A Day in June

6/29/2016

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

A Day in June

Spring being a tough act to follow, God created June.

Al Bernstein

            When people ask when they should visit the Sandhills, I always say June, because it’s the prettiest month. Wildflowers are at their peak, weather is usually cooperative, unless we have a round of thunderstorms or tornadoes, and best of all, it’s green. Green doesn’t necessarily last out here, much beyond the fourth of July. But in June, the meadows are a sea of waving grasses, you can drive past alfalfa fields that are a mass of purple, or else full of neatly wrapped round bales, and the yucca are in bloom. When you walk to a hilltop for a better view of the beauty, keep one eye on the ground because cactus are in bloom now, and like the yucca, it’s a short season.

            We’re outdoors a lot in June, checking to see what is up in the garden, pulling weeds, and mowing. The cool season grasses grow so fast you can hardly put the mower away before needing to pull it out again. Likely there’s some leftover fencing to be done, and cattle to put out to grass. Brandings are mostly over, and we grab an afternoon to take the kids fishing, or a weekend for a getaway.

            It’s the season of Cattlemen’s conventions, family reunions, class reunions and weddings. Supposedly, June is a month of leisure, but since everyone schedules these occasions around that assumption, it may be one of the busiest ones. There will be receptions for those with milestone anniversaries, because, guess what—they were married in June.

            We live with wind out here, and that’s an aggravation at times, but when it doesn’t blow we get antsy. And there’s always a week of doldrums in June, when we have to chase water because windmills aren’t turning. Those are the days when we look longingly at the boat, if we have one, because it would be so peaceful on the lake; but no, we have cattle to move, or a pump jack to hook up.

Rhubarb pie is on the menu, along with asparagus and strawberry shortcake. Garden lettuce too, as well as radishes, and peas, if you were lucky enough to get the planting done before Memorial Day, but that’s always chancy in this part of the world.

Roses are in bloom now, and iris, so it’s hard to pass them on your way to the clothesline without stopping to drink in the glorious colors. Please tell me you still have a clothesline, and use it in summer. There’s nothing like the scent of sun dried sheets.

Day lilies and the mid-summer flowers are budding; about to take the place of poppies and whatever other early ones are fading. Fireflies light up nights when it’s still, and hot, so you sit on the porch watching stars appear, both above and below.

June is on the way out the door and I hope you took time to appreciate it. July has its own charms, and a different pattern of busy that’s mostly work related. Independence Day approaches, with all the trappings of celebration, mixed with an aura of sadness, because that means summer is half over.

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Be Here, Now

6/22/2016

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Be Here, Now

            Maggie came up off the bed with a start, barking at the top of her lungs. I crawled out and opened the door so she could protect us from the owl that lives in a tree near the bedroom and the coyotes across the meadow. We’re all used to their nighttime serenades, but occasionally Mags decides to reassure us that she’s at the top of her watchdog game. One circle around the house usually proves her point, so we can all fall back to dreamland.

Until the first sign of daylight, when the birds begin to wake up. Maggie sleeps through that, but I don’t. I have trouble going to sleep this time of year too. The scent of damp dirt from my evening flower watering drifts in the window, and there are fireflies all over the yard. I’m transported back to childhood days when we sat on the lawn to cool off after supper, while I caught them in a Mason jar. Later, I was lulled to sleep with the soft song of a windmill out by the barn.

When we visited my grandparents in Omaha, I lay awake listening to cars stopping briefly at the dead end street on the corner by their house; hearing footsteps on the pavement as someone passed, and wondered where all those people could be going when it was past bedtime. Those were the days when air conditioning was only for department stores, or offices downtown. While adults hovered near fans in the house, I sat on the newly cut lawn breathing deeply and pretending I was in the hayfields at home.

Neither of my homes has air conditioning, and it has to get pretty warm outside before I can be convinced to shut the house up against heat. Perhaps that mindset goes back to childhood when I fought going to sleep for fear of missing something.  Few folks realize how much they miss with windows shut, but I suppose when the focus is always on a screen of some kind, the idea of a whole world out there is foreign.

