Tag Archives: Foggy Weather

February 3, 2010 · 9:31 am

Post Haste Verbena with Tool

Prehistoric Tool In Situ Poprock Hill Pasture February 3, 2010

Temperature was 37 degrees at 6:30 a.m….Light rain was forecast and has started raining at 8:00 a.m….Rain exposes prehistoric tools, rocks, horseshoes, wood debris and boulders in the pastures….When I first moved here, I looked for quartzite flakes and tools of prehistoric people that harvested acorns, edible plants and deer.  Finding no quartzite, I changed my pattern of survey and looked for iron ore and meteorite tools that had been abraded, not extensively flaked.  I found things.  Poprock Hill pasture has yielded tools in abundance and will be designated an archeological site by the state of Texas.  This morning, after the first feed of the horses, I took a photograph of a tool in situ.  Light rain washed clay off the tool, exposing craft and art of people that hunted and gathered before the arrival of the European.  Not far away from the tool, a red ant hill with little stones about the portal to the underworld rose slightly from verbena plants that will bloom in the spring.

6 Comments

Filed under Flying Hat Ranch

Tagged as , , , ,

November 11, 2009 · 7:08 pm

Fog in Sims Valley

Grove and Fog, November 10, 2009, Flying Hat Horses, Texas
Photo by J. Matthews
Early Feeding in Fog, November 10, 2009, Flying Hat Horses, Texas
Photo by J. Matthews
November mornings in central West Texas bring surprises.  Yesterday, fog dropped down and obscured the distant hills and Cross Timbers Mountains from the back terrace of our ranch house.  We live in Sims Valley, about four miles south of Interstate 20, between Abilene and Fort Worth.  The road that goes into the grove in the photograph, “Early Feeding in Fog,” is one of several dirt roads used in the nineteenth century between Stephenville and Thurber, a coal mining town that supplied fuel for the railroads.  When a north wind blows, we can hear the locomotives whistling as they speed through Strawn, Mingus, and Gordon, three small villages north of Interstate 20.
The horses, Shiners Fannin Peppy and Stars Bars Moore, eat some alfalfa I have put in their tub.  This morning, November 11, the fog was so thick I could hear the horses nicker, but could not see them in the arena.  The fog lifted by 10:00 a.m.
[Annotation:  because I have the flu, I stayed home yesterday and today.  I put on my field jacket and hat to feed, quickly returning to the house to get the camera and take the photographs.  I am feeling better this evening and can probably go to work at half-speed tomorrow.  Besides, I need to see if the ducks are still quacking on the Baird Hill Pond, close to Abilene.  We have to get our priorities straight, don’t we?]

1 Comment

Filed under Flying Hat Ranch, Horses

Tagged as , ,