Monday began a warming trend, and on Tuesday melted snow streamed down the valleys toward the ponds, but still I saw no geese. Most of that day I spent indoors in meetings, so perhaps birds were passing overhead and I was unaware. By Wednesday most of the snow had vanished from the bluff. Norma and I rambled across prairies and woods, and still we saw or heard no geese. A nagging nervousness set in; why were the harbingers of spring three days late?

I recalled that when four inches of snow fell on the bluff last week, parts of northern South Dakota got nearly a foot. Maybe the corn fields and wetlands where migrating geese feed and rest were still blanketed in white. That might suggest to those who listen to weather reports why migration might be premature, but perhaps geese also knew that their reception farther north would be cold. I don’t know how they know, but I am convinced that after thousands of generations of migration, they sense instinctively what we must rely on modern media to learn.

In any case, nervousness has turned to joy. On Thursday, thousands of geese filled the sky. Another three inches of wet snow Sunday reminded us that March is our snowiest month, and I know that for weeks the earth will remain frozen, that tilling the garden is a month or more away. We may not see pasque flowers for weeks, and there will be more fires in the wood stove. And yet, the first sign of spring has come—angle after angle of geese rushing and honking northward across the sky, pushing winter beyond the bluff, clearing the path for yet more geese and ducks and sandhills cranes, and eventually, two months hence, even brown thrashers.

When I hear the thrashers’ song, I will set out tomato and pepper plants and will relegate the cold and ice of 2009 to memory. But for now, it is enough to strain eyes and ears toward the Missouri, waiting for the next V of geese to clear the bluff.

–Jerry

And yet, winter has taken its perennial toll in death. Trees have been stark and brittle for months. The soil that in two months will produce the first lettuce leaves are hard as brick. Even the lovely amber and pink of native grasses has faded, heads stripped by wind and stems shattered and drab. And on the hillside east of the house lie the remains of a frozen deer.

What took her life, I could not ascertain. I saw no arrow or bullet hole, which I have sometimes found. She looked healthy enough to be alive when I found her sheltered south of a cedar tree a hundred feet from the house, a protected slope of native grass where deer often sleep. I expected her to spring from her bed and disappear, but she did not. When I came close, the glaze across her eye proved that this was her final rest. Like sisters of a dozen generations, she had come home to die.

A hundred feet from the house is too close for decaying flesh. I picked up a frozen leg and began to pull. I tugged her to the next cedar before concluding that she was too heavy to drag. I went for the tractor, picked her up with the snow scoop and hauled her to the hillside two hundred yards away.

The first night, coyotes came. I heard the happy commotion from our bed. By morning her belly was opened and choicest parts were gone. Then came the day shift, a murder of crows, two dozen or more, their raucous caws conveying their glee. Two weeks have passed, and now, should I wish, I could move what remains of her carcass with ease. The dining table is a carpet of hair, but little is left of the body but skin and bones.

When the weather warms and what remains begins to rot, vultures will dine, and then insects and worms. When winter comes again, mice who live in the nearby brush pile will gnaw the scattered bones. And someday, what nothing above ground eats will enrich the soil. Sad and shocking as death always is, it is an essential part of life. And in this never-ending cycle, the season of death plays a vital role.

–Jerry

To read more of Jerry’s observations check out his book, Waiting for Coyote’s Call: An Eco-Memoir from the Missouri River Bluff.

Yes, chemical companies and dealers were well represented, and yes, I and other delegates did find information on new formulations and new equipment and techniques for applying chemicals. Like all else in modern America, fighting weeds has gone high tech. On the Missouri River bluff I will continue to engage thistles and leafy spurge with my hoe where possible and my backpack sprayer where necessary.

But for the scale of ranches and roadside ditches, new technologies include GPS mapping to systematically record and monitor where various invasive species grow, what chemicals are used, when and in what quantities, and what progress toward control can be observed. Besides making the work of applicators more systematic and efficient, it also enables more precise targeting of chemicals, saving money and reducing potential pollution of water and soil.

Important as new chemicals, information and technology might be, what impressed me most about the conference was that in the past decade a sea change in attitude has occurred. From weed supervisors to entomologists to department of agriculture extension agents, there is growing recognition that fighting invasive weeds with chemicals alone is an expensive and losing battle. The new approach is “integrated pest management,” and the rising tool is bio control.

Bio control begins with the recognition that not all answers come from the chemistry lab. Instead, we must turn for answers once again, as our ancestors in every culture did, to Nature herself. In the case of leafy spurge or various thistles or salt cedar of a dozen other imported weeds that continue to spread despite decades of chemical attack, bio control begins with patiently observing what insect species eat the plant in question in its Old World region of origin.

