The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 51. Hell Is Confinement, Darkness, Heat and Humidity

We arrived back at Pedernales Falls State Park well after dark, just before 10:00 p.m.  I worried the whole way back that we might not make it.  Marci doesn't have the concept down that you can be locked outside of your campground.  Normally, when you go camping out west, it is at national forest campgrounds, which only have seasonal gates, and once the campground is open for summer, you can come and go as you please, so long as you pay your nightly fee and don't stay over 14 days.  Your campsite is your home.  You can arrive or leave anytime you like.

Not so east of the Rockies.  Campgrounds there are usually in state parks and have strict park hours with tight security.  At 10 p.m., gates close and no one enters or leaves--at least not by vehicle.  I too was once ignorant of Eastern outdoor protocols.  Where I come from, you just pull your trailer out in the desert and park it wherever you want, and there you go--camping.  If you are more civilized, you pull into a small little campground up a canyon beside a stream that has few sites and a single outhouse with a green fiberglass roof.  Even the national parks let you come and go as you please.

But no, not back East.   Even some national forest campgrounds (in the rare places there is national forest) lock their gates after 10:00.  It's just that way.  So, as I worried and fretted, Marci listened to music, sang la-la-la-la along with it, and told me not to worry.  It was damn irritating.  I half hoped we'd have to spend the night sleeping in the car just so I could say, "I told you so."

As it turned out we made it.  I can't even remember if there was a gate.  We just drove on into an eerily empty state park and then dropped down through the thick, short oak woods to an almost vacant campground.  There was one other occupied site, just across the road from us.  I feared we might be chopped up in the night, thrown into the camper, and driven off in the morning to be consumed later.

When we opened the car door, heat and humidity hit like a wall.  Out west, nights are cool, even on the Fourth of July.   When we go to see the fireworks, we take sweaters and blankets, and some years, that is not enough.  It is simply not supposed to be above 70 degrees at night.  It must have been like 85 that night.  And if there is moisture in the air, it is suppose to fall.  It's not supposed to hang out up there in the air, dancing all around you, going, "You wan't cool, refreshing rain, don't you--Well, ha, ha, ha!  I'll make you sweat torrents of stinky slime instead!"  Of course, I lived eight years in Dallas, so I should have known it would be like this, but what the mind remembers abstractly, the senses do not.  I was shocked and horrified.  My nostrils simply would not accept this new reality as normal.

As we had set up our tent before going to San Antonio, we were able to go right to bed.  We were tired and I quickly fell asleep.  However, I woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat.  When I opened my eyes, the tent was four inches above my head.  It was small and we were on cots, but the cozy space had not bothered me during the cold nights of the Rockies.  Something about the heat and humidity changed everything.  I felt like I couldn't breath, and the visual reminder of the tight space just intensified it.  I felt like my entire body was being consumed by a worm. I started to panic, which made breathing even harder.  I felt I'd go crazy in my own skin.  Finally, I woke Marci and pleaded to change places.

Next to the door, I unzipped the flaps, rolled them back and stared out the screen into the invisible but all too real heat and humidity as I waited for death.  Eventually, I dozed off and got some sleep before dawn.  When I woke up, random drops of rain hit the tent with a ping.  Outside, the sky was low and heavy, but other than that all was well.  I was alive and excited to meet the day.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 50. The River Walk

River Walk, September 13, 2018

Heavy, dark clouds loomed over the octagonal, 1929 Gothic Tower Life Building, its enormous American flag whipping dramatically against the quickly moving black band that looked like it could spawn tornadoes at any given moment.  We slammed the car doors in the uncovered parking lot and set out strategically for the nearest building we could find with awnings in case we needed shelter from rain, hail, or whatever flying debris the weather might send our way.  It seemed our luck of avoiding the torrential rains of this unusually wet and verdant fall in Texas had run its course.  We were headed to the River Walk, but I feared we might be viewing most of the day through water streaming down some cafe window as the world flashed and shook outside.   Yet, we forged ahead because when you are on vacation all you have at your disposal is each day.  It's not like you can rearrange your calendar and stay home and clean house or read through the storm, and set out on your picnic once the weather clears up.  All you have is the day, so you use it, regardless of the weather.  Tomorrow it will be time to move on to another place.

