The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 54. Balmorhea State Park, No. 2

Time to touch base with stillness at Balmorhea State Park

It's a bit odd that Balmorhea State Park seems like such a big part of my life since I've only been there four times, and two of those times it was closed.  Yet, it feels as familiar as neighborhoods I once called home.  Perhaps one reason for this is its size.  At 46 acres, it's just over half the size of the 90 acres of family land I call home.  When you go to Balmorhea State Park, you can park the car, place the keys someplace safe, and just stay put for days at a time.  Yet, there is still enough to keep you occupied.  When you're out in nature with nowhere to go, time slows down, and you learn to just be.

I noticed this even happens with young children.  You'd think with a swimming pool that covers 1.3 acres, your kids would be so anxious to get over to that pool, you'd see very little of whatever else the park had to offer.  However, my children spent more time at the cienega, or desert wetland, right next to the campground than at the pool.  Though reconstructed after the pool destroyed the natural habitat when it was built between 1936 and 1946, the wetland reconstruction was done so well that today it appears as timeless as the surrounding desert itself.  There is a shaded wood deck that juts out over the swamp where you can spend hours listening to birds and watching snakes, fish and turtles in the water below.  There is also a short trail that takes you to a glass wall so that you can see underwater.    The wetlands allowed the adults to just sit around at the campsite and talk while our boys spent hours watching snakes.

I think what I enjoy most about Balmorhea State Park is just the natural desert landscape that surrounds the campsites.  True, you could plop a campground down anywhere in west Texas and you'd get pretty much the same desert experience.  The real question then is why aren't there more places just like it?  If preserving a measly 46 acres can bring so much joy to humanity, why not have many more little preserved squares like it?   Camping opportunities in west Texas are few and far between, and the two National Parks--Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains--are often filled to capacity.  A dozen 46-acre parks spread across that enormous space would relieve the pressure on the parks and would certainly get used.

The grass-lined canals and great expanses of mowed parkland are enjoyable too.  There are swings, picnic tables, and even a cute little Spanish-styled adobe lodge whose rooms look over a tree lined canal of sparking water and thriving little fishes called Pecos gambusia.  We spent many hours just walking along the ditches watching the silver streaks zip through their cool, clear world, ripples of wavy, golden light playing the pebble and sand bottoms below.

I love the grand, sweeping views of Yellowstone, but just as meaningful are the intimate views of nature this little Texas treasure provides simply by the compactness of its size and the variety of ecosystems available within a short distance from the campsite.  Writing this makes me want to hop in my car and drive 16 hours, covering more than 1000 miles, just so I can sit still on 46 acres and be.  Of course, I have 90 acres here to do the same, but I don't.  Here is my life--grasses to mow, trees to trim, flowerbeds to weed, chickens to feed--and I get so busy maintaining the place, I forget to experience it.

Balmorhea State Park provides that slowness vital to touching base with the foundations of life.  Its remote location also provides one of the most profound night skies you will ever see--the milky way arcing over creosote and yucca scrub-land in glory, a Genesis-depth of understanding penetrating into the core of your normally distracted mind and heart.


References

Texas State Parks and Wildlife. Nature. n.d. 18 5 2020. <https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/balmorhea/nature>.

Wikipedia. Balmorhea State Park. 1 March 2020. 18 May 2020. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balmorhea_State_Park>.

 

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 53 Balmorhea State Park, No. 1

One of the canals flowing out from the pool into the green grounds of Balmorhea State Park

Our plan was to camp at Balmorhea State Park.  I love that place.  It's woven into my personal history even though it was often closed when I  arrived, and I had to view its wondrous waters through a chain link fence, only to dream about what it would be like to dive into the world's third-largest spring-fed swimming pool.  A large blue hole in the center, 30 feet deep,  pumps 22 to 28 million gallons of clear, cool water per day that fills the man-made pool and is then the channeled out into sizzling desert via long canals.  Oasis here is an understatement.  This time too, the park was closed, and so once again, I was stuck viewing its wonders from a distance.  Perhaps that only intensifies its lure, a sort of forbidden fruit enjoyed far all too infrequently.  Whether or not that's true, I've come to accept that it's often closed when I go by, and so I wasn't too disappointed when we arrived to a mostly-fortified state park.

