It's impossible to get this right. Mission Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion de Acuna was moved to San Antonio in 1731 and completed in 1755, and in the 265 years since then, an immense city has grown up around it, evolving along with the world: transportation evolving from horses to cars and jet planes; communication evolving from letter to radio, to television and internet; and political jurisdiction over the mission switching from Spain to Mexico, to an independent Texas, to United States. And yet, in all that time little has changed at Mission Concepcion itself except for the slow eroding of the bright frescos that once covered the exterior until the water-stained limestone bones became exposed. However, inside, if you were to teleport there right now, you would witness an interior pretty much the same as if your were among the 150 Native American groups brought to the mission in the 1750s. You would be viewing the fresco paintings, which still decorate those same walls with only minor restoration. Never have those walls been plastered over. Never have the paintings been recreated from small existing fragments. No, instead, those cheerful yellow walls have remained unchanged for generations of viewers, many which are members of the congregation of this still operating place of wonder and worship. No wonder the place has been saved as part of both San Antonio Missions National Park and as a World Heritage Site.
The dome and chapel still maintain the original painted fresco
Yet, of course, mentally and spiritually, there is no way to get back and view it as those original Native American residents did. Disease is not wiping out my people, my culture, my history--not yet, anyway. I visited on my own terms, practicing my own religion. I was neither rounded up as many were, nor was I refugee of tribal wars, as many more were. I wasn't forced by either the Spanish nor by desperation to live within walls erected to isolate me from all that I once was. Neither can I experience God as either the Spanish or Native Americans did then, no matter how religious I am, and no matter how strongly I have felt the influence of God in my life. Although I know from personal experience that glimpses of the clear light of the divine are perceptible throughout all ages, we are fools if we believe our connection to the eternal is not colored by our particular experiences here on earth. With all the changes in culture and science, there is simply no way to know God the same way He was known 250 years ago. He may be everlasting and unchanged, but we are not.
Yet, I swear at Mission Concepcion there is enough of that past still floating around in the very air that although not literally transported back in time, one is so keenly aware of different lives, different modes of thinking, different modes of experiencing reality, it is frankly disorienting, and in that moment of confusion, perhaps one slips for moments out of that heavy-domed stone ego "I" and experiences something transcendent.
I know I did, and I didn't expect that at all. While I was at Mission Conception I vanished for brief moments and walked among all humanity.
A pilgrimage to Mission Concepcion is both a religious and a human experience. Where the divine and temporal intersect is where spirituality on earth is found. Throughout history humankind has attempted to give thanks and connect with our source. That is our common human heritage, and Mission Concepcion is simply a profound reminder of what it feels like to be part of the fabric of life.
Marci adding to the human story that is Mission Concepcion
References
City of San Antonio. San Antonio Missions:
Mission Concepcion. 2018. 28 January 2020.
<https://www.worldheritagesa.com/Missions/Mission-Concepci-oacuten>.
National Park Service. San Antonio Missions
National Historic Park, Texas: Mission Nuestra Señora de la Purísima
Concepción de Acuña. 8 March 2016. 25 January 2020.
<https://www.nps.gov/saan/learn/historyculture/conc_history1.htm>.
After our walk down to the Pedernales River, we headed out for San Antonio, or at least tried to. I took a wrong turn, and we headed in a wrong direction, although it was an amazing one--a back road that ran through a squat forest of scrubby oaks all tangled together, clawing their way over and around low hills. It looked pretty wild for central Texas. We eventually got ourselves turned back around and ended up exiting the wilderness at Johnson City, which although not the way we came into Pedernales Falls State Park, it was at least a place I knew. So, we headed towards San Antonio on U.S. 281, the main road through the Texas Hill Country, and also the best way to generally miss the hills altogether. Four lanes wide in many places, and cluttered with civilization's junk, it will get you through the Hill Country; you just won't see much of it. For that, you need to make use of the side roads like the one we just came off. The Hill Country is an elusive thing, for it's not really made up of hills at all. Rather, the topography is created by the eroded edge of the Edwards Plateau, and so even though "many of the hills rise to a height of 400-500 feet (120 -150 m) above the surrounding plains and valleys" (Wikipedia), one has to be in the right places to see them. You're in them, and then you pop up on top of the plateau, and they're gone. U.S 281 in most places rides a flat line across the top of the plateau and leaves you thirsting for the topography you came looking for in your miserable life amid the flatness that is the majority of Texas.