Perhaps that is the real reward of vacation.  These days we spend so much time insulating ourselves from the world.  If it snows, or rains, or even if it is just extra windy, we head inside, watch TV, get on Facebook, or do inside chores.  We really only experience the outside world on bright, sunny days, and even then, it is usually for short stretches of time.  We spend most of our existences in heated/air-conditioned cocoons.  When we are on vacation, we are somewhat forced out into the real world by the fact that now is  all the time we've got in this place, and we might as well enjoy it, regardless of the weather.  If only we had great enough vision to realize the same reality applies to our life:  This is the only time we've got on this place we call earth, and we might as well enjoy it regardless of the literal, political, or emotional weather spiraling around and through us, because when it's time to move-on, we will be moved on whether we like it or not.  The hours we consume worrying about things we would never worry about while on vacation is mind-boggling.  When on the road, you just go and do, and dress as appropriately as possible.  Life should be lived the same way.   

As it turned out, all that hit us were a few sprinkles.  We crossed some street and dropped down into the lush, watery world that is the River Walk.  I'd never seen it during the daytime.  It was less crowded, less festive, a lot less light dancing around, dazzling the mind with runs and streaks of color, but beautiful none the less.  On such a cloudy day, what was most prominent were shades of green: the lacy, almost black, branches of giant bald cypress gently swaying overhead and ferns, hostas and other shade-loving plants, tucked in the rich, black soil of flower beds between stone walls, walkways, and the green waters of the canal.  The river was doing its magic again.

This was the third trip of Marci and me doing this walk together.  The previous two times had been with our boys at Christmas.  Once Lloyd came with us too.  The River Walk is especially beautiful during the holidays, when the trees are lit up in every color you can imagine, all that light is multiplied in the undulating mirror of the river.  Everywhere you look is a streak, a splinter, a spark-- a flint, a fleck, a flash--of intense color as Mariachi bands, streets musicians, and congregations of laughing people score the dynamic scene.

River Walk September 13, 2018.  During the winter holidays, most of those trees are lit up with lights.

Visiting San Antonio today it is hard to believe the city ever existed without the beautiful, benign banks of the San Antonio River gently winding through the city center.  But the river once was not viewed so favorably.  It was pron to nasty, life-taking floods, so much so that military personnel were forbidden to go near it, and people were warned of "being drowned like a rat" if they ventured down to its banks (Wikipedia).  In fact, had we showed up 97 years and 3 days earlier, or on September 9, 1921, we would have been greeted with more than 23 inches of rain--in a single day!--and an incredibly angry river.  That's the day the streets of downtown San Antonio were flooded with one to twelve feet of water, depending on your location, after a hurricane slammed into the gulf coast September 4, and the tropical aftermath dropped 8,000 acre feet of water and took 215 lives across central Texas (Salinas), 51 of those drowned rats being residents of San Antonio (Wikipedia).

But what a way to turn tragedy into something amazingly beautiful and life-sustaining!  So, it is worth providing here a short, condensed history of the River Walk of San Antonio:

After the flood of 1921, the city planned the Olmos Dam and a diversion of the river around the natural bend located in downtown San Antonio.  Construction began in 1926, and if it were not for the San Antonio Conservation Society, which in 1926 put on a puppet show at city hall and took commissioners on canoe rides down the river, instead of having the river walk today, downtown would be graced by a concrete sewer (Wikipedia), as that is exactly what the elected visionaries had dreamed up.  What the commissioners lacked in vision was made up for by architect Robert H. Hugman, who on June 28, 1929 presented his plans for "The Shops of Romula and Aragon," the beginning of what would become The River Walk (The San Antonio River Walk Association).

We spent the afternoon and evening walking along the canals until our feet could carry us no farther, with an amazing boat ride to midway through to rest our weary soles and provide us a different perspective on the canal.  Although somewhat expensive, it was well worth the money.  The boat glides you along, and all you have to do is aim your camera at the next magical site.  Or, if you're so inclined, you can listen to the boat operator give a narrative history of the canal which your brain will dump before you ever step on solid ground.  Or you can take selfies.  I never do that, but in the enthusiasm and excitement of American tourism, I did.  I have to say it is quite the novelty.

