By Julie Carter
It's dry, it's a drought and yes, it seems to be getting worse. Now we are setting "drought" records. Not the kind of record to make anyone very proud.
The hot winds blow every afternoon and take away any clouds that might want to ponder in the sky. It moves them across the state so possibly it rains somewhere.
The humidity levels are ranging in the single digits to low teens that's the "dry heat" we hear folks talk about.
Wells and springs that have served ranchers for generations are coughing, choking, and sputtering with a death rattle warning of catastrophic consequences. You can feed livestock when you are out of grass but out of water means out of business.
If you ever once thought the ranchers were not tending to the wildlife during the day to day business of caring for livestock, a drought drives that point home hard. Usually the only water available in the majority of the local ranch country is water pumped to the surface by a rancher. All forms of wildlife have moved to the water holes.
The fenced highways have become a death trap for the antelope who find the only green food to eat to be in the right-of-ways.
Pastures along an 80-mile route that I drive every week have noticeably no grass, few if any cattle and an unusual number of highway casualty antelope carcasses providing buzzard feed. It is a "blight" staring every driver in the face.
In three consecutive days I've had close encounters in my yard with varmints I would just as soon not meet in the dark. A snake, family of raccoons and a skunk not that any one of those is unusual but so many in a row so close together isn't the norm.
The antelope have brazenly become part of a mowing operation on the perimeter of the yard. They are hungry enough that they barely look up as I step out the door and leave only if I head out the gate.
I drove to White Oaks today to do an interview for a story. For those of you that are not from around here, White Oaks is tiny old-west town that should have died after the mining boom of the 1880's and didn't. Going to White Oaks is a 125-year step back in time where you might tie your horse to a hitchin' rail but don't plan on filling up with gasoline or buying a burger anywhere and the folks that live there hope to keep it that way.
It was the middle of the day, middle of the week. But the White Oaks watering hole, also known as the No Scum Allowed Saloon, had a full-parking lineup in front and the bar stools, and possibly the patrons, were loaded.
Two-legged varmints and other folks of genteel persuasion—known as tourists—found shade and liquid refreshment while they waited for the ghosts of famous Lincoln County lawmen, gunfighters and cattlemen to drop by.
There are a lot of good folks looking upward these days. They look up with hope for a cloud and they look up to pray. Those same folks wear long tired faces of worry while they stay awake nights trying to figure out how to outlast the drought.
They know two things for certain. Today, although it didn't rain, is one day closer to the day it will. And when it does, it will be needed.
© Julie Carter 2006
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