HICKORY PASS RANCH #1

Out of Washington.  Day 1 -- Day 2
By (c) Russ Barnes. All rights reserved: text and photos

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Here’s a story. A journey in daily journal form.  All the way from Washington, DC to Austin, Texas and the ranch.  I will be publishing these posts from today till July 28.  I hope you will join with me by your comments and wisdom.  Please check in every day for the duration.

July 8, 2008, Tuesday --  Washington DC -- I pack; organize for trip.  Haven’t flown in eight years.  Nervous, anxious.   Anxious about where I’ll be.  Will I have enough to survive?  Will I really have time to do my work?  Will Robbin abandon me while I’m gone?  Will Anne be okay with her house without my help?  I’m also sad.  I feel alone.  I know I will miss everyone.  This is not going to be social I think.  It is going to be lonely.  But that’s what I think I need.  Don’t exactly know why.

I develop severe heart palpitations.  They last the whole day without let-up.  Heart skips a beat - at least three times a minute.  Irregular heartbeat too.  I feel bad, fluttery in my chest and stomach.  And that adds to the anxiety, a sense of dread.  I feel so bad, I call the doctor.  She says to take a moderate amount of diazepam all the way up and through the flight.  The palpitations don’t go away; but they diminish.

July 9, 2008, Wednesday. Washington to Austin -- I get through security, new to me after 9/11, almost without a hitch.  The flight is close to routine.  I even sleep a bit.  Fly south out of Houston along the Gulf to avoid a thunderhead between Houston and Austin. In the airport there were live jazz and blues bands playing in several spots. Welcome to the spirit of Austin.  Karen meets me in Joe’s truck, Silver, with a gray-top, AKA Wallmart.  Since, if there were seven 9/11s, you have everything in that truck to survive.  On the dashboard are the skulls of animals like bobcats, sundry other bones, teeth, bullets, feathers, and such things the black neighbors call Ju-Ju.  Evil spirits will not come near.


EAST AUSTIN

Karen at 53 is smashing as always.  She talks a stream, Joe talks a stream.   We all three talk a stream.  Non-Washingtonian.  It’s about plants, animals, cooking, adventures experienced, business, who was hospitable and who was not, about ways to get out grease and dirt, put things together. 

And about Leslie.  Leslie is a gay man dressed in a pink bra and a g-string who regularly walks up and down Congress Avenue.  He was arrested.  The Travis County ACLU intervened, and now Leslie continues her daily walks and has gained celebrity status.

Joe hugged me upon arrival at the house in East Austin.  Ramshackle place as always. Nineteen sewing machines strewn about with other mind-boggling accoutrements having to do with my host's encyclopedic interests.  

Dinner, the Eucharist, if you will.  Well, more accurately, going back to the ancient sacrifices.  Oil barrel barbecue grill in the back yard with a huffing and puffing chimney. Smelling of Fajita meat.  What a meal: Fajitas in fried tortillas: the meat, sautéed onions and varieties of of peppers, guacamole, a french cheese, and home-made salsa.  Then a Mexican bean soup on the side which was one of the best soups I have ever tasted.  Then we made contact with Robbin by Skype video conference in Mexico.  I had such a feeling of worthiness of these three people.  We all talked together.  A little stilted.  But I was so proud of everyone.


To be continued tomorrow
Go to sequel: #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8

Water, Desert, Thirst, and Betrayal

By (C) Russ Barnes; Photo by Russ Barnes

It’s mid-summer and dry. Below you will find a fragment of a piece I wrote while at Hickory Pass Ranch near Marble Falls, Texas, a 3500 acre ranch at about 1300 feet altitude. Water and dryness. For travels to the desert those are themes always in front of you and to be contemplated. What is your experience of thirst and quenching it with cool, real and metaphorical water? This little piece is part of a larger story. Sign up to follow the blog and you will see other pieces from the ranch and many other places, from me and from others. Any thoughts about water rights?

WATER: from “Alligator Stew”

Water is not taken for granted. It becomes precious. It fills you. Cow Creek often dries up during the summer months.

John Steinbeck observes in his book, Travels with Charley, that civilization and social activity thrive around places with abundant water. Steinbeck noted this while crossing the wide swatch of Texas in his van, Rocinante, with his dog, Charley. Intellectual ideas and spiritual experiences, he perceived, are more likely to flourish in the minimalism of dry places.

Joe, catching a sight of flowers in the brittle sedge, said, "It’s as dry as a popcorn fart out here, and it’s bloomin’. It’s so dry, the trees are lookin’ for dogs."

DESERT FATHERS

Meditating a bit on Steinbeck’s observation, my thoughts turned to the early desert fathers of Egypt came to mind as I roamed the range at Hickory Pass. One of those desert fathers pointed out, “The man who flees and lives in solitude is like a bunch of grapes ripened by the sun, but he who remains among men is like an unripe grape.” I’m way not that stringent. But the old father has a point.

The individual thrives in the desert, in dryness. Society breeds around water.

Karen is reported to have asked Joe, "Is Russ becoming a hermit?"

EDWARD’S AQUIFER

It was another father -- Jacqueline’s father, Jackson C. Mouton -- who decided on the site at the top of the hill for building the Hickory Pass Ranch house. At its altitude, there is no natural running water; so he drilled down to bring water up. Beneath the Hill Country and beyond, is a mighty, but delicate, underground river called the Edwards Aquifer. That underground source of water is fed by surface water filtered by the geological layers through which it seeps, and then that pure water is stored in the cool and running waters below.

The desert fathers applied prayer and contemplation to drill deep through their metaphoric desert to quench their thirst, to allay betrayal. Jacquelyn’s father used an oil drill. The object in both cases, it occurred to me, is not entirely dissimilar: to slake thirst.

When you drink from the tap or take a shower at Hickory Pass Ranch, the water is pure, particularly in comparison to the water supply of, say, Washington, DC At the highest point on the hill, near the guesthouses, sit three squat, round cement towers. These house a pump system, which fills a huge stainless steel cistern. Gravity then serves to provide the water pressure needed to service all three ranch buildings.

BETRAYAL

The desert? Lack of water. Betrayals surfaced in conversations between me and Joe. Betrayal is what leads one to the desert for resolution. Joe said, “I came here broke. He paused honestly. Well not completely. My bride came with me. More. Then the school found me. I felt like a duck falling on a pond.” “I understand,” I said to Joe.