Or, that's how you experience it as a transplant from Utah wilting away in Dallas. Texans, on the other hand, think of the Hill Country as being something akin to the Himalayas or the Mount Kilimanjaro, an experience that will transform anyone passing through them into something a little more enlightened, a little more Texan. Why the Hill Country is the spiritual center of Texas, I'm not sure. Though lacking topography compared to the states to the west, Texas does boast some pretty rugged ranges, such as the Guadalupe Mountains on the border of New Mexico and the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park. Both ranges dwarf any hills one might happen upon in the Hill Country. One does not have to happen upon the Guadalupe Mountains at all. Like any real range, it is not elusive. It is a wall that can be seen miles off.
Yet, even as a westerner, I've got to admit, there is something significant that happens to your heart in the Hill Country when there is an unexpected turn in the road, and you drop for a while down into a narrow valley with a clear, cool river winding between thickly forested hills. It tricks your mind into thinking you've entered the foothills of some bigger range. You imagine climbing up into higher stuff, where at some point, you will have a breath-taking view of snow-capped peaks.
That never happens, of course. Texas is one big tall tale. Still, there is something about descending into San Antonio from the west that reminds me of dropping into Denver from the west via I-70. I will get to that, but, first I must cover lunch. No trip is truly memorable without a significant lunch stop, which can be almost anything, even a Dairy Queen or a roadside picnic table. The time on the road itself creates the memorable lunch stop.
We drove through the most amazing of towns, Blanco, which has the typical Texas downtown built around a town square with a courthouse plopped down in the center of the green. Except, the downtown looks completely different than most small towns in Texas. It looks like you're in Mexico. This is due to the rough white limestone used to construct the buildings rather than the normal brick. The downtown looks very borderlands old west. Why I didn't stop, I don't have a clue, other than the rumblings in my stomach. I'd glanced around, passing through, and when no food establishment caught my eye, drove on. That, however, was a mistake. The town screams, notice me, I'm unique.
Blanco may look like it belongs in Mexico, but as of 2010, of a total population of 1,701, 88% was white and only 23% Hispanic. Yes, I too noticed that adds up to more than 100%, and still somehow another 1% of Blanco is African American and yet another 1% is Native American, and still another 7% is from other races (Wikipedia). Either such is the complex nature of statistics everywhere, or more likely, such is the complex nature of getting at truth in Texas. Reality in Texas is as elusive as vertigo in the Hill Country.
Still, apparently the Blanco mirage has caught more than my attention. The downtown is a registered historic district due to the unique architectural styles and building materials that comprise it. This is how the part of downtown that caught my eye while driving by is described on the National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet by the National Park Service:
The west side of the square is the most complete commercial row and best represents the architectural diversity of the district. Beginning at the northwest corner, the Cage Building or Lindeman's Grocery (1908, Site No. BC 24) is constructed of rough limestone with load-bearing walls. Immediately south, the Old Theater Building (Site No. BC 25) is in contrast with its smooth, limestone-faced facade from the 1930s rising taller than its neighbors. To its south, two buildings continue this smooth facade at a lower scale. A change in facade material occurs in the next building, the Comparet Building (c. 1880, Site No. BC 28), with its ornate pressed metal upper facade and late-19th-century storefront. The 2-story Masonic Building (1907, Site No. BC 29) returns to the rough limestone facade as seen in the Cage Building. The three buildings completing the west side are constructed of brick and date from the 1920s (United States Department of Interior).
Even that dry, technical description of a legal document is picturesque without any mention of light, shadow or ambiance. We should have parked, got out and had a romantic stroll.
