The Endless Prairie Wind
Now we move into spring. Both the Ides of March and the Vernal Equinox have passed. Dawn comes a little earlier each morning; the sun eases itself little-by-little northward in the eastern sunrise sky. The prairie winds blow and whistle and sometimes howl. But, if you are going to live on the prairie, you will live with the winds.
The ranch headquarters are about halfway down the bluff that drops toward the Cheyenne River. We face the river valley, which lies to the southeast of us. This location gives us a southern exposure for the winter sun, a great view of the river valley with a couple of main tributaries that help to feed the river, and a very welcome shelter from hard-charging, northwest winds of winter. So with our backs to the wind and our faces toward the sun, we guesstimate what the day will hold for us and try to plan our activities accordingly.
Regular chores come first. This can be the easiest part of the day or sometimes a pain in the butt. For example, dogs and horses never leave anything alone. I have watched the dogs bring in old bones from the pasture and deposit them everywhere. It doesn’t matter to them that someone else will have to pick them up and dispose of them. I have seen the horses surround the bed of my pickup and empty it of tools (pliers, hammers, fencing tools, bags of wire clips, etc.); anything they can pick up, they will and anything they can knock over will be on the ground. I have yet to be successful in my attempts to have them straighten things out and put them back where they belong.
The wind is a lot like the dogs and horses. It too never leaves anything alone. It whips panels off the windbreaks, rips roofing tin off the barn, and it brings tumbleweeds from miles away and deposits them along the fence line. If these winds are followed by snow, it will gather in drifts along the tumbleweed fence line and bend it to its will.
The wind can cut like a knife in winter and make the cottonwood trees sing in the summer. But mostly, it never ends, and the work can’t wait for it to stop. If you’re a fencer, the wind is job security, but if you’re a rancher, it’s a never-ending spring job. And, no seasonal element can stop the production.
Dressed for the conditions, we hunch up and keep our heads down to keep the dust, snow or rain out of our eyes. Posts are straightened. Nails are driven. Wires are stretched and fastened into place. Once the pasture is secured to hold buffalo, we can step back and take pride in a good, honest day’s work. Wind or no wind.
When I first started falconry oh so many years ago (well, only 25 years ago. Harry McElroy and others have me beat by a country mile), I was told to NEVER, EVER fly my redtail in the winds (around Dallas) because if she went up into a soar, I’d never get her back. It was another five years before I heard about Gerald Richards in Utah, but if I didn’t fly her in winds, we’d never fly. Granted, the winds around you are much more significant, but now I live in NE Arizona. My new benchmark for flying in winds if if they get serious about knocking me to the ground. These birds have wings and those wings work so we hunt/fly. I figure if the winds are knocking me to the ground, my male HAHA could end up in Poughkeepsie and nobody wants to end up in Poughkeepsie ;-)
And the winds (and critters) are here to teach us that we’re only in charge of a little bit around here…LOL!
I have recently returned to rural Rhode Island after f20 years in London where I deeply missed Big Weather- wind and all. So glorious to be back by the sea in the midst of random chaos- anchored by wind.
Your description is compelling.
We left NE Ohio for West Texas when I was a kid. We lived on the north edge of town, with nothing but prairie beyond. I’d never felt and heard such wind. Anything not nailed down was on the move. I remember tiny drifts of red dust along the window sills of my bedroom, where the wind had found a way in—as it always did. And tumbleweeds piled deep along the fences and walls. But even that experience didn’t prepare me for life on the Laramie Plateau in Wyoming. Snow never really fell. Rather, it rattled past the windows in horizontal streams and collected in great drifts across our road. We learned very quickly to respect the wind that could kill the foolish and unprepared.
I can’t help but think of a line from a song by James McMutry (someone else who knows how to write about living in the wind),
“There ain’t much between the Pole and South Dakota, and barbed wire won’t stop the wind”
The wind, oh the wind! Growing up on a farm … and a farm site on a hill …in the prairie region of N. Iowa, I thought the wind was a downer. I will always remember trying to go from the barn to the machine shed in an actual 100 MPH straight wind.
That is, I thought wind was bad, until we moved the buffalo to our new farm in S. Iowa so long ago. Then I finally realized that wind is so refreshing. I missed the wind. Maybe it was my comfort food? I don’t know. But that wind … to me …removes stale air (that is unless a farm is downwind from all those big cattle feedlots in and around Garden City Kansas). And in Yellowstone my horses, given the reins, sought out the same thing if there was little wind. The breezes on the passes and mt. tops. Any place to activate the “wind senses”.
Without wind my horses couldn’t smell the griz or poachers horses. For me it was the so gentle breezes on my cheeks that gave a sixth sense awareness of life … good and bad …around me. That realization was similar to finally acknowledging another unconscious survival need ….. and laughing, when realizing one looks both ways ..just like animals … before putting ones head down to the stream for a drink of water.
The breeze on one cheek … or the other … always rotating the head to gather the wind from one side or the other … for a combined better idea of what danger was around me. It was no different than what my horse was doing. Yes, smell, but it is something a lot deeper. So again laughing to myself when I figured it all out. Yes, life without wind is so boring .. and so unrevealing of life in that outdoors.
I had never thought of tumble weeds being wind breaks … but I bet every elk or bison on that open short grass prairie knew if there was no water to be found … they could go to any briar patch or obstruction to that flat plain … and find that survival snow on the down wind side of that tumble weed … or any other "tumbling’ weed snow fence. Yes, ,for mans artificial barb wire fences, its a drag, but for life with man, as any another animal, that wind is a life saver. I guess I know my time is up on earth when I can no longer walk against a 20 mph wind. Same, I sure with Dan or Jill, I bet.