Mesquite and Windmills: Crossing the Texas Panhandle
PublishedSeptember 29, 2004
I, Bernie Harberts, did not use generative AI to write or illustrate this article. Spell check and grammar check, yes. AI, no.
After almost half a year of walking across North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas and Oklahoma, Woody, Maggie and I arrived in Texas. Texas! Land of the Long Horn, oil rigs and cattle drives. And now home to, at least on a walking-through basis, a pony, a mule and a dusty guy with a big grin.
Maggie enjoys a well-deserved feed on the Texas state line. This photo was taken by a rancher who gave us the sandwich he’d packed for lunch – and then snapped this pic. That’s a proper Lone Star welcome!I let Woody and Maggie graze for ten minutes on the state line
But then reality kicked in.
Ever since Arkansas, people had been telling me, “Boy, it’s going to be hot and dry over there in Texas. Nothing but mesquite and dust”.
At first I didn’t believe them. As I rode across Oklahoma, things looked okay. Dry, but enough grass and water to get by.
Oklahoma: the yellow flowers are volunteer sunflowers. Note how the grass is pressed down by the wind, which was starting to blow harder and harder
Then I stepped across the Texas state line and discovered what everyone was talking about.
But first I had to learn how to say “mesquite” right.
It’s Not “mes-keet”
For years I’d called it “mes-keet” with the stress on the first syllable. Then just west of the Texas state line a rancher informed me it was “mus-keet” like “mosquito” without the “o”.
They pronounce “mexican” funny over here too. So while I was at it I learned how to say that right. It’s “mescan”.
Then came the matter of water.
The Texas panhandle really is arid, that’s why it’s so full of mesquite and cattle. No more brooks and creeks like the Great Smoky Mountains. No, out here your priorities are water, horse feed, and then human food, in that order.
Where once I searched gas stations for spigots, I now looked for windmills. That first night in Texas, an hour before the sun hit the dirt, I heard something clanking off in the mesquite. I led Woody and Maggie out into the brush and as I pushed through it, the clanking got closer. I got to a clearing and, just as hoped, came to a windmill. The fan was turning slowly, the sucker rod, the part that pulls the water from the ground, was rising and falling and a stream of water was burping into the stock tank at the windmill’s base.
A precious discovery off in the mesquite
I pitched my tipi next to the windmill, fed Woody and Maggie and leaned up against the cart taking in the beautiful view of the windmill pumping that most precious of liquids up from the ground – water.
Sign up for The River, the RiverEarth newsletter, for occasional doses of rambling and homestead life. Plus you'll get a free copy of my 155-page illustrated ebook 19 Million Mule Steps.
Leave a Reply