February, 2005

Last month I thought our winter had finally arrived. I thought so because we had both snow and cold. Well, I was wrong. Neither the snow nor the cold lasted, and now the robins have returned to the ranch. I mention the robins because they seem to be early, and I haven't yet seen a white-crowned sparrow (which doesn't mean they are not here), a more dependable harbinger of an early spring arrival.

Throughout this winter, at least thus far, we have had perhaps a foot of snow total and maybe a half an inch of rain. That, my friends, is not even a drop in the bucket for the grass in the pastures. Fortunately, what we receive of winter snow and rain is not necessarily indicative of regional precipitation. There is still hope. So when I see this land working to replenish itself in spite of several years of drought and dry winter, I am repeatedly amazed at the resiliency and toughness of the prairie habitat.

The other day I was looking at our buffalo herd on the U.S. Forest Service land on the other side of the Cheyenne River. Actually I was three or four miles south of the river in a mixture of grasslands and badlands habitat. In the grassy valleys there was grass; and on the broad, flat, higher tables there was grass. From above it all seemed dormant but I got down on the ground to see whether new grass had begun to appear. It had. Tiny green shoots of several kinds of grasses had barely emerged. Now we'll see if that lasts. Of course it should with some rain to assist but who would have guessed it could green with as little rain as we have had this year.

And it is not just the habitat that is tough and resilient. About three weeks ago I noticed that one of our younger calves was limping and carrying its right foreleg. The radius and/or the ulna were broken. It was a simple fracture. Since then I have been keeping an eye on that calf. This morning, when I saw it, it was walking on the leg; walking gingerly on it, but walking on it nevertheless. My guess is that in two more weeks the calf will be indistinguishable from the rest of the herd. Today that calf playfully butted another, larger calf, and did so rather nimbly. I wonder who of us could straighten and heal our own broken arm without a cast or splint of any kind-simply by using gravity to straighten it until the bone knits itself sufficiently to be used.

Tough and resilient, habitat and inhabitants! Environmental adversity is a given in the natural way of life on the prairie. As in most landscapes the human piece of the puzzle survives and endures. I like to think that we might learn to live with as little complaint as a drought-ridden new blade of grass or a broken-leg buffalo calf and learn to live and act positively within the adversity of our environments