Chaotic Climate

We have had some strange weather as of late.  A nearby city called McAllen (part of a sprawling, congested and otherwise colorless metroplex) suffered two devastating hail storms a few weeks back.  Local meteorologists are predicting an active tropical storm season (in other words, we might get a hurricane), and the drought is still upon us, although recent rains, and hail, have moistened the ground somewhat.  I see that to the northwest the state of Arizona is already experiencing some nasty wildfires and it’s expected to get worse since the West and Southwest had nary a winter and their drought continues unabated.  We used to never get tornadoes in this region but four times in the last few weeks we’ve been under tornado warnings around our place.  Of course, there’s also the sun to deal with.  And perhaps, that’s the root of our conundrum since heat—or the augmentation of hotness—is creating not simply a condition known as “warming” but in real terms a situation more accurately described as “chaos.”  You can use innocuous and otherwise namby-pamby terms like “climate change” in an attempt to undermine the issue and therefore give license to continued hedonism and recklessness.  But the truth is that things are not going well in many places, and the “let’s claim it doesn’t exist” tactic, as well as holding up a queue of quacks to buttress such nonsense does nothing to fix the problem.  I guess it’s inevitable that scientific data should become a political issue when empirically derived observations conflict with our holiest held ideology, “profit no matter the outcome.”

So here we are with droughts, hailstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, blizzards, floods, and soon to see water shortages, crop failures, increased diseases (more on that in a later post), and yet at the same time we keep digging the hole deeper and deeper.  So here’s my question: How deep do you want to make this grave?

Making Bone Arrow Points with Hand Tools

I imagine a number of you have made bone arrow points using stone tools.  That’s an interesting exercise and I have enjoyed going primitive on several occasions to fashion arrows and arrow points, bows, strings and the like with rocks and teeth.  But this post is about using conventional steel tools like files and rasps and also store bought sandpaper.  Likewise, it’s about keeping things quiet.  I live in the woods where there are no sirens, car horns, diesel trucks, lawnmowers or any of those other obscenities associated with “modern society.”  And I’m not about to destroy this peaceful milieu by introducing motorized racket: No belt sanders, rotary tools or whatever else passes for construction in that other world beyond the gate.

Anyway, a neighbor’s cow went to bovine heaven a few months ago.  The vultures, coyotes and various beetles had a great feast and now the bleached bones lie randomly scattered and ready for various projects—in this case arrow points.  I began by gathering the ribs.  Cow ribs are tough structures and make excellent tools.

The above photo shows a cow’s rib that’s already been cut into a section and is ready for further cutting.  I’m holding a blank point in one hand and you can see another blank point on the table.

Using a coping saw I cut the rib in half lengthwise.  Be careful you keep the cut in a straight line so you can use both halves to make points.

These are the tools I generally use.  I won’t necessarily use all those tools on every arrow point but I have the option to choose various implements as need be.

Once I’ve cut the rib in half lengthwise (or at least a piece I intend to make into a point) I’ll begin removing the spongy bone within the rib.

I use a rasp to scrape off the spongy bone.

Here you can see how the rasp is removing the spongy bone.

Now that the spongy bone has been removed I’ll start to shape the point using a fine mill file.

Here you see the bone point is starting to take shape.

Because the rib is slightly convex the arrow point must be carefully filed in order to eliminate the curvature and give the arrow a straight profile.  Go slowly here because if you overdo things you’ll just make the curvature worse.  Remember also to go in reverse to what might seem the logical direction.  In other words, you will straighten the bone by going up against the curvature in order to obtain the straight line you are seeking.

The above photo shows the back of the point.  Again, the rib’s shape in cross-section is thicker on one end and thinner on the other.  You will want to even out the profile.  You will use both a fine mill file and sandpaper to get the lines straight and even.  Don’t be impatient.  File or sand a little bit and then check the results.  Go slowly!

Here I’m using 80-grit sandpaper to flatten the outer part of the rear section of the point.  Again, it’s important to go slowly and check your work frequently.

I use various grades of sandpaper ranging from 80-grit to 500-grit.

Now it’s beginning to look nice.  I’ve got the proportions top to bottom, left to right and in cross-section all worked out and have smoothed out the bone using increasingly fine grit sandpaper.

I use a fine rat-tail file to fashion the notches on either side of the point.  Make sure you get the notches even on both sides or the point will not be symmetrical.

A labor of love: Bone points are actually stronger than stone points and nearly as strong as steel points.  The above points are suitable for medium or large game up to the size of white-tailed deer.  Using fine grit sandpaper I’ve honed the edges to a razor sharp finish.  These points will cut you!

