This Country

We’re off to Texas! Or more accurately, we were off to Texas; now we are back. Starting in late February, Laura and I traveled in our camper van from North Carolina through southern Texas, along the Mexican border to southwestern Arizona, then up into southern Utah, Colorado and back home.  We were gone eleven weeks and drove 7500 miles. What did we see? Well, a country astoundingly vast and varied, with landscapes of almost unbelievable beauty. It is easy to dwell on the multitude of problems our country faces; I do it all the time. But gosh! It’s just an amazing place. We as Americans possess a wealth of public lands and parks that is probably without equal. If you can, go.

Prior to our trip I had run out of inspiration for any blog posts, but I can think of lots of things to share now. The title photo is not from this trip, but from our previous visit to Texas in 2006 when we went with the children; Laura and 12-year old Thomas are adding another state. I just like it. Here is post one, the first ten days of our trip, south and west to San Antonio:

Generally speaking, if you are happy and do not want to be, driving across metro Atlanta is a good way to remedy that problem. In a propitious start to our trip however, we left Waynesville on a Sunday morning and four hours later were on the other side of Atlanta, still happy and able to enjoy the early spring greens of Georgia and Alabama. Our first stop was in Birmingham, Alabama. We lived there from 1986 to 1989 while Craig was doing his residency after medical school. We took a walk around our old neighborhood of Homewood, of which we have fond memories. Those were the days prior to mandated limitations on the work hours required of young doctors. I was certainly well trained as a result of my Birmingham years, but I also got lost walking in our neighborhood for months as I had never been there in the daylight. Thirty-one years later our son Nathaniel, in utero in the picture below, would have a much more humane medical residency experience.

We started our time in Texas with a detour to visit the only remaining boundary marker of the former Republic of Texas, now on the Louisiana-Texas state line. Prior to the admission of Texas as a state in 1834 this was an international boundary. It was surveyed in 1832 and marked by a series of stone pillars, of which the marker post pictured below is the sole remaining example.

I do not think of Texas as a swampy place, but east Texas, like much of the coastal southeastern United States, has lots of swampy terrain, or at least did have prior to being extensively drained to facilitate farming. We spent time in the Big Thicket National Preserve; it is an area of great biological diversity where perhaps eight distinct ecosystems converge in a relatively small area.  It is swampy and sandy with lots of mosquitos, of interest mainly to serious naturalists. We were there too early in the spring to appreciate its botanical richness, but it is hard to pass up a good swamp.

Leaving the forested lands of east Texas we continued west to San Antonio. Historically, San Antonio’s main attraction is the string of Spanish Missions established in the early 1700s along the San Antonio River. The most well-known is the Alamo which is now surrounded by the modern city. Four other mission church complexes lie south of the city and are preserved as the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park. They are easy to tour as they are all connected via San Antonio’s wonderful Riverwalk bicycle and pedestrian path. I always enjoy seeing these Spanish sites; as school children we all learn that the United States was settled east to west primarily by northern Europeans: the Pilgrims got out on their rock and pushed inland from the Atlantic coast;  Daniel Boone blazed a trail west through the Appalachian Mountains and the settlers followed into Kentucky; pioneers in covered wagons crossed the plains with great hardship; the Mormons walked to Utah.  All true and worthy of admiration, but America’s history is so much more complicated than that. How about those Spaniards? Perhaps a hundred years earlier they were moving north from New Spain into what would become the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.  The most visible relics of their efforts are the mission churches, most of which are in California, but they are all over the Southwest. And I always hate to not think of the Native Americans. Europeans were of course exploring and colonizing a land that had been inhabited for 20,000+ years. And most sadly, Old World infectious disease spread from the Caribbean far faster than did explorers and settlers. There are estimates that the native population of the Americas fell by perhaps 90% in the 16th and 17th centuries, probably the greatest demographic crisis in history.  So who knows what these lands were like prior to historical times?  They certainly were not empty wilderness just awaiting settlement. In any case, the San Antonio Missions are beautiful, and an important part of our national story.

From San Antonio we continued west toward Big Bend National Park.  On the way we camped at Seminole State Park in west Texas. Here, having driven around or through Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Houston, and San Antonio, with views over the Chihuahuan Desert and the Rio Grande valley to the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains in Mexico, I finally felt the sense of relief and excitement that I always hope to feel… the sense that we had left the tired, paved-over lands of the eastern cities, and entered into the warm heart of the West.