We put new windows in the house at Bruce’s place when we moved in. All of the sales people who came out to convince us of the superiority of their product mentioned the fact that our home would be quieter. “You won’t hear a thing out there,” was the usual comment, and we couldn’t convince them that we wanted to hear the meadow larks, cattle bawling, wind in the treetops, and someone driving into the yard.

I’m summer’s child, and that season is pretty short in the Sandhills. But I carry a jacket all summer to wear in restaurants, waiting rooms, and even at social events in people’s homes, so I’m pretty happy when the celebration is held on the deck or in the park.

Most of us live in a bubble, conscious only of what is right in front of us, because we have shut out the rest of our surroundings. I’m pretty ok with that when it snowing and ten below zero, but for now, could we please open a window?

           

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Overwhelmed

6/15/2016

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Overwhelmed

            I hear that word weekly from a friend who is moving to a smaller place after twenty odd years in a ranch style home. Sorting and tossing, saving and recycling, donating, and perhaps begging someone to take this or that off her hands. Today, she wondered how many dollars have gone out the door, to charity, or a discard pile.

            It’s a fair question, and perhaps a hard one to face, for those of us who pride ourselves on financial responsibility. The truth is that the great majority of us spend foolishly. Even those living below poverty level will buy a lottery ticket or a soda, or continue smoking.

Marketing techniques foster this habit too. Buy one, get one free. But many times, we don’t need two. Hit the post holiday sales to lay in a supply of decorations or gift wrap for next year. Maybe you have to rent a storage unit to keep all the bargains in—how is that a saving?

My friend is fortunate to have many folks offer to help with her move, and they tell her that they are learning a lesson. Planning to go through their own stash and downsize before they are dead and someone else has to do it. She’s learning too; says that she will be thinking long about whether or not to purchase something now.

I recall being very resentful when my mother moved to an apartment in town. She was one who never let a bargain go by, who bought in bulk, even long after good transportation and an empty nest made it unnecessary. If she had a motto, it was probably, “might need this someday.” But when someday came, she forgot she had it, or it was out of style, or she couldn’t find it, so a replacement was the solution. The result was that we hauled out pickup loads of unusable items, never mind that there wouldn’t have been room for them in her new dwelling. She moved another time, and by then had accumulated more stuff. Upon her death, we began all over again. In case you didn’t know, or are one of those “someday” people, this is backbreaking work, besides being overwhelming, and there’s a lot of emotion involved. Trust me you don’t want to inflict it on those who love you.

We did the same dance all over again when we moved to the home where my husband’s folks had lived all their married lives, and though I hadn’t known them for very many years, the same resentment at having to deal with other people’s responsibilities surfaced. I hate feeling that way about people who are dear to me, but feelings are feelings, and we can either be honest about them or stuff them until they come out sideways and hurt innocent bystanders.

Another woman who finds it necessary to adjust her shopping because of the economic climate has a solution for the depressed mindset that happens when the company cuts our hours or a two family income shrinks by half. No new spring styles, or vacation trip, but how about a packet of seeds to plant? You’ll enjoy the flowers a lot longer anyhow.

Go to a free concert or high school performance in your community. Take a walk with the kids and have a contest to see how many birds you can name, re-read the books on your shelf, instead of buying the latest best seller. Trade some clothes with a friend who’s your size, or shop a second-time-around store. Downsize needn’t mean deprivation, and you won’t find yourself overwhelmed when another chapter of your journey unfolds, if you focus on experiences rather than material goods. 

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Moving On

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messersmith

Moving On

Texas, May 19, 1836.

Cynthia Ann Parker, age 9, was busy inside the fort on that morning. Likely her mother had her about some chore, or perhaps she played games with a cousin. Her father and the other men were working nearby when a Comanche group approached, waving a white flag and asking for food. When supplies were brought out, they attacked. Cynthia Ann and several relatives were taken captive and later split up. Cynthia Ann was not mistreated, instead, she grew up as a member of the tribe, married a young warrior, Peta Nocona, and had three children, Quanah, Pecos, and Topsannah. The other Parker captives were eventually ransomed and returned. Cynthia had opportunities to be rescued, but refused.

