broken-hearted, broken-down owner needed to sell the “long in the tooth” mare he had since she was born.

The Red Cow by Larry McWhorter was about a young man seeking to prove himself with a mean cuss whose capture was highly prized, but who was, in the end, left alone to her freedom.  It reminded me of Townes Van Zandt’s Pancho and Lefty (“All the federales say/ They could have had him any day.  They only let him slip away/ Out of kindness I suppose.”)

Chuck Wagon serving lunch

Cowboys in 2023 - the chuckwagon served bagels and choco-latte, the men wore Crocs and spiky hair, “with faces that looked like they fell into a tackle box.”  (Sam Noble)

There were poems about people, too, about the land, the cowboy life.  Women were not left out, for although everyone knows a good cowboy is made by a good woman - many of whom worked alongside their cowboy husbands - many women wrote, recited or sang poetry.  Jill Jones did some mighty fine yodeling, and I couldn’t help think of Prairie Home Companion’s “Lives of the Cowboys.”  (Lefty is always playing a poorly tuned guitar and yodeling, to the annoyance of Dusty.)

“I was fifteen before I realized grass was supposed to be green.”  - one of the cowboys said about growing up in arid country.

Chuck Wagon truck

One sweet faced grandma wrote verse about her mother’s visit after she’d been a young cowboy’s bride.  “ ‘Shucks, golly darn it’ ” just won’t do when your horse falls on you, or the cows you’ve spent a half day rounding up escape because somebody forgot to fasten the gate,” she recited. “This is my life, and just get used to the cussin’” she told her mother (my paraphrase.)  She also wrote about bundling in layer upon layer of clothing to move cattle in frigid weather, and the need to shed and restore all those layers when nature inevitably calls.  It’s a woman thing, it really is.

There were two things that stuck in my craw, so to speak.  One was that this same sweet woman mentioned with a touch of vehemence that the former ranches in Oregon’s Willamette Valley were “being destroyed by environmentalists.”  Well now, I know many ranchers have become enlightened in recent years and want to co-exist with the natural ecosystems.  But it is a plain fact that ranching has historically, and continues to this day, to destroy habitat for the rightful owners of the land - the wildlife.  Here in Big Bend National Park, the former grasslands of Tornillo Flats were grazed out of existence prior to the 1944 establishment of the park, and may never recover.  Grassland breeding birds have experienced precipitous decline in population due to destruction or degradation of habitat due to ranching, agriculture and development.  The native tallgrass and shortgrass and mixed grass prairies have been pretty much exterminated save for remnant parcels “the environmentalists” saved.

In this same afternoon program, one of the men sang about how ranchers owed their livelihoods to the U.S. Cavalry who cleared out the original human inhabitants, and the buffalo hunter who cleared out the cattle’s competitor for rangeland.  He also poignantly concluded the ranchers had blood on their hands as much as these Indian- and buffalo-killers.   It’s too late for the Comanches, Apaches, and all the other displaced tribes.  But it’s not too late for what remains of native habitat and wildlife. Nearly all early settlers of America’s western lands owe their land and livelihoods to the federal government, which used federal troops to exterminate Indians, and which gave free land to homestead.  Their descendants would do well to remember that when they complain about today’s “handouts” and “destruction of livelihoods.” 

Dutch Oven biscuits - yum!

It also struck me that this “Cowboy Road” (“The Cowboy Road - it’s just horses, hats and leather…”  - Allan Chapman) is exactly the antithesis of the “Good Red Road” of the Indians that occupied my thoughts and activities 20 years ago.  I spent several years “being with” Native American peoples of various sorts - that being a whole ‘nother story - and have great empathy for their sorrows - both historical and contemporary.  Cowboys and Indians don’t have to be enemies today, and I suspect they often aren’t. 

The University Center was crowded for lunch, so I was going to skip it when I saw a chuck wagon set up in a field.  I asked if it was for the public, and the fellers there assured me it was, and when I asked where the donation jar was they said somebody had forgotten it.  But in hindsight I think lunch was for the performers, and these cowboys were just being kind. 

