Without the monument, this would be just another wheat field. Easily recognized signs of the passage of millions of cattle have all been lost through time, through actions of nature, and of man.

Plowed fields and barbed wire, triumphant over the cattlemen a century ago, remain in control of passage through the region. And behind the granite monument and its protective barbed-wire barrier lie other barriers of nature: Trees, vines, thorns and other vegetation, streams and water-caused erosion, and ticks, snakes, wild boars and other living hazards.

When the cattle moved through this spot by the millions, these trees couldn't have been here. The plowed fields would have been open prairie. The barbed wire wasn't invented until 1874, and didn't come into widespread use for at least another decade. Any erosion here would have been due primarily to the trail-sharpened hooves of the cattle, as they scuffed up the dust on their way down to the Red River.

On the other side of the barbed wire fence, we saw an old sign that referred to a Scenic Chisholm Trail Walking Tour, with an arrow pointing vaguely north. Nearby, a metal plate was attached to a concrete slab -- back in the early 1970s, a troop of Boy Scouts from Sheppard Air Force Base had come through and marked a trail. There is a metal pole beside the concrete slab, with a horseshoe mounted on top, and a metal arrow pointing the way, in the same direction as the Scenic Path sign.

We started forward. The brush grew thick. We pushed through. The scenic path promised by the old sign was gone. The Boy Scout trail also was ... no, there was a second metal plate attached to a second concrete slab, and a second metal pole topped with a horseshoe and completed with a metal arrow pointing the way. Ahh, we thought, trust the Boy Scouts to be prepared. Right?

Just beyond this second arrow, the ground drops. A spring has cut a gully into the hillside. Tree limbs have fallen and blocked the way. Vines and thorns and slick mud, oh my!

We picked our way down the hillside, looking for another Boy Scout marker. If there was one, it was lost somewhere in the brush.

We blazed our own trail, pushing through brush and reeds and seed-covered things and thorns. No compass except for our shadows, which I figured pointed north-northeast as the mid-afternoon winter sun continued in its course.