The great American Selfie:  Steve and Marci Brown,
San Antonio River Walk boat ride, September 13, 2018

And then we did what you always do on vacation.  We moved on.  We drove back in the dark to our camp at Pedernales Falls where I spent the night gasping for breath in a hot, humid, claustrophobic hell.  But that is the next story.

References

Salinas, Rebecca. mySA.com. 3 April 2015. 7 March 2020. <https://www.mysanantonio.com/150years/major-stories/article/The-1921-flood-caused-death-destruction-new-6177194.php>.

The San Antonio River Walk Association. History of the River Walk. 2020. 14 March 2020. <https://www.thesanantonioriverwalk.com/history/history-of-the-river-walk>.

Wikipedia. San Antonio River Walk. 20 January 2020. 14 March 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Antonio_River_Walk>.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 49. Alice Walker and a Night Along the River Walk Long Ago

It is possible San Antonio and the River Walk would not be part of my life if it were not for my obsession with Alice Walker in 1989.  I was taking the second semester of Women's Literature from Dr. Ford.  We were assigned to read The Color Purple.  I couldn't get enough of Alice Walker.  I headed for a bookstore and purchased Living by the Word, a collection of her nonfiction essays, and devoured each word methodically.  Walker spoke plain English.  Her descriptions were short and sharp.  Sometimes she walked in circles around a subject like a good story teller, and sometimes she wandered back and forth in wavy broad strokes right up the center to claim her territory.  What she didn't do is construct a standard five-paragraph thesis paper, mechanically leading you to adopt her conclusion, like I'd been taught one had to do in order to make an argument.  In fact, she didn't seem interested in convincing at all.  She didn't build her writing on traditional Western rhetorical techniques.  She lived it.  Breathed it.  Her writing said, This is what I have experienced and this is my story.  Here it is.  Whether or not you want to hear it, so be it, I'm telling you anyway. I will not be silenced anymore.

She was also a voice for the poor.  I was a working college student without financial aid, and I felt very poor at the time.  I'd worked minimum wage jobs in high school as well, and I saw people in their 50s and 60s trapped in low-level management jobs in fast-food and retail.  I'd lived in apartments with roaches and twenty-year old rotting carpet.  And I knew I had it good compared to most.  I came from a good home.  I experienced no domestic violence.  I was a man.  I'd never been raped.  I knew I'd been lucky, but I also felt I saw the world clearly, and that the deck was stacked against most in favor of the privileged few.  I was ready for revolution.  Alice Walker was the voice of clear-eyed anger.  Even her hair stood for something.  Those long, black dreadlocks.  Her broad face, big eyes, and warm, knowing, full-lipped simile.  Her bright, African apparel.  I had an idol.

One spring day Professor Ford announced that she'd just found out on short notice that Alice Walker would be reading in San Antonio, five hours away.  I was in a class of young women who I hoped would be revolutionaries too, although they didn't always seem that way.  They nearly bit my head off when I observed that whenever they went to a club on those "ladies get in free" nights, they were participating in the subjugation of their sex.  I think I said something like, "If you want to be equal, you've got to stand up and demand to pay equal; those courtesies come with expectations."  They did not agree and let me know it, although Professor Ford seemed to.

Their resistance to my message might have had more to do with the the messenger than the message.  I'm sure I seemed pretty creepy to my all-female class.  I sat in the back most of the semester, the only male, without saying a thing, and then I'm up there at the pulpit rattling rapturously, preaching fire and damnation against anyone who enjoys ladies' night out.  That was the way I was.  I was incredibly shy, so I generally never spoke.  But my mind was always ticking.  I could see patterns in society--especially patterns designed to keep people down, as that was  my main paradigm--and I'd get so worked up over the injustice, I'd break out of my shell, come raging forward with a torrent of words, and then retreat back into my safety zone.  I could argue like a lawyer; I just couldn't say "Hi."  I'm sure the combination of the two made me seem like an unstable menace to society, an extremest secretly making pipe bombs to right the world of its wrongs.  And perhaps that could have been a direction I'd have taken if I hadn't had such good parents, and if my all-time hero (even more than Alice Walker) hadn't been Gandhi.  I believed then, as I do now, that generally a beneficial-end can never justify impure means and that seldom is violence a solution to anything.

