Control: An Illusion

Control: An Illusion

Humans are funny creatures. Some imagine we control much that happens in our world. Because technological advances during the last two centuries eradicated small pox and put men on the moon, it’s easy to buy this idea. Believing we direct our lives makes us feel safer. However, anyone who lives in Kansas understands our species doesn’t control of much of anything but putting satellites in orbit and operating a remote that allows us to picture what weather might do. With that little button and functioning electricity, we can react to nature but we can’t regulate it. Recent weather has made that abundantly clear.

Though memory tends to be short, few of us have forgotten the multi-year dry spell that parched ponds, streams, and rivers into dried mud, shriveled prairie grasses to sere curls, and decimated trees. Watching evening news programs offered no comfort. Grim-faced forecasters highlighted maps of nearly every Kansas county in bright colors that confirmed what we saw daily—we suffered extreme drought.

In reaction, town councils voted to restrict watering while individuals opted to place rain barrels and other systems in yards and fields to capture every bit of moisture available. Gardeners promoted drought resistant plants and xeriscaping to manage a non-existent resource. Appliance and hardware stores marketed low-flow washers, toilets, faucets, and showerheads to conserve water.

Amazingly, in only a few months, the scenario has changed. Instead of facing a water shortage, businesses advertise sump pumps and dehumidifiers to waiting customers. Home improvement departments that promoted fixing foundations weakened due to dry conditions now publicize efforts to prevent leaky basements. Ironically, area residents must figure out how to channel water away from properties rather than to them.

Our ancestors faced similar issues. Where do you build a town? Those who build along a creek, river, or stream in dry years, have easy access to drinking and household water. Heck, enterprising sorts might build a mill to grind grain or produce electricity to light homes.

One wet season changes everything. Overnight, residents who prided themselves on wise planning and convenient services find raging torrents sweeping houses from foundations or eroding roadways. Such experiences have occurred far too often in the last month. More than one first responder team has recently rescued folks from cars or houses. 

Not only do storms that tint the radar in shades of red, pink, and purple dump deluges on saturated soil, plunging temperatures alter those molecules into baseball-size ice chunks. Heavy winds turn such projectiles into artillery that shatters glass, pulverizes siding, shreds crops, and convinces anyone living through the assault that Mother Nature knows how to wage war. Goodland residents will stay busy repairing and rebuilding property for months after this latest weather event.

Over a single summer, Mother Nature has reminded us life can change overnight. Ponds overflow, rivers surge over banks to wipe out roads or flood communities, and wind-driven hail shreds siding and splinters glass. Pressing a remote’s on button provides a preview of the show to come and sometimes offers time to prepare ourselves for the result. However, it doesn’t control what’s about to happen. Neither do we.

Mud’s Blessings

Chinese philosophers are on to something with their Yin and Yang concepts. Light balances dark, silence/noise, joy/sorrow, and in our case, mud offsets dust.

Yes, mud. Icky, gooey, sticky mud. Like cat hair, it latches onto anything it touches, finding its way from roads, yards, and pastures onto shoes and pant legs and into homes. It finds its way into the oddest places—a speckle stuck to a grocery sack, a chunk dropped by the door, a smear on a purse.

Lately, there’s been such an abundance of it that most of us can hardly remember the true color of our vehicles. Next time you drive through a parking lot, look to see if you can identify in-town-only transportation. Country cars and trucks can’t hide. One sported such a coating that chunks finally started calving like ice floes off a glacier. The asphalt beneath that pickup had enough of someone’s former road or field topping it that a gardener could’ve stuck in a couple of potato eyes and carrots and started a nice veggie patch.

Mud doesn’t just coat a car or truck’s paint job. It adds new dimensions to the driving experience. Try being the second or third person to drive down a sloppy road and read the tracks of the vehicle ahead. It’s clear all will proceed smoothly when the tracks follow a straight path in the appropriate lane.

However, tire-wide trails that weave back and forth across the road forming sharp little wedges along the ditch are a heads-up alert. They reveal every minute wheel jerk where the previous driver hoped to level the journey. When you observe those, tighten your seat belt and check for loose items that can fly through the car. Deep ridges formed from ditch to ditch inspire gasps and devout prayers.

I wonder if this is how amusement parks with those tiny cars youngsters love to drive came to invent the track rail that keeps those vehicles on the road. As moisture-laden soils dry, unfortunate country drivers hit tire-grabbing gouges that derail pickups and sedans into the Grand Canyon of ruts.

 

Those trying to escape such bone-rattling caverns on an icy morning may find themselves fender to fence post up the nearest incline or launched into a patch of green wheat. It makes a person think similar conditions had much to do with the formation of the still-present tracks on the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails.

Fortunately, farmers and ranchers have a handle on this situation. Not only do they own tractors to pull stuck vehicles out of morasses of waterlogged soil, most have multiple pairs of dandy boots—knee-high, rubberized footwear they can hose down after tromping through deep slime to feed and water livestock.

Mud isn’t only miserable; it multiplies work. Cattle, pig, and horse owners schedule extra time to feed and care for animals. This mire also increases drive time to town. Road crews know their real work begins when it dries. Housekeepers and janitors cringe, thinking about the extra vacuuming and scrubbing. One day of sludge makes it obvious why farmhouses have a mudroom.

But! Yes. But. Lack of mud means lack of moisture. It means blowing dirt. It means watching rooster tails of dust hang forever airborne when someone drives down a country road. It means no green wheat peeking from furrows, no milo, no sorghum, no soybeans, no corn, no rippling creeks, no fish to catch, no wild flowers.

 

Lack of mud suggests no life for many of us who love the prairie. I best buy some muck boots, extra vacuum bags, and start counting my dirty blessings. 

August Fogs Predict Winter Snows!

Daily temperatures may still top the century mark during the next few thirty days, but soon they’ll start dropping. Knowing old Man Winter has already packed his bags and bought his ticket to Kansas compels me to google long-term weather forecasts each year. The irony is that I’ve done this long enough to realize weather predictors have worse batting averages than losing baseball teams. To prepare better for changing seasons, I also consider what meteorological prophets relying on folk wisdom have to say. Since August has just begun, I’ve planned a little experiment to see how accurate those old-timers were when they offered up this maxim, “Count the number of morning fogs in August to predict the number of upcoming winter snows.”

Considering the dismal success rate of professional forecasters, I figure that testing some of my ancestors’ tried and maybe not-so-true maxims can’t steer me any further off course than the Weather Channel does. After all, those generations alive before media started telling me what to think depended on their practical experience of watching nature and noting patterns to thrive and pass on their genes. These people whose survival depended heavily on their ability to anticipate storms have to have some pointers I can use.

Besides, some of those sayings like the one that states we’ll have a snow total that matches the tallest sunflowers makes sense. If we had a wet summer that made our state flower reach gigantic heights, it’s more likely a wet winter with piled up snow will follow. I’m not sure I can make such a big jump with the correlation between the number of August fogs and winter snows. So, I’m going to get scientific to test this prediction.

Every year I think I’ll remember how many mornings I awakened to find the field behind the house hidden by layers of misty, white fog. By the time I hang up January’s new calendar, I forget. So this year, I’m going to jot down those hazy mornings with big  X’s. That way I’ll have a permanent record to back up my not always correct memory. Now, I just have to remember not to toss it when I get my new one.

It wouldn’t hurt to have folks who read this column provide back up. If all of us kept track of those ground hugging clouds for the next few weeks, we could double check one another after the last snow next spring. We’d then see if our long gone relatives were on to something or if their words are as empty as those mists that will soon hide our prairie several mornings this month.