However, since I was thinking with my stomach rather than my head, I stopped when it really mattered. Not only that, I took a picture of what really mattered at the moment, the front door of Hacienda El Charro (Hours: Mon.-Sun, 7 a.m. - 7 p.m.) even though the historic, white-stone facades of downtown were definitely more significant than an aluminum and glass door on a building with the type of siding you find on a shed or modular home. The food, however, was tremendous and very reasonable. I should have taken a picture of that instead. It is, after all, the proper thing to do in this day of social media. I simply failed at everything except feeding my gut.
Hacienda El Charro: very good food in Blanco, Texas
Like, I said earlier, the drive into San Antonio on 281 strangely reminds me of the descent into Denver from I-70 going east. Obviously, it is not as dramatic. The Hill Country is only a few hundred feet higher than San Antonio, rather than thousands, like Rockies rising over Denver, but there is the same mixture of woods, ranch land, rolling hills, and occasional rock outcropping with big homes on the hillside as you near the city. Then the freeway widens, car dealerships and low high-rise office building pop up among the ever more patchier woods until you're in the city. Perhaps that is a familiar scene when approaching most American cities. After all, most American landscapes do have hills and wide river valleys where the cities sit. However, I know very few cities intimately, and they don't follow that pattern. Because Salt Lake City sits at the tiny toes of the Wasatch Front, which rises dramatically to the east, it is approached suddenly when going west. Unlike Denver, there is no long, gradual decent. It is a dramatic drop. You're in mountains, high peaks all around you, and then boom!--the valley opens up, and you're there. On the other hand, if you're approaching from the west, you cross the Salt Flats and a portion of the Great Salt Lake, which is as flat and barren as you can get. Or from the South or North, you follow the valleys, so again, there's no long decline. Reno, you enter through canyons from pretty much any direction but the south, which is a long meadow. From the east El Paso is approached along the long river valley of the Rio Grande and the descent is made long before the city slowly builds. Besides there are no trees for high-rise office buildings to poke their heads above. And Dallas, well in Dallas, there is no such thing as descent or ascent.
So, it's likely dropping into San Antonio is not really that similar to descending into Denver. My mind might have made it seem so because that was closest comparison my mind could find out of the cities I know well. For some reason the brain functions on similes and metaphors even when comparisons are somewhat forced. Terrified of the strikingly new, we move forward safely through analogy. Oh, I can be comfortable with this because it is like that which I know well.
Whatever the approach is compared to, at some point San Antonio clearly becomes a big Texas city, complete with the ring-interstates and little clusters of glass-box skyscrapers reflecting back that big Texas sky, cars merging from every-which-way. Yikes, Texas!
However, the minute you exit the freeway, San Antonio becomes unique again. It is to Texas, what San Francisco is to California, Paris is to France, or Venice is to Italy. It is simply stunningly beautiful. It is a city of light, reflections, stone, culture and Romance. I think one can even safely say without exaggeration that once you've visited San Antonio your life is never quite the same.
We started this particular trip by visiting Mission Concepcion, which I hadn't seen before, and as we approached the towering aged glory I was absolutely stunned at how the centuries melted away and there I stood before some stone demonstration of both wealth and power and simultaneous humility to a power and glory even higher in a place and time I did not understand. I might as well been zipped through a wormhole to the middle ages.
It was profoundly moving, and disorienting enough, that as I exited the car, i-pod in hand, I just kind of wandered around in awe, leaving Marci on her own, not knowing how to approach or what to do before this thing before my eyes. Do I kneel down and pray? Do I prostrate myself and kiss the ground? Do I sacrifice myself before the gods? That, of course, is a bit exaggerated. But it honestly did take me off guard. I was simply not prepared for something so gorgeous. I had thought the River Walk is what makes San Antonio so special. I was wrong. It is at the very least the River Walk and the Missions together. But, I have a feeling that as I make more trips back to San Antonio, I will come to realize it is San Antonio that makes San Antonio so special. It is everything. The hills, the missions, the canals, the foods, the musics, the languages, the literature, the arts, the cultures. San Antonio is one of those special places where various forces compete and combine to create the jewels of human civilization. Who would think such a place would rise out of the jackass-filled flat expanse that is Texas? Not me. But there it is, Rome or Paris, ringed with a white ranch fence with a gaudy ranch gate topped with bull horns leading to it. If, like me, you're strapped on cash, skip Europe and head for old San Antone.