Dutch Oven baking - coals top and bottom

The chuck wagon crew

Apache Adams and the Australian Jack Sammon sat on the hay bales next to me, and one of the artist-sculptors in the “Trappings of Texas” show at the Museum of the Big Bend was on the other side.  The tender brisket, the cowboy beans, dutch-oven baked biscuits, and fresh salsa with cilantro, were darned tootin’ good.  The cook tasted some of the brisket, then rubbed his oily fingers on his boots (a good idea, I thought).  Coffee warmed in the huge pots, and windblown dirt and ashes mixed with our food in true cowboy fashion. 

From the campus the small town of Alpine below was backdropped by several mountains and hills.  The breeze was cool and the day warm.  I could see living here someday.

I stayed as long as I could at the night session, but had to leave at 9 pm for the 2 hour drive back to Big Bend, so I could be at work by 7:30 in the morning.  Next year maybe Doug will swap me two days, so I can stay longer .  It’s something I will definitely look forward to.

Lower Rio Grande Birds

I have added some new birds to my favorites list, thanks to a trip to the Lower Rio Grande Valley recently.  The above Green Jay is one.  I have a fondness for jays, and this is particularly striking in its tropical coloration.  It's a Mexican bird that ventures north of the border in South Texas - quite common there actually, but no less of a jewel.

Blue Jays, which we're all familiar with, are also favorites of mine because they're so beautiful and sassy.  I've never seen them actually harass birds at the feeder, but their size and brazen swooping onto the feeder tends to intimidate the smaller birds into scattering. So misunderstood!

The Common Pauraque is my other new fave.  This bird is in the nightjar family - a nocturnal bug-eater like the whip-poor-will with a tiny bill and huge maw for gathering lots of skeeters and such.  It sleeps during the day, and at the Estero Llano Grande State Park they don't seem to mind parking themselves right beside the trail.  Two of them were so well hidden in the dead leaves that even though the area was marked off and I knew they were there, it took a few minutes before I could actually tease their form out of the forest floor.  

Here is the second one, showing the value of camouflage.  A closeup below.  They are common in Mexico, Central and South America, but again only show up in the US in South Texas.

The exquisite patterns and earth tones of their feathers, and their supreme confidence in their invisibility, as well as just being darned cute, won my heart.  I so wanted to pick them up and pet them.

 
The Buff-Bellied Hummingbird is also another new favorite.  It is quite a bit larger than the ruby-throated hummer which is the only breeding hummingbird on the East Coast.  The male is iridescent and this one kept up a steady chipping like that of a verdin.  Evidently there was another hummer in the area it was trying to keep from "his" feeders.

Aside from the great birds, I didn't really care for South Texas.  For one, it was too cluttered and populated.  And they don't clean their roadsides and vacant lots.  I've never seen a landscape as littered with white plastic shopping bags as I did in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.  One town had vacant lots dotted with fluttering bags stuck on grass stalks as if they were purposely planted there.  Plus I could only find a Public Radio station coming in weakly near Estero Llano, and that was from Corpus Christi.  At best, three of four radio stations are entirely in Spanish.  I know this is a haven for "winter Texans" but I much prefer the wide open spaces of Far West Texas and Big Bend.  Anyway, more birds:

 

The Altamira Oriole is lured in by oranges placed in many of the park and refuge feeding stations. It is said orioles won't eat oranges unless they've been cut open - they either can't or won't penetrate the skin to get at the luscious fruit inside.  Good thing, or the citrus farmers might have eliminated them long ago.

An Altamira and Audubon's Oriole, which is more yellow, have a dispute at the feeder.  A hooded oriole also visited this prolific site, which was at Salineno.  It is worth stopping at the World Birding Center in Roma, a little town just east, for info on how to get to this site, as well as some good books and t-shirts.

The land is owned by the Valley Land Fund and donations bring in seed and fruit that attract so many colorful birds it's as if they're living Christmas ornaments.  The caretaker had to keep swooshing away the red-winged blackbirds that were eating her out of house and home, but they finally got the idea and segregated themselves in a far part of the yard near another feeder.
 

 Audubon's Oriole closeup

Some birds at Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, which is known for attracting rarities (rare only in America, I should say.) As for overall quantity and variety of birds in general, I found it to be rather sparse. 

Black-headed Grosbeak, female

This is a mutation of a white-winged dove - a chocolate color rather than buff

And a hybrid oriole - called by the locals as the "Smudgy Oriole"

Female red-winged blackbird sporting pink epaulets - females typically have no wing color.

