Perhaps my best argument against the theory of Intelligent Design is the indisputable fact that the vast majority of the good things to do in life happen in the same month. I'm talking about October and more specifically, October on the Great Plains. Winter out here can be inhuman, the last few summers have been unbearable. Spring can be good, but unpredictable. The time of year we wait for is fall. And the fall month of choice is October.

It is "jacket weather". Jacket in the morning but shed by noon, and not needed again until the sun sets into an almost always gorgeous sky. The days are long but not so long that a person needs a nap to see both sunrise and sunset. Octobers on the Great Plains are about as close to perfect as is possible on this earth. Trouble is, everything happens in October. There is a lot of getting ready for winter and recovering from summer. There is all that football and going back to school stuff - neither of which interest me much anymore. But there is the great change of season to watch carefully - the leaves, the epic migrations that pass overhead every hour of every day. There are young buffalo to watch as they become more independent from mothers. I spend time wondering what those half dozen big bulls that separated themselves from the herd are thinking. It takes a lot of time to consider and keep an eye on everything that happens in October and that time is subtracted from the things that are best DONE in October.

Like hunting and fishing for example. I have five bird dogs that spend all year dreaming about October and I have a responsibility to them. I haven't been up on Crow Creek, where October grasshoppers make kamikaze leaps onto the surface of dark pools and drive big fish wild with desire. The business of getting buffalo meat to customers takes up a lot of time at this time of year. Christmas is just around the corner and, like the hunters of old we are busy, "fill the larder", as precious October light seeps away for another year. Some Octobers New York agents ask for revisions of manuscripts, for crying out loud.

It gave me little consolation to learn that the Harvest Moon - the October moon - was given it's name because it is so often so bright that farmers were able to work most of the night getting their crops in. I don't want to harvest crops and, brilliant as the Harvest Moon is, it is not bright enough to shoot birds by or to illuminate a gigantic brown trout sipping grasshoppers from shimmering water. I don't want business and farming to hog October but I know it is the way of the world.

So here is my solution: the design needs to be altered to something more intelligent. Like two, or even three Octobers. Why not? I vote for cutting out January and February. Now that is intelligent.



by Gervase Hittle



A couple of weeks ago we had a nice Fall rain--finally. The buffalo were in a pasture on the other side of the river, which is not always a good situation. The river rises, taking the fences that span the river with it on its tumultuous way downstream. This untoward event leaves the buffalo herd unhindered from drifting up to higher ground and into the U.S. Forest Service land where the cattlemen leasees still have their herds on the summer pastures. It would not be good for us to encroach on their grazing, even as a result of this high river, act of nature event.

As soon as we could get through the fields along a muddy field road, Erney and I went to look at the fences crossing the river. To our surprise they were still partially intact, and the river was too high to cross safely; so we retreated to the ranch. On the way back to our dwellings we left open the gates leading into the pastures where we wanted the buffalo to be...on our side of the river. Personally, I was afraid that the river would remove the remaining wires, and the buffalo would wander out; so about three hours later I went back to the river to look the situation over. The river had receded a little, but now that was no big deal.

To my surprise, and I must say delight, the herd had crossed the river (an event I would like to have witnessed because there was a one-week-old calf among them) and came through the gates that Ernie and I had left open. Now my worry was over and the job simple, close the gates behind them and go home to a shower and dry clothes.

Since then, I have been thinking about a Native American belief, and I have been thinking about last month’s RRD entry; and I have been trying to see if those two things and this high water river action would fit together; so bear with me for a few more minutes.

Last month’s entry was a linear thought process: my early years with buffalo in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge stretching across a rather long space and time essentially devoid of buffalo, and my latter and/or present years with buffalo on the Cheyenne River. The Native American belief holds that the buffalo presented itself to the people for the people to survive. It is probably a stretch for me to assume that the buffalo came home to us; but I have no way to prove or disprove that. I’m glad they did what they did. I’m not sure I need to know why they did it (better grass, drier ground??). It may not matter; the fact is that they came across the river and in my mind bent that linear thought process into a completed circle, and once again I am delighted.