The first time I saw Balmorhea, I was on a great escape from my own reality.  Karen was a bright, beautiful marine biology student from Berlin.  I was floundering architectural student still hanging onto my childhood dream of becoming a world-class architect, while in reality, I frequently skipped my drawing and design classes to hang out in my dorm and write depressing poems.  I had no choice.  I have recently realized that I was probably experiencing PTSD--a delayed reaction from the bullying I received in junior high and high school.  But, I didn't know that then.  I just knew I had to write.  I'd get up, intending to go to class, and instead I'd end up sitting on the top bunk, writing:

Architecture

I choose a society of bricks
and hollow dark caves.
I articulate words to escape my made womb.
I call to poems.

My poems grow in health.
I live in hell.
I live my whole life
with a cave-hole in my heart
where happiness is blown out
and loneliness is sucked in.
I bleed for it.

I am both ruthless master
and bleeding slave.
I love sacrifice.
I love sacred caves.

I wrote poems, stories, memories of my childhood in Utah and long, drawn-out letters to Karen.  She wrote long drawn-out letters back.  They were a life-line.  Years later, even after marrying Marci, I kept them in a good-sized box on the closet shelf.  I may still have them somewhere, or I may not.  I remember one year when we were moving, I decided I didn't need them anymore.  I was happy; Marci was my life; I no longer needed them.  So, I think I chucked them.  But I also think Marci may have told me to hold onto them.  I don't remember what I decided to do, and Marci and I are not the type of people who can easily find our boxed memories.  We have one house and three out buildings crammed with books and other sentimental junk.  Hoarders is the term shallow people use to describe people like us.   

Anyway, those letters always came in blue and red striped envelopes--Par Avion.  I'd walk over to the post office in the student center and open my P.O. box.  If that striped envelope was there, the day was good.  If it wasn't, I'd walk back to my dorm with a light-less solar system flinging around a bunch of cold rocks inside me.

I still remember the day Karen first arrived that spring.  Actually, it may have been February.  Anyway, it was a freakishly cold for Texas.  That morning I sat in the dorm room and watched snow drift on the roof of the student center across the way.  I'd glance at the clock every few minutes, waiting for a reasonable time when I could drive to DFW to meet Karen for a few minutes before she caught her next flight to Albuquerque.  She would stay with some relatives there for three or four weeks--her sister and brother in-law, if I remember right--and then she would come back to spend a week with me.  I had a long road trip planned to west Texas and Big Bend National Park.  I was sick with anticipation.

I don't remember the drive to DFW although I should.  Driving in rare winter conditions in Dallas is not an easy thing to forget.  Stupidity is pronounced everywhere with cars slid off onto the shoulders and into the medians.  But I don't remember it.  I just remember sitting in the cold terminal waiting for passengers from international flights to come in.  It was crowded, and there was a sliding glass door behind where I was sitting; every time someone came in, a cold blast would bowl on in with them.  It was brutal.

So was the anticipation.  I feared I wouldn't recognize her.  I hadn't seen her in over a year.  Even then, we had only spent one weekend together.  One night I received a call from the stepmother of my friend Carl.  He was away at college, and his stepmom had never called me before.  I hardly knew her.  At first, I thought something bad must have happened to Carl.  Nope.  She was setting me up on a blind date with Karen, the daughter of a colleague of Carl's father, a renowned physicist.  Why she chose me and not Phil, who was a better friend of Carl's, I don't know.  Maybe she thought I needed a date more.  Perhaps she thought we would have more in common.  Karen was very cultured and I liked art.  But then so did Phil, so I don't know.  Anyway, I lucked out.

