Home for Christmas

December 24, 1997

“Let’s go home for Christmas,” I said.  

Pat replied “But we have no home.  We sold it - remember?”  

“Yes, I know, we are homeless orphans - but I still want to go home,” I replied.  Woodvine - our 20 acres of woods in East Texas - is home to me.  Even though we may spend only a few weeks here every year, we have electrical and telephone hookups and about 30 years of pleasant memories to keep us coming back.  There are other attractions in the College Station area such as an office full of old books, friends, several doctors, a couple of dentists, a local Compuserve number and all the amenities of a university town.  

Here at Woodvine, the memories of our kids playing games in the woods evoke nostalgia and associated emotions.  I remember our kids swinging from the long, single-rope swing that hung from high up in a bent-over post oak.  They would climb about ten feet up into a neighboring tree - carrying the swing with them.  Straddling the rope and sitting on the wooden swing seat, they would step off into space for a thrilling, spinning ride.  The woods rang with the sounds of their exuberant play!  These same woods are much quieter now.  Last night as I listened for the calls of barred owls, I heard the sound of a train whistle.  The closest train track is probably 15 miles away.  

Ever since barbed (bob) wire was invented, it has been used to separate neighbor’s pastures - to keep the horses, cattle, sheep or goats from escaping their grassy prisons.  But what good is a fence on an ecological preserve?  Deer jump over or climb through fences.  Other wildlife is hindered very little by barbed wire fences.  The importance of my fence is to keep the neighbor’s cows out and to mark our property lines!  

In ranching folklore, I remember hearing the claim that, “A man can be judged by how he keeps his fences.”  A clean fence-line with sturdy posts and taut wires was a testament to a man’s character.  For many years, my fence has brought me shame.  It is overgrown with shrubs and vines to the extent that it is sometimes difficult to see the fence from the road.  Although I tried to replace broken fence posts and broken wire, the thought of actually cleaning the fence line triggered a persistent procrastination.  “Someday, when I get a little time, I’m going to clean that fence,” I often thought.  But recently - with an ax in hand and prepared to clean the fence - I had an inspiration!  If the brush that has grown up along the fence line is so thick that my neighbor’s cows cannot penetrate it to reach my smut grass and little bluestem, why clean the fence-line?  After all, the quail and other birds use the overgrown fence to escape predators.  There must be some virtue in having an overgrown fence line.  Am I just rationalizing to avoid an arduous task or rebelling against conventional folklore?  Maybe - but I have no plans to clean my fence line until some cultural guilt, inspired by ranching folklore, gets the best of me.  It won’t happen soon!  

With the time I have saved from not cleaning the fence line, there are more important things to do.  Guess I’ll take a nap!

Arriving at Woodvine probably ends our autumnal adventures which included following the fall colors, starting in Minnesota during late September.  Most of the trees here are mere skeletons of their summer appearance.  They are mostly bare of leaves except for a few, brown, post oak leaves which cling tenaciously in spite of winter winds.  However, there is still a surprising amount of color in the mid and lower canopy of the forest.  Not the brilliant colors of maple in Minnesota, but a more subdued red can be found in the young water oak leaves.  One of the most attractive is the few remaining leaves on dogwoods.  Their color borders on peach-maroon -- what other colors would they be in Aggieland, the home of the maroon and white, fighting Texas Aggies?  The leaves of the sparkleberry are now in full color adding shades of red, orange, and peach to the undergrowth.

The bare limbs of trees expose the Spanish moss and bright green color of brier and resurrection fern that are often concealed by summer foliage.  Some of the yaupon - also called Christmas berry - bear heavy crops of red berries as they await the invasion of migrating robins.  At some point, during the winter our woods will be alive with robins gorging on these yaupon berries which taste so awful to my palate.  Yaupon was named Ilex vomitoria for good reason.  When we once owned a real house, Pat would ask me to cut several branches of berry loaded, yaupon branches to decorate the fireplace mantel during Christmas.  Now that we live among the yaupon, it is more fun to observe them as they live naturally.  Took a small walk into the woods this morning to see the native holly trees -- which also evoked more Christmas spirit.  Adding to the color of the winter woods are bright purple clusters of Spanish mulberry fruit which still adorn the leafless stems.

One whitetail buck - that lives in our Wickon creek bottom - and I have a major Christmas disagreement.  I wish to keep the healthy and handsome young rusty blackhaw growing down by the creek.  The buck has other ideas.  In the process of rubbing off the pesky velvet from its antlers, it skinned most of the bark from the young tree.  The tree may live, but it will be forever changed by the encounter.  The evidence is fresh, which means that the rutting season cannot be far away and Christmas is here.  

The pair of Carolina wrens (maybe the same pair that built so many nests in the frame of Serendipity this spring) search for food in a brush pile outside our window.  No, I have not yet seen any moss in their beaks as they prepare to invade us again, but we will be watching! 

Since we left Woodvine in August, the yaupon, Spanish mulberry, and brier vines have grown a couple of feet tall in the driveway.  As we drive over them, they ping against the metal parts under my plastic car.  I will chop off their heads during the next few weeks.

It is good to be home with all our faunal, floral, and human friends to celebrate this time of changing seasons.

Winfield