What follows is a rigorous scientific search for answers: Does a particular insect effectively control a particular weed where they have evolved together? Does the bio agent feed exclusively on the specific plant in question, or might the insect, if imported, soon turn on our native or other desirable plants? Can the insect from, say Eastern Europe, survive a South Dakota winter? The process of approval for importation is necessarily painstaking; after all most of the problem plants, insects and animals we fight today were imported from abroad by accident, ignorance or a lack of thought.

For 10 years, flea beetles have assisted my struggle against leafy spurge on the Missouri River bluff. But a more comprehensive tool in the fight against noxious weeds has been restoration of native prairie.
In ever-broadening experiments since 1993, I have learned that tall grasses like big blue stem, Indian grass and switch grass not only overgrow, shade and choke out invasive weeds, but also provide the necessary habitat for insects and other organisms that evolved here as essential parts of an ecosystem in balance—processes I detailed in Waiting for Coyote’s Call. I was delighted to learn that people across the plains, from professors to weed supervisors, are also looking to Nature for answers. The fight against weeds is shifting from over-reliance on chemicals to bio control.

–Jerry

The pond Jerry wishes to skate is not always as perfect as it was when this picture was taken.

This year’s January Thaw came at the last possible moment—the last day of the month. The temperature reached the mid-40s, and melted snow began to move. At first it was tiny rivulets, trickling a drop at a time down icy slopes. By late afternoon thousands of droplets had collected and water was flowing down hillsides and crevices to lower ground. Here on the North 40, our lowest ground, the destination of flowing water, is the pond.

For two months the pond was encased in ice, but by the time winter’s skin had grown thick enough to support humans in mid-December, the surface was also covered by snow. The pond was unskatable. By February 2, Groundhog Day, the first melted snow had reached lower ground. Another week of above freezing days passed, and most of the snow from surrounding hillsides had rushed as water to the pond and covered the ice. Then, because the air trapped in ice makes it lighter than water, eventually the old ice cracked across the middle, broke loose from its earthly moorings and rose. And then Arctic air returned.
On Valentine’s morning the thermometer read 10 degrees; surely the time for skating had come. I dug the skates from the closet and Norma and I headed for the pond. The surface was a glossy sheen from bank to bank, except for early winter’s iceberg protruding in the middle. A broad ring between around the cottonwood and willow edges seemed the perfect skating run.

I stepped out onto ice. A high-pitched crackle splintered across the surface, and I quickly retreated to the safety of frozen earth. The time had not yet come. Perhaps the warmth of Valentine’s Day had restrained the return of winter’s grip. But by President’s Day, two more days in the teens and 20s have thickened winter’s skin to more than an inch. We will gather friends and try again. But we will stay near the edge; life’s pleasures are never without risk, but we don’t take foolish chances when skating on thin ice.

–Jerry

Waiting for Coyote’s Call

Marmota monax

Whether woodchucks lie in deep sleep somewhere below the frozen soil of our woods, I do not know, If one should poke his head from his burrow and gaze through leafless trees to the clouded sky, and if he should be so foolish as to believe the lore of Groundhog Day and venture forth in search of spring, he will surely be disappointed, for regardless of today’s sky, we will surely have six more weeks of winter, and perhaps more, before spring truly comes to the Plains.

And yet, Groundhog Day is significant to my calendar of hope. In my 30 years on the Northern Plains, I have trained myself to repress all thoughts of spring through the long and dreary months of December and January. But at last, February has come. We have miraculously survived beyond the mid-point of another winter, both spirit and flesh intact, and it now seems less foolish to entertain dreams of spring. Thankfully, February is our shortest month. In four weeks, by the first of March, I will awake one morning to the far-off but familiar honking of geese.

Geese flying in classic V-formation

Jerry

The Wilson's geo-solar home

We designed our house in 1981 with these basic principles in mind: In keeping with the “organic” architectural philosophy introduced a century ago by Frank Lloyd Wright, we wanted our house to blend with the landscape, to be compatible with the land to the extent that was possible. In function, it must meet the needs of human animals, pathetically comfortable only in a narrow range of temperature hovering around 70 degrees Fahrenheit. But this comfort had to be achieved with minimal consumption of non-renewable fossil fuel. Thus, the general design was clear. We would do as coyotes do––face the sun and burrow in. On the northern plains, that means a geo-solar house. (There’s a whole chapter about this in Waiting for Coyote’s Call.)

In the coldest winter our climate can deal, frost creeps no more than a couple of feet down; below that the soil temperature remains close to 50 degrees. Our north and west external walls are steel-reinforced concrete, backed by insulation and then earth, so little energy is required to keep the interior warm. Our lower floor is an “open basement,” the south wall mostly insulated glass, open to the sun. The window size and height for maximum exposure in winter, as well as the necessary overhang to block unwanted summer sun, are determined by winter and summer angles of the sun at our latitude, 42º 54′.