My brother's girlfriend was in town the weekend of my blind date with Karen.  She had a sporty, dark-green TR-7, and she said I could borrow it for the occasion.  I was nervous as hell.  Carl's mom went on and on about how pretty this girl named Karen was.  In my experience beautiful girls and my existence didn't have much in common.  I worried that together we'd experience hours of awkwardness as I gawked at her and searched for something meaningful to say.  So, I gladly accepted Maxine's offer of the TR-7; I thought it might make up for my deficiencies.  At least Karen could go back to Germany and say, "That guy was a total geek, but boy did he have a great car."

Nothing went as I imagined.  Karen had a little of extra weight on her.  She was pretty, but Carl's mom had stressed her beauty so much that I was somewhat disappointed when I walked in and saw a pretty normal looking girl with a few extra pounds.

When I was a child I lied about everything--not to get out trouble, but to escape reality.  I hated that I did that, so when I was twelve I made a promise to God that I'd stop lying, and ever since then I've had this obsessive need to tell the truth.  That never stopped even during my many years as an atheist. So, the first thing I did was tell Karen that I'd borrowed the car hoping to impress her.  That turned out to be a good move on my part.  We immediately dropped all pretenses and quickly became friends.  The TR-7, as it turned out, was loud, making conversation difficult.  We ditched it back at my house and got my old Plymouth Reliant without air-conditioning  to drive around instead.  The back seat and floors were full of junk, but I didn't care.  Somehow in a couple of hours I knew Karen as well as I knew Phil or Marsh.  There simply was no need to pretend.  We set off to see my Dallas.

I probably took her to DMA and White Rock Lake, but what I remember is driving her along the dirt roads that run along the channeled Trinity River bottoms.  It was a fine, warm spring day.  The bluebonnets were in bloom.  Along those dusty roads, I was able to show her my two worlds at once.  I loved the city, but my soul forever belonged to the country.  After all, I grew up in a county with a population density of less than two people per square mile.  We looked at cows (which were still pastured along the bottoms then) chewing on fresh green grasses, the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown behind the canal bank.  We talked art, architecture, politics and science.  I knew very little about science, but there didn't seem to be any subject I could bring up that Karen couldn't quickly join.  She was incredibly well-educated for someone just out of high school.  She spoke three languages--English, French and German.

When she returned to Germany, we wrote back and forth to each other at least weakly, sometimes more.   Even with all that distance between us, we'd become best friends.  Still, that day in the airport I worried that she would walk by without me recognizing her.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

The minute Karen walked through the sliding glass doors from customs that brutally cold spring day, I knew her as well as any of  my best friends.  Only she didn't look the same.  She'd lost that extra weight, and I now saw her the way Carl's stepmother had seen her all along.  She was indeed very pretty.  I had thought that I didn't really care about that.  We'd had such a great time on her previous visit.  Turns out I did, because standing there looking at her minus the extra-weight, I was stunned.

I don't remember what we did.  I know we didn't have long before her next flight.  I assume we went to a coffee shop in the airport.  I do know she brought me some gifts from Germany--a couple of picture books about Berlin and a jar of Nutella, which was not sold in the U.S. then.  When she explained that you spread chocolate hazelnut on bread like peanut butter, I thought, Chocolate on bread?  Yuck.  But, of course, when I actually tried it, I discovered what every American knows now.  Leave the Jiffy on the shelf; grab the Nutella instead.

The time she spent in New Mexico was pure agony for me.  I received a couple of post cards, but she was on vacation.  She was sight seeing.  I was staring past the gallon of orange drink I dangled in front of the window air-conditioning unit in my dorm room.  I had tied a string around a water pipe near the ceiling and hung it there.  We had no fridge, and it was a vein attempt to keep the sugary drink semi-cold.  Anyway, I was on the top bunk, skipping class, staring past the jug of orange drink and out the window to the roof of the student center across the way, picturing instead west Texas.  There would be the Monahans Sandhills, the Davis Mountains, which I knew well, and Big Bend National Park, which I'd never been to but had researched fervently.  And there would be us, standing facing each other, that hot west Texas wind whipping Karen's long brown hair under a blue sky that goes forever.  Anticipation was eating me alive.  I couldn't even write my normal dismal poems.  All I could do is dream.

