Category: Pawhuska

Wildflowers and Tamed Wilderness

9/24/2022

When I walk by the Partridge Pea on my acreage, I usually just keep moving. One or two plants and a few blooms. Weeds more than wildflowers.

But when I was exploring a Nature Conservancy area near Pawhuska, OK, one year i saw the Partridge Pea blooming with a vibrancy I'd never seen before.

Even though I've been walking many of the same trails for some time now, the changes from year to year amaze me. Just because I see one wildflower blooming abundantly one season, I know I'm not promised to see the same blooms next year.

There's an old saying, "The only thing constant is change." I didn't realize how true that was in nature.

This autumn, the pollinators have again found the blooms growing best for their needs.

Bison...At Home on the Range

7/17/2021

Bison are fairly common here. But they’re usually, willingly, in pens. I’ve heard that if a 1000 pound bison doesn’t really want to be enclosed…it’s difficult to argue.

Surprisingly, though, I’d never realized the difference between seeing a few of them in a pen, and seeing a herd of them in the wild. Besides the lack of fencing, the ground wasn’t littered with troughs—or barren because of over-grazing, They looked more peaceful, and unspoiled.

I imagine myself seeing a sight viewed centuries in the past.

Even the babies seemed more contented in the habitat.

But no matter how peaceful and serene everything appears...this is their home, and I'm a visitor. I wasn't invited by them, and I'm to take care. Or, as the sign says:

One spring, in a contained pasture, I did wake one up accidentally as I drove slowly along the road. It's best to let them sleep.

Photos taken near Pawhuska, OK at the Tallgrass Prairie Wildlife Preserve.

Roping in the Research

9/5/2020

It’s not every day you get to test your roping skills in a fairly safe environment, and if I’d not doing it correctly, well, this may have been the first time I ever held a real lariat…

It is a long way to the ground and as I’d recently taken a painful tumble from a hammock, I didn’t want to fall from three times as high. So I removed my shoes to get on the stationary horse, making sure I could feel where my feet were.

The stirrups aren’t stationary and are moving as you nudge your feet into them. But, I managed to pull myself into the saddle easily. There were steps and this was a relatively small horse. It does take a little power to pull yourself into the saddle on a real horse…or you need to teach the horse to kneel for you, or have a raised object you can stand on.

Then I practiced the twirling. I learned that a pro roper often stands in the stirrups as he throws the rope over the horns of the animal, and also that he would be holding the reins in his left hand, along with the twirls of rope, at the same time. The rope even had to be looped carefully to make sure it wouldn’t tangle when thrown.

The horse is moving, the animal to be roped is moving and the cowboy or cowgirl is moving. It’s harder than it looks, but more fun than it looks, too. Or, at least it is on a fiberglass horse.

As long as you could do it without shoes or cowboy boots, I could see trying it again on a real horse…except it really is a long way to the ground, and again, the horse is moving. In a rodeo roping event, the horse would be running at a fast clip, and speed is important as the event is timed to the seconds.

The safest and easiest thing to rope is your own foot.

Pictures taken at the Ben Johnson Museum in Pawhuska Oklahoma.

Wildflowers and Tamed Wilderness

Bison...At Home on the Range

Roping in the Research

Archives

Categories