References
United States Department of Interior .
"National Register of Historic Places Registration Form." 5 June
1991. Registration Form.
<https://atlas.thc.state.tx.us/NR/pdfs/91000890/91000890.pdf>.
Wikipedia. Blanco, Texas. 5 January 2020. 24
January 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanco%2C_Texas>.
—. Texas Hill Country. 16 January 2020. 24
January 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Hill_Country>.
Marci looks over the lush landscape of the Pedernales River.
Big, sloppy, black-brushstroke clouds crawled along the horizon as we left Austin. Texas had been receiving an extreme amount of rain over the summer, and it continued into the fall. Although it made the landscape spectacularly lush, I feared we'd end up camping some night in the driving rain. So far we lucked out, but a Texas thunderstorm is not something to take lightly. The amount of wind, electricity and water produced can be profound. As we slowly left the city behind and climbed up into the hills southwest of Austin, I wondered what our day and night would bring. The plan was to quickly set up camp at Pedernales Falls State Park, and then head to San Antonio. We wanted to do the River Walk at night, but we didn't want to set up camp in the dark.
I'd been to Pedernales Falls before with the gang, and I thought I'd have a flood of memories, but I didn't. It was like being there for the first time. Much of that, I think, had to do with my point of reference rather than a deteriorating brain. I am now a product of the west, and from a western perspective, the Texas Hill Country is a scene of verdant jungle-clogged knolls and dells. From my new paradigm, it was just so damn green and overgrown--as well as hot and humid--that it felt like I'd been dropped down on some foreign planet.
When I lived in Dallas, the hill country had the opposite effect. It was the only place nearby where one could see a rock outcropping or any real undulation in the ground surface. There was scrub oak, cacti, and very occasionally, one could even spot a sagebrush. From Dallas, the hill country felt western. Somehow it reminded me of growing up in Utah. When I was there with my friends, I was thrilled to be out west.
Returning from the west thirty years later, it was clear that vision had only been a product of yearning. Though incredibly beautiful, Pedernales Falls is clearly a Southern experience and not a Western one. It is on the wrong side of the dry line, or Marfa front, as it is sometimes called, which separates the moist eastern air of the continent from dry western air. Because of that, even without any notable mountains to create rain shadows, the transition from southern to western flora in Texas is pretty dramatic, and going west on I-10, it seems to occur at a little town called Junction, two hours west of Austin.
Simply put, I could no longer relate to Pedernales Falls as a western experience, and so it seemed to be completely new to me. That freshness ripped it from nostalgia and placed it in its own light. That is kind of nice. Now it isn't a place I experienced with the gang, but rather a place I saw Marci wandering around a lush, almost European landscape, wearing her garden hat, timidly facing the daunting, wild, tangled fecundity set before her. The stark west has forever been replaced by the landscapes of John Constable, western Minimalism demolished by European Romanticism.
It was fresh, lush and lovely.
The clear, usually calm Pedernales River can become a torrent of mud with little or no warning.
After setting up camp, we walked down by the Pedernales River, and what a delightful river it is. The trail was closed with a printed warning of possible flash floods. We ignored the sign--sort of. I didn't travel all that way to not see the river. We were, however very cautious, and as we went down by the river, I planned escape routs up the hillside and kept an eye upstream. There was absolutely no sign of possible flooding, the river as clear and tranquil as can be, but the river is known for rapid rises in water levels, so much so, that sirens have been installed along the river to warn waders of impending doom. I'm not much of a thrill seeker, and so I do take such things seriously.
Still, I'm glad we ventured cautiously down to the water. Although only there a few minutes, those minutes were some of the most memorable of the trip. The landscape was absolutely breath taking in a quiet, lush, relaxed sort of way. I am used to grand, sweeping western landscapes, like the Tetons, but I also really love some of the small-scale intimate landscapes east of the Rockies. Pedernales Falls State Park is one such jewel.