The Walking Stick

I’m not a frequent user of walking sticks.  Others around me use them so I make them sticks and now and then I use them too.  These are not fancy sticks, though in my mind the beauty of the wood takes precedence over carvings and the like.  Some people carve their walking sticks.  I’ve seen trolls and gnomes and goblins and eagle’s heads carved at the tops of handles.  I’ve seen sticks shaped like serpents and once at the beach on South Padre Island I saw a fellow with a walking stick fashioned in the form of a pirate’s sword.  Some walking sticks leave me cold.  I was at an upscale outdoors store in Austin not long ago and they were selling “hiking staffs” made of aluminum and other assorted alloys.  They had fancy price tags on them and I wondered why anyone would spend so much money on a metal pipe when all one needs is to cut a branch of appropriate length and head out.  I read a book by Colin Fletcher called The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher and he had a practical view on walking sticks.  Fletcher is considered one of the founding fathers of modern backpacking.  Now I’m not a devotee of carrying heavy packs and I think packing skills trumps lugging around dozens of pounds of “things,” but even Fletcher believed in just snapping a branch and then using it to stabilize himself and his load of stuff when hiking the backwoods.

 People have different ideas of what constitutes the appropriate length for a walking stick.  Here in the South Texas Brushlands a stick must serve more than one purpose.  It’s not just a staff used to aid in hiking but it also serves as an early warning system to probe areas that might harbor rattlesnakes.  You know I’ve had some problems with rattlesnakes this past year but over the last couple of weeks I’ve killed seven monsters within two-hundred feet of my house.  In fact, the other night I was goofing around in my little workshop and I looked beyond the rim of lamplight and saw something that in the last 60 years has become imprinted on my cerebral radar screen: That quintessential bogey that raises the early warning system and puts me at DEFCON 1.  I grabbed a flashlight and pistol and walked over to the anomaly and saw what ultimately measured 74.5 inches of pure hell.

We think of "workshop hazards" but how many of you have ever considered something like this.  This snake was just a few feet from my shop (just an overhang connected to a storage shed) and it went over six feet long.

My sticks range between 52-53 inches and I use the top part of the branch as the bottom of the stick and the bottom part of the branch as the handle.  I’ve used various woods like chaparro prieto (Acacia rigidula), mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), guajillo (Acacia berlandiera), and Granjeno (Celtis pallida) for my sticks and perhaps I’ve used other woods but I can’t remember all of them.  Some woods are too heavy and that is my other concern when making a walking stick.  It should be strong but lightweight.  The three sticks in the pictures are all made from granjeno.  This is a ticklish wood to work with because though it dries to a nice light weight it also has a tendency to check and split if not properly cured.  So I’ll leave the bark on a few months and then, using one of my crooked knives, shape the stick to the dimensions I prefer.  I’ve capped off sticks with all sorts of things but I’ve been using ½ and ¾ inch PVC lately because I’ve got a cache of pipe around the house and it seems to work okay.  I drill a quarter inch hole about ½ inch from the top of the stick and thread some parachute cord through it to serve as an aid in holding.

I don’t give the sticks a fine sanding because I want a firm grip so I’ll take it down with 80 grit paper and leave it there.  I paint my sticks with clear urethane and that seals the wood and protects it as well.  And best of all, I did it myself.  I didn’t spend any mullah at any upscale outdoors store.  Just remember the KISS Principle, folks.

The Bitter Fruit Amargosa

In South Texas and northern Mexico thousands of kids, and probably as many adults, have been forced or at least reluctantly acquiesced to take a dose of Amargosa.  The word means, “bitter” and is aptly applied.  The plant is in the family Simaroubaceae, a small clan confined primarily to tropical regions.  Amargosa is known scientifically as Castela texana—the genus in honor of a French naturalist named Castel and the species noting its presence in the state of Texas.  Amargosa extract is taken either from the roots or stems and is used in the treatment of Entamoeba histolytica.  The efficacy of this treatment has been the subject of several scientific inquiries and to date the results are promising.  But she is a bitter mouthful and when those who have swallowed the brew are asked to describe the experience the answer usually comes not with words but via facial contortions.  A friend of mine says it was his mother’s catchall cure for any sort of stomach or intestinal ailment.  “She even used it to treat skin rashes,” he said.  To which he adds, “But I’m here to tell you it’s nasty stuff.”

Below are a few scientific articles on the efficacy of Castela texana.

http://biblioteca.cinvestav.mx/indicadores/texto_completo/cinvestav/2005/128187_1.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8984156

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15582360

Amargosa is also known as Goat Bush or Allthorn Castela. 

thanks for your condolences

Thanks to those who took the time to send their condolences regarding my dog, Chucha.  We buried her last Saturday not too far from the house.  Through the trees I can see her grave and in the evenings I’ll glance over that way and reminisce.  Lots of special thoughts came from so many readers and I’ll remember them all.  One very special message came from J.R. Guerra who wrote, "Take comfort that she lived like a dog should, unchained and free to wander in the open air."