Finally she arrived.  Although we had planned on staying the night at my brother's, almost as soon as we got there we decided to leave.  I was so excited to get out west that we drove and talked through the night, arriving at Monahan Sandhills well after midnight.  It was late, so rather than setting up the tent, we slept on the dunes under a full moon.

The next morning we were up and on the road before dawn.  I remember the sun rose over the flat eastern horizon just before Balmorhea, igniting the Davis Mountains to the southwest.  I remember pulling off the highway and photographing a tree-yucca in the bright morning light.

By the time we reached Toyahvale the desert was golden.  Off to the left, I saw a great patch of green behind a chain link fence and this enormous swimming pool out in the middle of nowhere.  And nowhere is Toyahavale, Texas, population 60.  What the hell?  I don't know how Lloyd and I missed it on our trip to the Davis Mountains, but we must have.  I turned around at some little white cinder block store with corrugated metal canopy out front.  It looked like a roadside restaurant in Mexico.  I drove back to the state park entrance.  This we had to see.  After all, Karen was a marine biology student.   She was on her college swim team.  This was her place.  Only we couldn't.  The gates were closed.  There was a sign.  Apparently, this week it was reserved for diving classes for University of Texas Austin students.  Reluctantly, we headed back back down the road, pulled over, and just stood there in the brisk morning air, rubbing each others arms, taking as much of the warm sunlight as our chilled skin could absorb as we stared into the bluest water imaginable just beyond our potential to dive right in.

And then we drove on to Big Bend, which is another story.

Here, now, I'm wondering how to wrap this up.  Part of me wants to follow that distant memory of Karen and I down to Big Bend, to feel again her smooth skin under my hungry finger tips as we stood all alone under the intense desert sun facing each other, lost in each other's eyes.

Part of me wants to just stick to the script.  This is a travelogue of one route through Texas.  The journey Marci and I took did not include Big Bend.  I spent a little over a week with Karen.  As of writing this, I've spent 23 years with Marci, and I plan on spending not only the rest of this life on earth with her but eternities after we die.

This morning I woke up realizing that what I really wanted to get across in this section is that life matters.  Youth, for all its glories, is somewhat wasted because when we are young we are so busy looking forward to our future that we don't sit solidly in the now.  I thought that those moments with Karen were an escape from life.  They were not.  Standing in the desert, looking into her eyes, feeling her smooth skin just below the hem of her shorts in my fingertips, I was alive.  She was special and I'm glad she came along.  However, I could have lived much more of life with that direct connection to living if I had just dropped all my worry and grounded myself and entered the moment, whatever it was.  Hell, I probably could have even made it to class and still wrote my depressing poems.  It's alright that I couldn't.  I don't want to go back and rewrite life.  I like how everything unfolded anyway.  But, if I could pass one thing on to the next generation, it would be this--make each day count, not by escaping what needs to be done, but by keeping a sharp eye and generous heart open to the passing events and sights.  The commute to work matters.  The encounter at the drive-through window matters.  The little daily interactions at work matter.  What goes right, what goes wrong--none of that matters--as long as you are there to learn and appreciate the ride.

Generosity towards experience, as I've come to see it, is what we are ultimately here on earth for--to experience gratitude to God for this thing we call life and for the  knowledge that comes from living.  The fact that a place called Balmorhea came into my life is amazing.  But if it hadn't, it would be replaced by someplace just as memorable.  Life provides an oasis of experiences, but we get so stuck in the mirages in our heads that we fail to see the striking beauty before us.  Karen provided a moment when I dropped all fear of living and instead just lived.  There is no reason I can't do the same on my way to work this morning.  Attention to detail is a choice, a choice well worth making.  Yet it is so difficult to experience each day moment by moment because we get so caught up in the endless chatter of the mind.

The Great Texas Road Trip Thank-You Tour: 52. Pedernales Falls State Park to the Exit to Iraan and Sheffield

Travel Date:  September 14, 2018.