If anything, it was my firm belief in the need for pure motives that was my real psychological abnormality.  I was born to feel guilty.  I loved those lines from "Something So Right" by Paul Simon: "When something goes wrong / I'm the first one to admit it / And the last one to know."  I was too keenly aware of any mixed-motives I might have to function properly in the world.  For instance, I knew that on the one hand, I really did care about the feminists movement, but on the other hand I took Women's Literature because I wanted a woman.  And not just any woman.  I wanted some little beauty with fiery midnight eyes, wearing a jeans-jacket and combat boots, and holding picket signs or maybe an acoustic guitar.  She had to be cute, but she had to be tough also.  The woman of my dreams was basically what Darlene on Rosanne would later be when she went to college, although at the time that show was just beginning to air, and she was a child.  Anyway, I figured Women's Literature was the best place to find a revolutionary spit-fire beauty, and so I signed up.

I never thought anything realistic about the scenario though--how I would approach her, what I would say, or more importantly, how I would get up the courage to say anything at all.  I never thought about how the woman I desired on the inside might not match how I envisioned her at all on the the outside. I never imagined that the girl with the cute figure wearing combat boots and a jeans jacket might be a shallow ditz playing the part of a college intellectual, and that the real revolutionary might weigh 300 pounds, have bright red hair, wear a purple and pink daisy-print dress and shiny black low-heal grandma shoes, and have an accent from deep down in Alabama.  Nope, no other possible reality need apply.  I had my mind made up.  The woman I wanted would be scripted to my every wish:  short; slender; nice hips, cute butt; kinky, long, black hair; midnight eyes; sarcastic, knowing smile.  She would just appear in the shape and form I desired, absorbing all that feminism, and when she saw me, she would immediately recognize that I was a poet, a pilgrim for the male species, ready to fight the good fight alongside her in the liberation of womankind.  We would demonstrate by day, sing anthems to the working class by night , and make passionate love in the early hours of the morning, and then get up, make coffee, write poetry, and then do it all over again, day after day.  She would be my Yoko Ono and I would be her John Lennon.

Instead, I found myself in class with girls who just wanted to go out at night (not with me), have a good time, and enjoy "Ladies Get in Free" without having to think about the impact they were having on humanity; girls who were bored by Professor Ford's long, draw- out lectures on the subjugation of women; girls who thought of her as some crazy, geriatric hippy who was bitter towards the world.  Still, I had hope.  Perhaps if I could go to that Alice Walker reading, bring back a signed book or something, and show it to them, sharing a word or two about the power of language and what words can do for the movement, perhaps it would light a fire in one of those lovely ladies' heart and mind, and the movie that was supposed to be my life would finally begin.

That is what I wanted to believe anyway, but I'd also read "Araby" by James Joyce. I knew nothing ever turns out positively.  Mangan's sister is a mirage, and any hopes of bliss evaporates at some bazaar while the world ignores you, everyone going about the business of feeding their own selfish desires.  Still, if I left right after class, I could make the reading.  Who knows?  Something could happen.

When I got back to the apartment and told my roommate Molly, she wanted to go with me.  Looking back, I realize she was probably a lot closer to my dream girl on the inside than I would have been comfortable admitting, which is probably why we fought so much.  She read all of the time and she was definitely a feminist, but she didn't match my filmmaker's vision, so I never considered scripting her into my life.  Truth is, I was the same sexist pig I so deplored, which is why, perhaps, I was so drawn to women's literature in the first place.  I was fascinated by the guilt of my own species.  Why are men such pigs?

However, Molly was a good friend.  I had no problem with Molly tagging along.  It's just that I knew Molly well, and from the moment she said, "I want to go," I was terrified the whole thing would fall apart.  I feared that I would never come back victorious with an autographed book by Alice Walker, and that I would never be received by that class of girls as an enlightened man of the women's movement, ready to be embraced and loved by all.  Of course, part of me knew those girls cared less about Alice Walker, feminism, or Dr. Ford's class, but I wasn't yet prepared to give up the fantasy.  I'd scripted it, and was determined to make it happen against all odds.  Unfortunately, without even knowing it, Molly was more than happy to jump in and play the role of my antagonist.

