Kickapoo
The State Park, not the casino. The 10-year-old boy in me loves the name. Poo!
My love interest and I enjoyed some semi-spontaneous kid-free adult traveling adventures this weekend, and it was a joy! Except for the sleeping in a tent through a 30-degree overnight. But everything before and after that: perfection.
First, we collected historical markers on the 4-hour road trip out to the only semi-close state park we could find whose campsites weren't all booked up for the weekend. And it has poo in the name! And it has caves, and bats! How could we say no?
Market #13735
I don't know why historical markers tickle me so much. I suppose it's because the first one we spontaneously stopped to examine on our trip to Big Bend last spring had such a great story. I mean, it had "massacre" right in the title. Virtually every marker I've read since has been a somewhat sedate tale of some rich people somewhere and how they spent or made their money. But traveling through south Texas, we got back to theme of Texas history: killing off the natives who were already here!
There's lots of references to Indian fighting, of course, and the forts that sprang up to conduct the fight. One of the ones we read this weekend even referred to the "depredations" of the natives. I appreciate the lack of any degree of irony with which such stories are written. The Comanches are villainous; the white settlers of the wild frontier are brave and true. One of those treacherous Comanche even kept the gun of the stalwart Indian Fighter he killed. The nerve!
None of the 6 markers we collected on this trip lived up to the story of red-headed and red-bearded Henry Robinson who was, as a particularly word-loving friend of mine might say, "hoisted with his own petard," it's still fun to watch for them and pause in our journey to get a photo. We got lots of frontier tales, if not thrilling ones: forts and churches and stagecoaches and various town and city services established. I love that my traveling companion is not only not annoyed by my desire to collect these things, she even suggests it and points them out as we go. Treasure those who participate with you in your weird obsessions, y'all. That's what I'm trying to say here.
When we stopped at the marker outside the courthouse in Kinney County and read all about its Beaux Arts Classicism and its octagonal corner towers, she even suggested I take a picture of the building it described. Then she showed off her super baggy roadtrip sweat pants with a quick impression of MC Hammer. Stop! Hammer time! Please, Hammer, don't hurt 'em! This woman is not only game for my silliness, she's game to stir up plenty of her own, too. Can't touch this!
When we got to the park, we checked in and set up our campsite. This was only the second time in her life that she's done tent camping, so she deferred to me as the expert, though I've camped only a handful of times since I was a Boy Scout 30 years ago. I got a fire going, but I had trouble getting the coals right for cooking. Still, she made me feel manly and capable, and what better gift could I get from my love interest than that?
We spent the afternoon hiking one of the trails. We found solitude, companionship, conversation, bawdy adventure, rock-sitting meditation in a dry creek bed imagining the roar of the flash flood waters that tear through when the rains come. We even saw a little wildlife. She, who grew up in the very different wilds of Queens, can now say she's seen a deer running at full speed and leaping over an impossibly tall fence, and has seen up close the famous Texas armadillo, live and not squished on a road.
In the evening, we went to Stuart Bat Cave to watch the bat flight. And yes, I did say, "To the bat cave, Robin!" But only once. There, we watched the first 20 minutes of an hours-long process of around 1 million bats exiting the cave for their nightly hunt. These bats are Mexican Free Tail bats, same as the ones under the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, and are likely in the midst of their annual migration to Mexico. The first bat out, as the group inside the cave began flying in circles to build up momentum, was struck and knocked out of the sky by one of several hawks that began circling in anticipation a few minutes before the flight began. The park ranger described the bat flight as a nightly buffet for predators, with hawks striking from above, snakes dangling down over the cave opening to see what they can catch, and raccoons and possums prowling about to crunch and munch on any that get tangled up in the tall grass just outside the cave. Aw, nature! So utterly lacking in sentimentality!
After freezing through the night (30 degrees! In Texas! In October!), I got another fire going, and remembering my difficulty with the coals the night before, I broke out my clever plan B: a butane camp stove! Now she would emerge from the tent to coffee and oatmeal, steaming hot and waiting to revive her from the frigid and restless night! But the stove crapped out on me after boiling just enough water for the coffee. When she emerged to find no breakfast waiting for her, was she mad? Was she disappointed? Did she spend the morning pouting and giving me the silent treatment? Of course not! She broke out the bread and peanut butter!
If you can date a fun-loving, spontaneous woman, do it. If you can date a fun-loving, spontaneous woman who shows up with a plan C, do that, too! These are the life lessons, people. This is gold I'm giving you here.
By this time, my phone was dead, so I have no more photos. I was forced to live my experiences through the window of my own eyes instead of through the little electronic screen. And I'm OK with that. After breakfast, we joined a small group taking a short and bumpy bus ride to the Kickapoo Cavern for which this particular state park was named. I was taken completely by surprise, expecting nothing of this scale, probably because I did not plan or research this trip at all.
The high ceilings did not require us to slide, squeeze, shimmy, or crawl, but there was plenty of up and down hiking across piles of rock that fell from the ceiling a long, long time ago. We spent about 2 hours in the cavern, going all the way to its end about 1200 feet back. It was warm and humid inside despite the outside temperature. The heat was rejuvenating after our freezing night. The formations were beautiful, and the hike in and back out again was just the right amount of workout. There was calcite and sweet potato rock and some sort of flint-like stone whose name I've forgotten, unless that was also the sweet potato rock but with a different name. Crup? Frup? I don't know. I was more there for the experience than the science. There was flow stone and cave bacon and formations with names like The Dragon, Yogi and Boo Boo, and The Victorian Lady, all the things one expects from a good cave tour, but unlike the other caverns I've been to, in Georgetown and San Antonio, there was no built-in lighting, pathways, handrails, etc. It was just the cave, as it's been for unfathomable stretches of time.
Well, as it's been excepting the inevitable bits broken off and spirited away, or the names carved into the ancient natural wonders by spelunkers gone by. It's a fascinating aspect of humanity, how inevitable it is that where there is an amazing display of natural beauty, humans will feel the compulsive desire to leave a bit themselves upon it for others to find and take bits of it home with them for others to be jealous of. Gorgeous stalactites of translucent orange and white crystal chipped out with pickaxes. Names and dates scratched and carved into stone and written on walls and ceilings with the soot from smoking torches. Spaces that have been sculpted over incomprehensibly long swaths of time by incomprehensibly tiny and relentless drops of water, altered in an instant by all kinds of human visitors, including, incidentally, an Indian-fighting soldier from a nearby frontier fort. So many visitors, all similarly overcome by the urge to declare, "I was here!"
Maybe this blog is my "I was here too!" We did not carve our names, and we did not steal any treasures. The treasures we found there are the treasures we find wherever we go: the experience of being together. The memories we are making day by day, month by month, year by year. The history and lore and private vocabulary we create with every minute we share. I am still, now nearly 3 years after my life took a drastic turn, so grateful for what it has become instead and for who I have become instead, and to her for finding me and sharing the journey with me. It's been a joyful adventure. I can't wait to see where it takes us next.