A shock of green neon shooting through a window, Austin, Texas
There are few things I like better than being downtown in the big city at night. I love stone surfaces bedazzled with purple light, a shock of green neon shooting through a window, layers of images mirrored and multiplied. The Juarez night was my world when I lived in El Paso. While other college students crowded inside the clubs dancing below mirrored disco balls and laser lights, I'd be on the street, where the inside and outside worlds bleed together--light and sound bouncing all around; a young woman on the corner, black eyes flashing back the lights, her body gently swaying to the rhythm of an unknown music in the arms of her lover, counter to the heavy beat shaking the walls of Club Reno; an entire chicken spinning on a rotisserie over an open flame in the window of a carniceria. Heat. Light. Motion. Layers of humanity. A photographer's heaven, and a pretty potent place for a young writer also.
There are few things Marci likes less than being downtown in the big city at night. She fears the pan-handlers and dope dealers buying and selling the last of all they've got left in this life just to get by. She sees humanity huddled in dark corners, dangers lurking everywhere, a world so unlike the open, red-earth and pinion dominions she experienced growing up in the southwest. She fears an urban downtown at night as much as I fear standing on a sandstone cliff-edge looking nearly 1,000 feet down to a bend in the Colorado River.
Needless to say there was some conflict when we found ourselves walking around Sixth Street in Austin at night. I felt I was home and Marci felt she'd somehow ended up in the very real plot of a true-crime book. I wanted to stay on the street as long as possible, and all she wanted to do was get back to the car, lock the doors, and drive off to suburbia.
I prevailed because I can be a bastard. I don't mean to be. I just am. I need to see. I need to feel. Not participate. I care less about that. I just want to be wide awake in America, the film-strip in my brain running, running, running, as light and music and motorcycle engines rattle and roar. I need to be there taking in light and shadow.
And so we walked Austin at night and we saw. Willie, was there, bigger than life, painted on the side of a building, a rainbow world around him, big as Buddha, a drunk disciple sitting cross-legged leaning back against his thick arms, a couple of motor cycles up front, one black and one neon yellow. Damn. What beauty! And so we walked.
Willie mural by artist and musician Wiley Ross,
East 7th Street and Neches Street
Sixth Street Austin, Texas
Finally, we came to Antone's, a place we could agree upon. We both came specifically looking for the blues. I'd expected to find it blasting from every third bar lining Sixth Street. That is the Austin I remembered from the 80's. I'd only been there once, at Halloween, but I hadn't forgotten it. The street shook as different rhythms oozed out of various one-room clubs and mixed and mingled with the crowd pushing through the street. It was hot; it was electric; I was twenty-one, I think. I had driven down from Dallas with my friend Molly. If I remember right, Phil came along with us. It was wild, it was weird, the costumes were funky, but what I remembered most was the mix of country and blues streaming out of blue-lighted bars. My friends wanted to be pushed down the street with the flow of carnivalesque insanity. I just wanted to find a bar and sit and listen to the blues.
Antone's, 305 E. 5th Street,
former playground f Stevie Ray Vaughan
Sixth Street is no longer that place. Its fame killed it. It has become a place where tourists like Marci and I go to find what they think Austin is. Meanwhile, the real Austin has moved out to places like Rainey Street. I was somewhat prepared for that, and had played with us going to Rainey Street ourselves, but nostalgia won over. I wanted to again experiences the music I remembered pouring out of those compact little clubs like I'd heard that Halloween night long ago.
Part of it might have been that we weren't there on a weekend, but I think mostly Sixth Street has evolved into an upscale neighborhood too expensive for the music that made it famous in the first place. So we left Sixth Street behind, walking.
In the end, the walk was worth it because we found the "Home of the Blues," Antone's. I guess because it was a week day, the club was all but empty. Still, the music was good, very good, and for a bar, the sodas were cheap. We found what we came for--an inexpensive place to experience good music.
I wish I knew the name of the band we heard, but I don't. They were not the scheduled act, and so it was not their name on the marquee that I took a photo of. But there they are below. If you recognize them, let me know. I am a big fan of what to me is The Unnamed Band from Austin's Antone's Home of the Blues.
What I know as The Unnamed Band from Austin's Antone's Home of the Blues
Marci finally enjoying Austin--all because of Antone's