Thanks again,

Arturo

In Memory of Chucha

Lest I give the impression that life in the woods is idyllic then let me make it clear that is not always the case.  When things go wrong they do so in powerful and sinister ways.  The goblins that dwell here look for any advantage to pounce and a moment of absentmindedness can, and often does lead to catastrophic events.  I look in wonder at those who set their campsites on bare ground with nary a thought, or those who hike the woods dressed in shorts, or the clan that gives little thought to bringing water since that resource is abundantly available where they live.  But here in the South Texas Brushlands we watch our steps and listen intently for those malevolent aberrations that appear as if from nowhere.

And so it was this evening when one of my six blue heelers went missing.  I had seen Chucha this morning when I went out on the porch for my dog’s morning treats.  A little ritual I go through where each dog must sit before given a biscuit, I noticed that Chucha looked lethargic and didn’t sit like she usually does.  Perhaps she was just being a bit lazy I thought; and to be honest I don’t even know if she ate the treat.  I had things to do and so I left the dogs to their biscuits.

But this evening when it was feeding time, Chucha did not appear.  The dogs were acting skittish and refused to get off the porch to go eat.  That’s when the abrasive rattling began.  What happened in the next few minutes is irrelevant in the sense that Chucha was by that time already gone.  I grabbed my .410 break-open shotgun, loaded it and peered under the porch.  The snake was only a few feet away and it was about 5 ½ feet long.  Now, I’ve taken hundreds of rattlesnakes in my life and it’s nothing I’m proud of or anything anyone should glorify.  If you want to read about rattlesnakes then read my book, Adios to the Brushlands, from Texas A&M University Press.  But I’m not writing here about snakes but instead about Chucha.  After the snake was killed I took a flashlight and shined the light under the porch—and I saw Chucha’s lifeless body.  How long she had been gone is hard to say, and at that moment it’s also hard to explain how I felt.  You see, this was Chucha’s second bout with a rattler.  A few years back a small rattlesnake bit her in the face.  She survived because the snake only managed to get one fang into her check.  My cousin Dora Ines rushed her to the veterinarian’s office and thus saved her life.  The snake today was another story: This was a good-sized rattler with enough venom to complete the job.

So here I am still in shock.  I love my dogs, and those of you who have pets will surely understand.  Chucha was a good and loyal blue heeler, and she always stayed close to me when we walked.  I loved the two nearly identical spots surrounding each eye, and the way she would look at me as if to say, “Let’s journey a little farther.”  Today her journey ended.  We are sad.  We’ll miss her.

The Gift of Silence

Two weeks on the road visiting family and attending to business and now back in the woods where last night I walked out on the porch and watched the International Space Station clear the horizon to the west then skirt the edges of our atmosphere along the northern sky.  When it disappeared in the east I noticed a passenger plane riding the winds somewhere in between and wondered about the people in both the plane and the space station and how they had no idea that far below and many miles away a man sat at his cabin looking up into the heavens.  It’s like that at night.  For the only things I usually see are the stars and the only sounds I hear are those of coyotes wailing at the moon and pauraques whistling in the dark and the ever present fiddling of crickets.  Now and then, as if a reminder of the world beyond this tiny enclave, comes the droning of a US Border Patrol helicopter.  The space station, the passenger plane and the helicopter but glimpses of a world driven by other needs and desires; for here there is simply the woods and the silence.  As I write these notes I hear mourning doves cooing in the trees next to the cabin and at one of my feeders I see that a pair of curved-billed thrashers has stopped to snack.  There’s not an hour that goes by that I don’t peer out at the birdfeeders to see who has come to visit.  Indigo and painted buntings, ruddy doves and Inca doves, white-winged doves, and my favorite dove, the ghost dove.  You birders out there are asking: “What’s a ghost dove?”  That’s what I call the white-tipped dove—a moniker used by most without any semblance of romance or creative thought.  So I’ll continue calling it the ghost dove and listening to its haunting coos as I have done since childhood, and I’ll revel in the silence that fills the gap between each melancholy note.  For me silence and nature far outweigh other needs.  Not but a few miles south trucks race along the little paved highway en route to distant markets.  A man who comes out this way tells me he visits in order to get away from the noise.  And yet, for most people noise is so endemic that they seem, or at least think they are, immune to its presence.  Some people won’t come over here because they claim it’s too quiet.  Then there is that odd batch that seem both uninspired and perhaps even incensed that anyone would prefer the silence of nature.  They have other problems as well.

For example, I know a man who asks, “Why would anyone want to walk in the woods?”  As if his desire to drive from place to place (sometimes one place is no more than a hundred yards from the other) is superior to those who choose to walk.  But then I read an article recently saying that the act of walking has been denigrated in our modern society.  We are a generally obese population.  I wonder why?

Perhaps it might be nice to devote a number of posts to the understanding of silence, the meditative powers of woods roaming, and the quest for a lifestyle removed from what has become known as modern society.  So let’s work on that for a while.