I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in the natural world around me. At age 5, there was the clear spring from which my mother and father dipped our water for drinking, cleaning the house, washing clothes and for bathing.
That clear, sparkling spring-fed pool was an enchanting place. It was located at the bottom of a deep ravine, sometimes the clear water became muddied by a visiting turtle.
My whole life, I’ve been fortunate in that during the summers and after chores entire days often were spent roaming the nearby hills and creek banks observing the plants and animals that lived in the water and fertile banks of the creek on our property and beyond.
Our family’s lack of electricity and piped in water never bothered me until the late 1940s when our neighbors began to experience the delights of electric lights and refrigeration. (We did at least have a battery-powered radio and by this time a well with pump just outside the backdoor.) Still, since I didn’t get to go to town often and very, very seldom got to see a movie, I sought the natural world for entertainment and solace.
The curiosity I cultivated as a child has stayed with me into my declining years. This desire to know something about everything led me to sample some of that orange-red dirt that the county road grader had recently cleaved asunder. Spring rains had darkened its color to a deep red-orange and the texture was not unlike warm taffy. I scooped out a spoonful and put it in my mouth. I can still remember that moment and the unexpectedly smooth, pleasant almost sweet taste of the clay. I doubt that I shared this experience with anyone because even at 8 years old, I knew one didn’t eat dirt. Does one?
Well, yes they do. Many, many peoples from every continent, especially in Africa and in the Southern United States eat dirt (clay) on a regular basis. There’s even a fancy name — geophagy — for the practice of eating earth for nutrition, to fill the stomach during famine, as a reminder of home during long absences and sometimes as a symptom of psychosis.
The clays commonly eaten in Africa and parts of the South contain important dietary nutrients such as phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, copper, zinc, manganese and iron. People around the world also eat clay as a cultural tradition for religious ceremonies or to treat diseases or neutralize toxins. The tradition of geophagy was introduced to the United States with the slaves.
Indigenous peoples of South America who live at high altitudes in the Andies Mountains serve a sauce consisting mostly of clay and water that they dip the potato in before eating it to neutralize the alkaloids of the feral potatoes that they cultivate at altitudes of up to about 14,000 feet.
A 1942 survey in Mississippi revealed that at least 25 percent of the schoolchildren habitually eat earth. There are good sites for nutritional clay in the southern United States from which many families send clay to their expectant mother relatives in the northern United States and elsewhere.
Are you aware that you’re eating kaolin (the white clay from which our sinks and commodes are constructed)? If you have ever taken Kaopectate, then you’ve eaten kaolin combined with pectin. Kaolin products have many uses in the medical field such as to alleviate the symptoms of diarrhea, the stomach and intestinal spasms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) as well as kidney spasms.
This state contains seven orders (broad classifications of soil types) of soil with their diverse ecosystems. The soil type, along with yearly rainfall averages and its history of the use or abuse determines what plants and creatures will populate each region. Of course there are micro ecosystems within each of these broad ranges.
Oklahoma has a wonderfully diverse and lovely topography from the sere extreme northwest of the Panhandle where dinosaurs once roamed to the extreme southeast’s moist mostly clay wetlands with its oak and hickory forests.
The most common of the soil types known as Mollisols are deep, very darkly colored soils that formed under grasslands. They are some of the most important agricultural soils in the world: cotton in the southwest to irrigated grains in the Panhandle and mixed crops in the east.
The information in this article about the soils of Oklahoma has been derived from a fascinating new publication, “Historical Atlas of Oklahoma,” fourth edition by Charles Robert Goins and Danney Goble. It is published by The Oklahoma Press, Norman, Copyright 2006. This is a handsome edition of the history of Oklahoma, its peoples, topography, geography, minerals (not just oil and gas but uranium, lead, etc.) and much, much more.
Thanks to my friend Patricia Folley for giving me such a wonderful taste of Oklahoma in this Centennial year. Before I received the book as a Christmas gift, I had no idea of its existence.
Outdoors
January 11, 2007
Good taste in the world outdoors
- Outdoors
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- Safety is vital when working with chain saws STILLWATER -- As Oklahomans clean up after the recent ice storm that left tree limbs shattered or lying around, care should be taken to ensure protection against unintentionally risking an arm or leg being added to the toll.
- Dolese Youth Park Pond teeming with trout for young anglers Oklahoma City resident Gaston Gallant goes fishing nearly every day of the two-month trout season at Dolese Youth Park Pond, a northwest Oklahoma City fishing destination currently teeming with nearly 2,600 rainbow trout.
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De-icing salt can harm landscape plants
Each winter, millions of tons of deicing salt are applied to state and municipal roads to keep the roads safe for vehicles to travel. Salt is spread near houses to avoid pedestrian injuries. This is necessary for safety, but did you know excessive salt can cause widespread damage to trees ? possibly leading to permanent decline and even death?
According to the Tree Care Industry Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to the tree care industry, even severe salt damage might not be visible on a tree until the end of summer, leaving homeowners wondering what might have caused the problem. - Making it through That was a cold spell of what we used to call "Biblical proportions." It was made perhaps more interesting locally by the old heat-pump in the house, which died on New Year's Eve. For a week, the household was maintained by an old Franklin stove in the living room, and by the old owner, who had to carry in firewood so it could be fed every hour or so.
- University of Oklahoma team wins college fishing event ZAPATA, Texas -- The University of Oklahoma team of Mark Johnson and Chip Porche won the National Guard FLW College Fishing Texas Division event on Falcon Lake Saturday with six bass weighing 34 pounds, 8 ounces.
- Great Western Feedout entry deadline Friday It is time to start entering for the Great Western Feedout of 2010. For those of you not familiar with it, the Great Western Feedout is a producer information feedback program that allows cattle producers the opportunity to evaluate the genetic merit of the calves they produce for feedlot performance and carcass value following weaning and a winter stocker program.
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Part-time lakes are of full-time importance
For the unlearned, old age is winter, for the learned, it is the season of harvest.
--Hasidic saying
Today's topic is the most important wetlands you've never heard of: Playa lakes and oxbow lakes. Playa lakes are usually saucer shaped natural low places with clay bottoms located in dry landscapes. - Christmas Bird Count yields unexpected rewards What am I doing here? It is incredibly cold morning and I am crouched here in the dark in the willows on the banks of the South Canadian River with a few stalwarts indulging in an activity called "owling.
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Increasing deer population leads to ornamental and garden plant damage
STILLWATER -- With more than a half million white-tailed deer in Oklahoma, many landowners experience nature in its purest sense as the deer can be viewed at close range.
However, this has become a problem over the years as the deer population has increased, forcing thousands of these animals into peripheral suburban areas, leaving homeowners to deal with damage to ornamental and garden plants. -
Wildlife Department to host town hall meeting
Sportsmen will have an opportunity to voice their thoughts on wildlife, hunting and fishing related issues at a town hall meeting hosted by the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation.
The meeting, one of a series, is set for 7 p. - More Outdoors Headlines