 

Plain Chachalaca, a chicken-like bird that reminds me of the wild turkeys I have in my yard in Maine 

I did see the black-vented oriole (from Mexico - rare here) but only have video of it.  When I first arrived at this park, I went over to one of the four benches parked near the birdfeeders, where the Chachalacas were greedily feeding.  A lady, whom I will call the Bird Nazi, informed me that people weren't allowed in that area because of the crowds of people that have been coming to see this bird.  I looked at the lone guy standing behind me, pointed out the benches which were obviously made for sitting on, and the guy insisted that because this bird was "rare" that it would be intimidated by people close to it. So while I obediently stepped back to the "safe" area, little noisy golf carts, bicyclists, and pedestrians walked right by the sacred feeders.  Evidently this "rare" bird is scared off only by people sitting quietly on benches.

I was so turned off by that attitude that I stalked off to another area where several birders awaited the hopeful arrival of the also-rare (north of the border, anyway) blue bunting and told them what happened.  They were equally incredulous.  That bird has been around for weeks and people were regularly a few yards away from it, apparently no harm being done to it.  I can see why birders have gotten a bad name from non-birders.  That was definitely a first for me.

Falcon State Park and Salineno:

The Great Kiskadee - a very large and stunning flycatcher 

Couch's Kingbird

Harris's Hawk

Bobwhite male

Long-billed Thrasher (similar to the Brown Thrasher)

 Olive Sparrow

Lincoln's Sparrow

Orange-crowned Warbler

Inca Dove

 Common Ground Dove

 White-tipped Dove

I will say that Texas has some of the best state parks I've ever seen, and even many of their roadside picnic areas are very pleasant places, with wildflowers and cactus blooms in spring. 

And now some water birds from Estero Llano State Park

 Fulvous Whistling Duck

Northern Shoveler

Ring-necked duck

Gadwall

Common Moorhen

 

Spotted Sandpiper in winter plumage

Least Sandpiper

Little Blue Heron

Least Grebe (they fluff up their whitish bottoms like cotton balls)

Gas went up 15 cents a gallon in the four days I was on the road.  Every gas pump in Del Rio on Friday was $3.05.  Don't tell me that's not price fixing!  But while I was there I got groceries at HEB (great produce - what a luxury!), got a haircut for $17.95, bought some summer shirts marked way down at Fashion Bug, turned in my ink cartridges at Staples for a $20 credit, and drank gallons of Dr Pepper (which I try to keep out of the house) and ate Jack in the Box tacos and Dairy Queen Flame Kickers.  (I know it's pathetic, but I'm a child of the fast food restaurants.)  

Despite the Border Patrol checkpoints and their numerous white-and-green vehicles everywhere, it was a great birding trip, with a little crass consumerism thrown in, and I can't wait for my next foray of birding.  Stay tuned!

Brutally Cold!

The water has been running from my faucets for two nights and days, going on a third, to keep them from freezing.  We’re having the kind of frigid weather this area doesn’t see very often - eight degrees this morning at my house in Panther Junction, one degree in the Chisos Basin.  Heck I was hiking in short sleeves on Monday!  There was even a light dusting of powder snow, which mostly sublimated (evaporated) at PJ  by 6 p.m. The Chisos Mountains are still dusted, as you can see by the above photograph, but there was nary a flake at Rio Grande Village.  It was so windy there that facing the wind was extremely painful after only a few seconds.  The wind chill must have been minus 30 at least.  (Hey I'm from Maine, so I'm not a wimp!)  Despite that, here’s how it looked today in Big Bend.
 

Sierra del Carmens with a stacked layer of clouds mid-afternoon

Looking toward PJ from the east, late afternoon

Ice Patterns on pond at Rio Grande Village

Trees wore ice garters

These ice orbs look suspiciously like turtles.  I hope not.  

Vermillion Flycatcher looks miserable

 
Golden-fronted Woodpecker on store roof, RGV


Even the fishes huddled together from the cold


Pyrrhuloxia


Sun peeking through the gray

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sierra del Carmens as the clouds cleared toward evening

Last light

Sun Pillar Pulliam Peak near sunset

p.s.  I hate blogspot - it handles photos very poorly - any ideas for a new blog host?