When the sun doesn’t shine, we burn wood, releasing energy the sun has patiently stored over decades in the cells of oak, elm, hackberry and ash. Over 25 years, our typical consumption of wood is about two cords per winter, two big pickup loads. The annual cost of staying warm is about two days of labor and a few dollars to maintain a saw. The added bonus is conveyed by the old saying that wood heats you
thrice: when you cut it, when you split it, and when you burn it in your stove.

––Jerry

Author Edward Wilson

Wilson–no, unfortunately not my cousin or uncle– was among the great inspirations behind Waiting for Coyote’s Call. It was Wilson’s great book The Diversity of Life that provided one of my favorite quotes, one which keep my spirits high in trying times: “There can be no purpose more enspiriting than to begin the age of restoration, reweaving the wondrous diversity of life that still surrounds us.”

Now I am savoring Wilson’s more recent book, The Creation. In a chapter entitled “The Pauperization of Earth,” Wilson observes that the great cataclysm that sent the dinosaurs to oblivion 65 million years ago–the collision of a giant meteorite off the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, was actually the fifth disturbance of this magnitude in the previous 400 million years of Earth’s history, each of which, the fossil record demonstrates, obliterated most of the living species of their time.

The Willamette Meteorite

Now, Wilson laments, “a sixth spasm has begun, this one a result of human activity. Although not ushered in by cosmic violence, it is potentially as hellish as the earlier cataclysms.” He cites the conclusions of a team of climate experts, that human-induced climate change, “if left unabated, could be the primary cause of extinction of a quarter of the plants and animals on the land by midcentury.”

Wilson names five causes for the decline of Earth’s biodiversity, which he summarizes with the acronym HIPPO. The order of the letters, he says, corresponds to their rank in destructiveness: Habitat loss, Invasive species, Pollution, human overPopulation and Overharvesting of Nature’s bounty. In short, we as humans have lost our sense of balance, or perhaps even the wisdom that balance is required–for healthy persons and for a healthy Earth.

Balance, we must seek. Now I leave my keyboard and venture out to feed the birds.

More snow today. The sky is bleak, and wind howls in the treetops north of the house. But we are protected by cedars, pines and deciduous bushes and trees and by our earth-sheltered home. A big chunk of hackberry glows in the stove.

Yesterday we drove with friends to the Missouri to look for eagles. Below Gavins Point Dam near Yankton, we counted 20 bald eagles perched in cottonwoods on the south bank. Most were mature, three or four grown but not yet distinguished by white tails and heads. Nine of the magnificent birds occupied two adjacent cottonwoods, nine eagles in a space of 50 yards. They eyed the flocks of floating and diving ducks, canvasbacks, mergansers and goldeneyes.

Occasionally an eagle would leave it’s limb and swoop across the current, dipping to strike a duck or a fish. But in this cold they can’t afford to wet their wings, so they are careful to only skim the surface. Ducks that see them coming have time to dive or dart to avoid the deadly talons, so most forays are without success.

From a high hill above the dam, where for half a century turbines have churned electricity from the river’s power, we counted 21 wind turbines, newly-installed near Crofton, Nebraska, one of two area wind farms facilitated by the Nebraska Unicameral’s near unanimous passage of C-BED legislation, a law that encourages community-based energy development. I wondered when the South Dakota Legislature will summon the wisdom to follow the lead of Nebraska, Minnesota and other neighboring states in promoting development of our vast and as yet largely untapped renewable energy resources, wind and sun.

We needn’t only dread or curse or hide from Nature’s powers. We can work with those forces to enhance our lives, and to reverse the trends of overconsumption and reliance on non-renewable and polluting fuels that threaten the future of the only Earth we have.

Jerry Wilson

Has the early winter snow come to stay, or will we be blessed with a January thaw? The 10 inches that fell on our bluff in mid December has melted on some sunny slopes, but has hardened to ice and crust elsewhere. I enjoyed skiing, alone and with family and friends, at least half a dozen times in December, but when I tried it on New Years Day I careened uncontrollably down an icy slope until I hit a pile of cedar brush. OK, enough of that until fresh snow falls.

Having the world encased in ice is tough on my four-legged and feathered friends. The colder the day, the more frantic the activity at our bird feeders. We have scores of house finches and a few golds and purples, juncos, various sparrows, bluejays, cardinals, red-bellied and downy woodpeckers, nuthatches and one flicker that flits past on some other errand.

The deer seem almost tame when they come for the handfuls of corn I toss on the frozen snow, though on a recent evening their abrupt scattering caught my eye; A sleek coyote was trotting down the creek bank below the house, and though he likely harbored little hope of dining on venison, the deer weren’t taking chances.

Meanwhile, the January sun reaches deep into our solar home, and without burning fossil fuel, or solar energy stored more recently in the cells of oaks and elms, we live in comfort, warmed and sustained by the ultimate source of all renewable energy and power. Yet, for ultimate comfort, when the sun goes down I’ll likely throw a couple of logs in the stove.

—Jerry