Hiking Into History, Sailing Into the Future
I’m 50. I remember being so proud of myself for not thinking 40 was a big deal, but 50 feels different, maybe because it’s getting harder to say I’ve got at least as much ahead of me as behind.
Not that I feel old. I think I feel younger now than I did 8 or 9 years ago, anyway. I’m healthier. I’m happier. I like myself more. I’m in a good place as a parent, as an employee, as a boyfriend, as a person.
Let’s put a pin in it.
For my birthday, Flora and I went on another state park field trip, spending the weekend visiting the towns around two nearby state parks and hiking them both so we can stick pins in them in our map of Texas State Parks. I love marking these and seeing what’s still left to visit. When we put the pins in yesterday for Palmetto and Goliad State Parks, I said, “Where next?” Without hesitation, she said, “Caddo Lake!” Yay!
If I had a similar map, or an app that worked better, I’d collect the historical markers in the same way. I’d mark them down and see where I’ve been and where I’ve still to go. But it would be a very busy map.
We stopped for lunch in Gonzalez, which is ground zero for so much of the Texas ethos. Everything in this town is named after “Come and Take It.” We ate lunch, for example, at “Come and Crepe It.” Flora was sure we’d been to this little town before, but we’ve stopped and had lunch and took pictures of historical markers at more than a few small Texas towns in the square with the county courthouse and the monument to white supremacy erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy, all around 1909 or so. They were busy in 1909, those Daughters.
I’ve said it before, I’m sure, but not all historical markers are ripping yarns. The ones about the first church of such and such denomination in such and such county are a bit dry. But when you find one in there that paints a picture for you of amputated limbs stacked up like wood, those are the treasures that make the hunt worthwhile!
I’m sure they were going to come right back for it.
Small changes over time make a big change.
Both Palmetto State Park on Saturday and Goliad State Park on Sunday weren’t the best hiking we’ve done. They’re both flat, smooth, easy trails. I like my hiking with a little up and down, something to make you work for it a bit. In its defense, though, Palmetto has the added bonus that its vegetation isn’t our usual, with dwarf palmettos and Spanish moss instead of ashe juniper and live oak that dominate the Austin landscapes. It also had swamps and extinct mud boils! The best part was the wagon wheel that had been absorbed by the tree that grew up around it. We love finding metaphors in the terrain on our hikes. What metaphor do you see in a wagon wheel inside a tree? I think this one is about stagnation. If you don’t keep moving, you’ll find yourself stuck where you are. Or maybe it’s not about the wheel, it’s about the tree, about adapting to your surroundings, about making your obstacles and traumas a part of yourself instead of a hinderance to who you thought you should have been.
It’s a good thing Flora’s a patient woman who’s in it for the journey and not for the destination, because I like to stop for roadside historical markers, too, in addition to the ones we find in town squares. Between Palmetto and Goliad, I pulled over more than a few times, once hitting the brakes hard enough to make her brace herself against the dash and suggest maybe I not do that for the next one.
Random stops along the roadside were how we serendipitously discovered THE two Gonzalez markers: those that talk about The Old Eighteen and “Come and Take It!” I wasn’t even looking for them, and there they were! Along the roadside is also where we found the story of stacked up body parts, plus the story of Hopkinsville, a community started by a formerly enslaved family who returned to the area after the Civil War. There’s also a town named after the ship on which the immigrants came over from Europe. Those are way better stories than rich people donating land to the town or the founding of churches.
Don’t make me get out my Hanging Tree.
In Goliad the town, not the state park, we found an eerily empty town square, not unlike the other town squares, with a courthouse and a Confederate monument. Scattered around the square were speakers mounted on light poles, playing music with no one around to hear it but us. It felt oddly like we were in a movie, and I half expected to see tumbleweeds blowing through. One of the songs on the speakers was “Ghostbusters,” and it played as a person pedaled by, slowly, slowly, on a bike, covered head to toe in cold weather gear such that even their face wasn’t discernable. It felt like a haunting. Flora asked me if I was going to touch the Hanging Tree, to see if I could feel the pain and tears of those who died there. I said no thank you. That’s how the horror movie starts, and next thing you know, your house is inhabited by malevolent spirits. I’m not falling for that.
There were so many stories in the historical markers in and around Goliad, from the birthplace of the Mexican general who defeated the French in the Battle of Puebla on the 5th of May, to the town named for a traveling snake oil salesman, to the hundreds of archeological sites saved from a proposed reservoir project. There are stories here that go a long way to explain that particularly Texan obsession with freedom for white property owners, that familiar commitment to armed resistance to tyranny wherever it’s perceived, if not exactly actually suffered. This is how we end up with assault rifles at protests against library story times in this weird little corner of the world. Santa Anna’s slaughter of innocents has carried a lot of water in this state over the years. Here we remember the Alamo, remember Goliad. And we keep it simple because, as always, white supremacy is a hell of a drug.