The first time I ever saw Pedernales Falls, I was sorely disappointed.  Although I'd never been to the Hill Country before, I knew Texas fairly well, so I didn't expect much.  Yet, I guess I retained my western mind, for when I think of "falls", I think of something vertical, like Yosemite Falls, Yellowstone Falls, or many nameless small falls up any canyon in any of the Rockies, Great Basin ranges, Sierra's or Cascades.  Hell, even Minnesota, with as little topography as it has, still has water falls.  Leave it to Texas to grandly proclaim something with 6% grade "falls".  Under normal conditions, water delightfully trickles over, around, and through slick, polished, gently undulating  stone at Pedernales Falls.

In my expectation to see a vertical drop of water the first time I saw the falls, I missed the significance of all of that bare, polished rock, with little or no vegetation growing in a climate that produces plenty of verdant growth.  What I should have easily noticed is that although Pedernales Falls may not be steep, during a flood, it definitely would thunder.  The falls are really the chewed up river bed of a few giant rapids, the scouring marks of great floods.  Looking through the eyes of a geologist, it becomes clear that during high water those rapids are definitely a force to be reckoned with.  The series of calm little pools that are so delightful to wade in (despite warnings) are formed by the flood waters chewing at stone with gnashing teeth as nature lets loose another extra-passionate downpour, which happens frequently enough to not let any sizable trees take root.  It also happens frequently enough that the park put in sirens to sound impending doom to anyone foolish enough to drag lawn chairs down for a delightful picnic alongside one of those calm pools.

This time, already having my expectations dashed by the marvelous capacity Texas has for hyperbole, I rather enjoyed the falls.  The most extraordinary thing about the spot is that clear water bubbles out from every little rock and crevice.  There are springs everywhere.  A large part of the river volume just magically appears at the falls, with little bubbling wonders all over the place, which quickly become good sized creeks themselves before joining the river through woven stone paths.  Pedernales Falls should really be named Pedernales Springs.  That is a name the place could really live up to, as fully translated into English it would become Flints Springs.

After spending an hour down at the falls, we headed out for our day's journey.  The day was gray, and the thick tangled dark oak added to the wonderfully dreary mood.  A Romantic by nature, I find something sublimely uplifting about dread.  Gray days are a drug for me.  Cold, wet streets, and the sound of tires on wet pavement are intoxicating.  It didn't rain, but the low heavy skies promised such wonders, and I drove through the low hills in awe.

That is until we came to a purple delight just 19 miles down the road in Johnson City.  Marci had been talking about donuts since Austin.  Due to a health issue, I no longer consume sugar.  However, I do consume bright colors and quaint little eateries, so when I saw this Easter-egg beauty, I thought to myself, This is a place that will make us both happy.  And it did.  I even found food I could eat for they also serve biscuits, kolaches (whatever those are), croissants and tacos.  I believe I had a ham, egg and cheese croissant.  The food was good and the atmosphere was fantastic.  I have no idea how the doughnuts compared with the best doughnuts in the world, which are found in Reedsport, Oregon, for I couldn't have any, but we won't get it into that here.  Actually, living life without sugar is not as bad as people think.  Any optimistic paraplegic says the same about living life without limbs.

From Johnson City, we headed west on U.S. 290 towards Fredericksberg.  I was shocked to find myself in the heart of wine country for I knew the area from the 80s.  I guess a lot can change in a quarter of a century.  Back then, there were a few small, pleasant vineyards.  Now, it looked like Napa Valley, but then it really didn't.  The one real thing in Texas is that very little of it (other than the wide, flat expanses) is real.  Although I've got to admit I love it, the state is the most fake place I've ever been.  Everything is an overdone pretension.  Unlike other places, Texas lives out its daydreams.  Oh yeah, California thinks it can be France.  Well, we can out-France them any day.  Hell, we can even out-France France.  Only they can't.  What was once a beautiful landscape of low, chalky bluffs, very western, in a low scraggly, undramatic sort of way, is now a stage backdrop for very large and tacky stone mansions that dwarf the hills they perch pretentiously atop.  As none of this existed before, I assume it's so the well-to-do in Austin and San Antonio can spend their weekends pretending they are well-to-do Californians escaping the madness of the Bay Area in their sleek little red convertibles.  It was really depressing; the area had once really been Texas.  

