Garner State Park, Texas I went out camping for a few nights at Garner State Park at the western end of the Hill Country. The park's central point is a big rocky hill named exactly like you'd expect it to be: "Old Baldy." And, in another instance of things happening exactly as you'd expect them to, it was raining the whole time. The weather was nice for keeping the campsites from getting too busy, but was not so nice for dramatic light shows on the cliffs. Nevertheless, the low rain clouds gave a cool moody atmosphere to the whole affair, even turning the base of the cliff into an abstract expressionist painting. Maybe Jackson Pollock visited here when he was a kid. Or maybe sometimes some things just look similar to other things.
Austin, Texas Often the birds who get the most street cred are the ones who make the impossibly long migrations, yearly expeditions across thousands of miles, stretches of land rendered somehow familiar by instinct, experience, or something even less explicable. But let's not forget to give thanks to those avians, stubborn if not brave, who pick a home and stick with it, through frosty winter and boiling summer. Let's be glad that, at least in Texas we can hear the mockingbirds sing through the winter and even on the one icy morning we can watch their ballet through the branches. Assuming they're not pecking our heads off for getting too close to their nest.
Enchanted Rock State Natural Area, Texas // Up on enchanted rock, low-sun glowlight turns the whole granite expanse into a realm of golden stone and deep dusk-blue crater pools. It's an improbably wonderful mix of colors and feelings that transports you from regular consciousness to some esoteric mind-place where fantasy runs free and everything seems pretty much great. Then the sun goes down, but luckily the world around you just goes back to its regular way of being impossibly beautiful.
