Editing Sigil:Uragh (section)

== Knowing the Grass ==

To outsiders, the plains can appear empty. To the Uragh they are crowded with information. Grass reveals soil, water, grazing, weather, fire, and the recent passage of animals. Tracks show movement. Birds may reveal water or carrion. Clouds announce conditions beyond the horizon, and wind carries weather and scent across country where there may be little else to obstruct it.

Families remember seasonal routes and alternatives, reliable springs, dangerous ground, disputed pastures, old graves, meeting places, sheltered winter country, and stretches best avoided at particular times of year. This knowledge is intensely practical and often extremely local. Maps can be useful, particularly when dealing with outsiders, but memory is easier to carry and can preserve distinctions no mapmaker thought worth recording.

The grasslands are therefore neither empty nor unclaimed simply because they lack walls. Different groups possess customary expectations concerning water, grazing, passage, and seasonal use, and these expectations can overlap in complicated ways. A valley empty in midsummer may be essential winter country. A spring used by one group this month may traditionally belong to another route later in the year. Understanding Kuragh Torr requires seeing occupation through time rather than assuming that land belongs only to whoever happens to be standing upon it today.