Stickers and Horny Toads
Before we knew the names of things,
we knew how they felt. We called them stickers—
goatheads, sand burrs, anything sharp enough
to stop a barefoot child mid-stride.
No distinction mattered. Pain was the classifier.
When the foot came up, Grandma would sigh,
reach for the needle,
and the ritual began.
Careful probing. A breath held.
The quiet relief of removal.
The body learning that attention can heal.
That was education.
The land taught the same way—
through consequence, not explanation.
Yucca stood like punctuation marks,
rigid leaves radiating patience,
then suddenly, in the right year,
lifting a tall stalk crowned with white bells
as if to say: Pay attention. Something has changed.
Buffalograss curled close to the earth,
yellow-green, forgiving,
never trying to be more than it needed to be.
Prickly pear waited along the margins,
unimpressed by drought,
carrying sweetness inside armor.
And then there were the horny toads.
They were everywhere once.
Stillness disguised as stone,
until the earth itself blinked
and revealed eyes.
You could pick them up carefully,
their bodies cool and solid,
their spines warning without threatening.
Turn one over, and there it was—
that strange line down the belly,
like a healed incision,
like stitches from a surgery no one remembered.
Even as a child, it felt important.
A mark of having been made whole.
We heard stories that they could spit blood,
but most of us never saw it.
The story was enough.
Truth didn’t need proof to be respected.
Then, quietly, things shifted.
The ants changed first.
Red ants appeared—not many at first,
just one mound where there hadn’t been one before.
Grandpa didn’t argue with them.
He didn’t study them.
He poured gasoline down the hole,
lit the match,
and watched the flame settle the question.
Usually there was only one mound.
That’s what matters now.
Not the method,
but the scale.
Because when the ants multiplied,
the horny toads faded.
When chemicals grew stronger,
the land grew quieter.
No announcement was made.
Looking back, it’s clear:
we were living inside a balance
without knowing its name.
The stickers taught caution.
The needle taught care.
The ants taught finality.
The horny toads taught stillness.
And the land—
the land taught that everything leaves a mark,
even when it looks like nothing happened at all.
Next dirt roads to travel:
The plants and animals around Brice are a very specific ecological mix — where short-grass prairie, sandy draws, and disturbed farmland overlap.
The Animals of Brice The Plants of Brice
Lyrical essays are an intentional contrast to analytical essays. Lyrical essays border on poetry. However, the intention is the same; to inform and to encourage thought.
Lyrical Essay
Brice was still communal, still embodied, and still land-literate, but already mechanized, electrified, and connected to regional systems.
Daily Life