We didn't think much of Fredericksberg either, even though back in Garden City, Jeff, our brother-in-law made it sound quite wonderful.  It was packed with Texas urbanites off to the country to dine and shop away from the restaurants and stores in their very own corner of suburbia.  I just don't get that.  It's the same in Colorado.  Why drive all that distance away from the city and drag all that crud with you?  That's one thing I admire about Californians.  For the population of that state, they do a remarkable job keeping their urban areas urban and their rural areas rural.  They don't build second homes all over the place.  They enjoy their urban lives, and when they want to get away, they drive up into the Sierras.  The national and state parks are packed, but at least there aren't condominiums, shopping centers and golf courses all over the woods.  They have there Tahoe (mostly to gamble and get drunk on the Nevada side) and they leave the rest of the wilds alone.  Too bad more of the country couldn't be the same.  I live into the country, but when I go to the city, I don't drag my country paraphernalia along with me.  The chickens and mangy mutts stay at home.  I even usually wash the car and vacuum out the mouse droppings.  Why can't urbanites have the same respect when they head out our way?  Wipe some mud on the car, throw a bail of hay in the back seat, and toss some old, rusty wrenches and mouse turds on the floor?  

We did eventually find Texas again.  Real Texas, like what folks picture in London or France, the Texas Chris Rea sings about--"Warm winds blowing / heating blue sky/ And a road that goes forever".  That is the Texas most Texans haven't seen before--that empty, dry space on the maps west of the Hill Country, which is where Texas ends for most Texans,  the Texas of creosote and parched earth.   And so, once we passed Fredericksburg, there was very little traffic.  Just heat and blue sky.  It was quite lovely.

There was a little more traffic once we joined I-10, but this far into west Texas, it still wasn't bad.  I'd forgotten how topographically-rich the terrain is on I-10 between Austin and Sonora.  In places around Junction, crews even had to blast through solid white limestone to lay down the freeway.  Exposed rock in Texas east of the Permian Basin is a rare thing to see.  Here there are white bluffs on long plateaus topped with black blobs of Juniper.  It felt western; it felt right.  

We stopped at the Pilot Travel Center in Junction to use the restroom and get a snack and drink.  On long road trips, these rather ugly metal contraptions of commerce become little oases.  Not only do they provide a place to get out and stretch your legs and relieve the pressure in your bladder that has been building mile upon mile, but they slow you down, especially when traveling the interstate.  They get you out of the artificially high flat terrain of the freeway and down into the rock, brush and natural undulations of the area.  They also slow you down so you can see the details.  I love long drives, but what I love best are those moments you exit that great river of concrete and enter a small tributary of real life, ugly gas stations, diners and all.  

And so we went on to Sonora and then to Ozona.  I wished I'd been better at capturing those miles.  I remember being pleasantly surprised at how striking they were.  I remember listening to music, sucking on sugar-free candy, listening to Marci talk and then snore.  I remember wishing she were awake to see this or that little thing on the horizon that caught my eye.  I remember her reading silently, then aloud, as she explored the landscaper of her book while I explored the landscape out the windshield.  I just don't remember the particulars.  I should have recorded those.  The glory of God is in the details.  Miss the small things and the epic just becomes a rather bland plot.

I do know at some point I was struck enough by the landscape to exit the freeway again, not for a drink, not to take a pee.  Just because the landscape called to me.  There I found a green highway sign.  One arrow pointed Iraan, the other to Sheffield.  How long or far to either I did not know, but there, under that heat and blue sky and a road that seemed to go forever, that they existed mattered, and for a small moment I just stood there and experienced life.  

Then I got in the car, opened a Coke Zero, grabbed a piece of jerky and headed back to the freeway with my wife of twenty-one years by my side.

  

   

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>.