And so one hot, humid spring day in 89 we headed south under a  boiling sky to meet Alice Walker and get my copy of Living by the Word signed.  If I remember right, another hero of mine, Paul McCartney, was playing Texas Stadium that same night.  We had to go east to get south, and passed it. The freeways were wet, the traffic was bad.  Molly wasn't as ready to go as soon as she said she would be.  I had paced the living room, saying loudly, every two minutes, "Are you ready yet?"  We left late. Although I worried about getting to San Antonio on time, I still imagined seeing McCartney live.  I didn't even try to get tickets.  They were sixty bucks!  But oh how magical it would be.  I could see the lights; I could hear the piano intro to "Live and Let Die" and then the explosion of sound--an orchestra on steroids.  No rules.  No fear.  Just a wall of sound.  All-encompassing sound.  Life!

And here beside me was Molly.  Molly with her foot up on my dashboard, talking on and on and on.  Molly who wasn't ready when she said she would be.  Molly who made it so we didn't get on the freeway before rush-hour started, which in Dallas is at 2:00 p.m.  Molly, who talked as if it didn't really matter if we saw Alice Walker.  Molly, who although she skipped class all of the time to read, read mostly pulp fiction.  Molly, who left dishes piled in the sink.  Molly who left spaghetti on her plate--for days at a time!  Molly, who did not conform to my vision of what a woman should be.  I was mad as hell at her for obstructing my doorway into the world of feminism.

Yeah, I know.  I didn't get it. The story goes on.

I don't remember much of the drive.  I didn't want a drive.  This was no pleasure ride.  I was on a mission, and my mission was to get to San Antonio, hear Alice Walker read, and get my book signed.  We were late and I was terrified my traveling companion would destroy the whole thing.

And after miles rushed by in a blur--just when it looked like I might cross the finish line--Molly stepped up to play her antagonist role.

"I'm hungry."

"We can get something to eat after the reading."

"I'm hungry now."

"Yeah, so am I."

"You don't understand.  You know, I'm diabetic."

That I did know.  I'd seen her carried out of the apartment on a stretcher as a result of her blood sugar getting messed up.

"Can't it wait?  We've only got 40 minutes?"

"No, not really."

And here's the really stupid thing.  I'm not sure what explains it.  It probably wasn't Molly.  We didn't just swing by some fast food drive-through.  I remember we got off some place near downtown.  There were old brick buildings from the early 1900's.  I remember Molly shooting up with insulin outside the car and a hard light hitting the brick facades.  It was gorgeous, but I wanted to be furious bad enough I stayed in my anger.  And then--this is the part I just don't get.  We went inside some diner and got these great big, wonderful burgers.  I think here, that the conflict must switched to man vs. self.  I abhorred fast food and was always looking for real food--an early Anthony Bourdain, I guess--even on my budget.  Somehow though, if we were late, it would be Molly's fault, not mine.  My thought process was, If I were alone, I'd go to the reading first, and then find a great place to eat afterward, spending hours slowly savoring the food as I read Alice Walker and looked admiringly at her very pretty signature, dreaming of reaction of the girls in Women's Lit.

Somehow, we still got to the place--some university, I think, although I don't really remember--before the event started.  There was a huge line, but I had my book, and we were in line.

And then they closed the doors.  "Sorry folks, we're full."

My heart sank.  This was no time to be a coward.  I stepped out of line and walked up to authority.  "Is there some way my friend and I can get in?"  I said, pointing to Molly.  "We drove all of the way from Dallas."

Those close by in the line next to me, who like me hadn't moved, who hadn't given up on their dream, were clearly impressed.    There was an audible approval of such dedication to the arts.

"There aren't anymore seats."

"We can stand," I said.

Several others in line agreed they could do the same.

Authority went to talk to someone with greater authority and came back.  "I can let in the two from Dallas and the first eight in line.  That's it.  You'll have to stand at the back, out of the aisles.  To everyone else, I'm truly sorry."

And so we got in.  My dream wasn't demolished.