The joyful surprise that neither Flora nor I were expecting was the AirBnB at which we stayed on Saturday night. There are some among our friends and family who, upon arriving at the address of the place and finding themselves driving into what looked remarkably like a junkyard would have turned back. There are those who, upon driving slowly past the knife-wielding Michael Myers mannequin in the window of the Airstream near the entrance might have decided to find other accommodations. But not us! We soldiered on, and when we were wandering about trying to figure out which tiny house was our tiny house, Darby came out to show us around, and suddenly we found ourselves in the dreamland of a 66-year-old powerhouse.
He asked us if we could keep up with an old man, and we chuckled. Two minutes later, we realized he was serious. His mind and his mouth and his body all run at triple speed. As hard as it was to keep up, it was harder to absorb everything he was saying. It was disorienting and delightful, especially his love for his adorable pit bull Rocky, who is living his best life in this mad wonderland. I can’t do it justice, the way that Darby lovingly described his vision for this world that he is literally sculpting right out of the earth. He is reclaiming an actual wasteland and making it produce fruit and sorghum and mesquite beans that can be ground into a gluten-free flour. It’s dotted with hobbit holes and fairy houses built from architectural antiques, with a Ship of Salvaged Dreams riding the peak of a mountain of Darby’s fancy, reachable by the Bridge Over Untroubled Waters. Inexplicable pillars suddenly appear from nowhere, holding up nothing but sky.
Darby talked non-stop as he showed us his dream that he has made into an actual, physical place on the earth. He will sell you a kit to make your own tiny house. He will teach you classes on cooking. He will tell you all about the exercise video he found that, by following its program for an hour a day, has let him restart his body over again at 30, though he is 66. He told us of his broken back and other health challenges while standing up straight, bending over, and touching his nose to his knees. He spoke of the human body as an electric machine that operates best when well grounded and bare footed, while doing fingertip pushups on slabs of granite countertops scattered about like yoga mats.
I have no doubt that Darby has disciples. I have no doubt that if more people lived as he lives, the worlds problems would decrease. But his intensity was a little overwhelming. When at last I said that I was tired and cold and ready to go eat some dinner, he turned without a word, walked away into his wonderland with his dog, and we never saw him again. You owe it to yourself to check out his Tiny Texas Houses. He has big dreams, and he is executing them with energy and purpose.
OK kids, everybody wave to the serial killer!
This all used to be flat.
Come sail away, come sail away…
The Vicky Too. I don’t know if there’s a Vicky Won.
Should we be concerned?
But the best part of the trip, of course, was Flora and I enjoying each other. Driving and listening to music and talking and laughing; hiking and holding hands and talking and laughing; under covers in bed by the drafty window talking and laughing about how we’ll probably be murdered in our sleep because it’s hard to process the intensity of an encounter with a true believer without kind of dismissing it as insanity.
Flora has always called me her old man, and I’ve always laughed about it, because I am an old man. I have gray hair, and I think I’m a little deaf sometimes, and I have a tendency toward “these kids today!” kinds of rants, sometimes with more of a sense of irony than others. But also I laugh because I’m not an old man, it’s funny because clearly it’s not true. I am young at heart. My soul has not grown brittle. I love new things, and I’m active. Old man? You funny!
But now, at 50, with colonoscopy and prostate exams part of the conversation, with a knee that stands up to a good run but decides to go out after a couple of stairs, when I have two pairs of glasses and am still always squinting because I never seem to have the right ones on, I think about Darby and his finger pushups with a little twinge of jealousy, or maybe guilt. Am I doing this aging thing right? Will I be able, when I am in my 80s, to move through the world with independence, with confidence, with strength and flexibility, mentally, spiritually, and physically? I am not pursuing my dreams with the intense passion that Darby is pursuing his, but that’s OK. Sometimes I exercise. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I am creative. Sometimes I lose hours and days in a creative fugue state. Sometimes I don’t. I write, when the mood hits me. I teach myself new things, like all of the steps that go into making a podcast. I try new foods, new music, new experiences every chance I get. I connect with my son, and we talk about hard things and silly things. Sometimes we don’t. I am open and honest and vulnerable. I speak my feelings. I laugh, a lot. I am capable of surprising, and being surprised. These, I think, are the things that will keep me, as I grow old, from ever growing old.