            In 1860, Sul Ross and his soldiers attacked a band of Comanches and captured a woman with blue eyes who had concealed a baby girl in her robes while trying to escape. Col. Isaac Parker identified her as Cynthia Ann. Her relatives did their best to turn her into a white woman but she pined for “her people.” When, after several escape attempts, both she and her daughter died, her family of origin could only have been relieved, for they knew not what to make of her.

            Meanwhile, Peta Nocona and Quanah hunted high and low for Cynthia Ann. Upon learning of her death, Quanah had his mother and sister re-buried at Ft. Sill. He became a leader of his people, and was a good friend of many ranchers, especially Charles Goodnight.

            In later years, Quanah often traveled across Oklahoma and Texas, trading with other tribes and visiting ranches. One day, Charles Goodnight encountered Quanah wandering confused, on the streets of town and asked what the trouble was.

“Lost,” was the reply. “I couldn’t find my way home.”

“But why?” Goodnight asked. “You know this country by heart, how could you get lost?”

Quanah’s answer was brief. “Barbed wire.”

I’ve cussed a lot of barbed wire in my day, mostly because it broke and cattle escaped. I’m thankful not to have had to go out with the wagon to brand, as Goodnight did, to round up miles and miles of country and then sort Longhorns out from the herds of other ranches. Still, there were plenty of folks who resisted fencing laws and some went to jail over the deal.

I began checking water and Hereford cattle for my dad at age 8, riding a six section pasture. We’ve divided that pasture several times since, but when I go out checking our Red Angus cattle now I can get as lost as Quanah, even though I helped build the fences.  

             If you want a clear picture of how the country has changed read Cadillac Desert, which is a history of how all the dams in America came about. Many of our major rivers no longer run in their original channels, and whole towns have been relocated. It’s got to be sad for people who grew up near those rivers, knowing they can’t go home again. But I can’t really go home again either. The villages where my family bought supplies after a two day wagon trip are nearly deserted now, and we use our powerful automobiles to go shopping in bigger towns.

            My dad viewed indoor plumbing, phones, and electricity as extravagant but he never chastised our neighbors for their wind chargers and piped in water. When REA came down our valley he believed one bare bulb in each room was sufficient, and always said he didn’t understand why people wanted to do indoors what belonged in an outhouse.

            Early Sandhills settlers tried to farm and found out this country prefers to remain grass side-up. We went along fine then, with grazing until center pivot irrigation, and some of us think we’d be a lot finer if that was never invented.

Nowadays, on my spouse’s Sheridan County place, we’re neighbors to a feed lot, and only a few ranges of hills off the flats where farming is king. We get the stink on days with a west wind, and although we don’t use chemicals on our garden we can’t claim it’s organic because when the spray plane goes over on a summer day we get the drift. Those folks are just trying to make a living and we don’t have the right to tell them how it should happen.

            In Cherry County there’s controversy over proposals for wind energy. The outcome will affect whole communities, but so do the center pivots, which are depleting the aquifer and leaching chemicals into the world’s best water, and so do the feedlots, where animals have to be medicated to survive in filthy conditions.

We don’t use four wheelers on the home ranch but most of our neighbors do. Those choices are made by individuals, for well thought out reasons, and there are trade-offs relating to finances, time, and personal values involved in each decision.

            It’s often said there are only two things certain in life, death and taxes, but there’s another certainty—change.

            Not so long ago, in the grand scheme of things, women, and people of color couldn’t vote. Before that, women and people of color couldn’t own property. Blacks and Native Americans were not considered human. We could claim, and we’d be correct, that there’s still too much inequality around those issues, as well as all of the ones mentioned above. Or we could celebrate how far we have come and put our energy to becoming a bridge over troubled waters.

           

           

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