The lights lowered.  The stage lights went on.  Out walked some dean to introduce Alice Walker, beauty, hero, icon.  The crowd stood up and clapped as Alice walked out.  Wow, I thought, you really can achieve something akin to rock-star status as a writer.  To me she was as beautiful as in her picture, although clearly older.   If I remember right, she wore little round John Lennon spectacles.

And then it happened.  Someone tapped me on the shoulder.   I turned around and saw someone in a fire chief suit.  "Sorry, you're going to have to leave."

"What?  They let us in.  See, here's my ticket."

"Yes, but I'm the fire marshal.  Sorry, we're over legal capacity."

Shit.  The man.  Real Authority.

Out in the foyer, one of the organizers greeted the dejected souls, and was clearly moved by human compassion.  I remember her as a little, frail woman in silver hair in her late sixties, although I have no idea if that is accurate, or just my mind weaving myth.  But, I do know she said something like, "I'm so sorry;  come back though, the book signing will be afterward in the gymnasium; I'm sure Ms. Walker would love to sign a book for you."

If I wrote this story, it would end here.  I'm not much of a fiction writer, and I don't really understand plot.  In fact, I try to avoid it whenever and wherever I can.  I want the plot-line of my life to look like the vital signs of a dead man.  I want it to look like the topography of Kansas.  Who wants goals and problems?  I just want a casual stroll across a mowed field outside Garden City on a perfect fall day.  That is the all of the undulations in life that I want.

Life, however, often understands plot better than even the best of writers.  Again, without knowing it, Molly stepped up to play antagonist.

"We've got a couple of hours.  Let's go see the River Walk."

I really thought that was a bad idea.  I just wanted to walk over to the gymnasium, sit on the concrete walk, and be first in line to get my book signed.  However, Molly went on and on about how beautiful the River Walk is and what a crime it is to come to San Antonio and not see it.  She promised we could be back on time.  If I had been more wise, I probably would have realized this was her real agenda in coming with me--to walk the River Walk.  Life really was "Araby," a plot of dissatisfaction spurred-on by everyone's own selfish desires.

Anyway, we ended up downtown.  We parked in some parking garage and got out.  I thought, What's so miraculous about this place?   It's a freaking ghost town.  The streets were all but void of traffic.  Not a single restaurant open.  It was deader than downtown Dallas after work hours, which in the 80's, made downtown Toledo, Ohio feel like the Las Vegas Strip or Times Square.

Then we walked across some silent street, stepped down some stairs below a canopy of big trees, and Wow!  A world of wonder opened up.

Stone, vegetation, water, light, music, people, life!  Absolutely stunning.  There simply is no way to get down the beauty of the San Antonio's River Walk on paper, especially at night.  It's spectacular no matter how many times you go back.  But, the shock of finding it there in all its glory on a night when you just knew nothing could go right.  Well, I was stunned.  Then mesmerized.  Molly and I walked around giddy as could be, and Alice Walker and the girls in Dr. Ford's second semester of Women's Literature became a distant memory, at least for the night.

At some point Molly said, "We better get going, if we're going to get to the book signing."

"No, let's walk," I said.  "It'll be alright."

On the drive home, I found my anger again, and silently seethed as I drove down the wet, congested interstate towards a reality nothing like the River Walk.  I had to.  If I didn't, my world might have unraveled that night.  No more dreams of the little revolutionary girl with midnight eyes and kinky, long black hair, wearing a jeans jacket and combat boots, holding picket signs.  I just couldn't let go.

No, it would be years later, when I met Marci, until that dream would be shattered.  She was simply so powerfully right for me I gave up on my expectations of life and just followed her.  Yet, that wonderful night with my good friend Molly was my first taste of really understanding that, as Paul's good friend John put it,  "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." (Lennon)

References

Lennon, John. "Beautiful Boy." Double Fantasy. By John Lennon. 1981. LP.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 48. Mission Concepcion, San Antonio

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>.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 47. The Road to Mission Concepcion, San Antonio

Mission Concepcion, San Antonio

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>.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 46. A Walk Down by the River at Pedernales Falls State Park

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.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 45. The Unnamed Band from Austin's Antone's Home of the Blues

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