For Wilshire Baptist Church
A trip to the Texas Hill Country last week was sort of a Plan B for us. Every fall for the past few years we’ve visited a national park, but with COVID-19 putting a damper on flying to distant parks on our short list, and a nine-hour drive to Texas’ two national parks too time consuming, we settled on state parks a few hours away. The result was anything but settling, and not so much a Plan B after all.
We started at Lost Maples State Natural Area, a park neither of us had visited or heard much about. We were intrigued by the prospect of hiking and seeing fall colors, and our timing couldn’t have been better. The stands of bigtooth maples for which the park is named were aflame in red, yellow and orange, along with red oaks and even large clumps of scarlet poison oak. Hiking the valleys took us under thick canopies of color, while climbing to the top of high ridges provided views of lush valleys of green hardwoods and cedars surrounding the blazing maples.
It was a proverbial feast for the eyes, and thinking about it now, I’m reminded of a quote from Irish poet and songwriter Van Morrison, who speaks of “going up the Castlereagh hills and the cregagh glens in summer, and coming back to Hyndford Street, feeling wondrous and all lit up inside with a sense of everlasting life.”
We spent the next day at Garner State Park on the Frio River, which for me brought back a flood of childhood memories. I had been there just once before, in 1970 on a rare family camping trip, so there was no jumbling of recollections with other trips. The hiking here was different from Lost Maples: riverside meanders around and over massive limestone boulders and giant bald cypress trees. Tattered rope swings dangling over the clear blue-green river brought back memories of swinging out over that water in a mixture of terror and delight while mothers in stretch pants and beehive hair shouted cautions to their children. Stepping on stones across the rushing river to an island, I recalled sitting in the chilly froth on a hot summer day. Watching the crystal-clear water tumble down a natural stairstep of white rock reminded me of a photo my father took of my sister standing knee deep in that spot, eyes wide with the wonder of it all. We didn’t know then that it would be her last summer with us.
An unexpected blessing in both parks was that we had no cell signals. That meant no election news, no COVID news, no texts or emails from family, friends or solicitors for car warranties and insurance. We were forced to be in the moment and drink in everything we saw with our senses, using our phones only to record a few new memories – whether it was standing inside the hollow trunk of a cypress tree or watching a fawn walk nonchalantly across our path.
It also was a blessing to recall a time when I was oblivious to politics, health, age or work and was just living the one little life that I had been given. I needed a return to that perspective. I needed time away from our over-hyped man-made drama and turmoil. I needed strong, unmistakable reminders that God is still in charge no matter what we do or think we’re doing to control things. I needed to be reminded that God’s world is greater than we can grasp and bigger than we can control.
On the way home Sunday morning, we sat at a picnic table on a beach at Lake Granbury and joined our Epiphany class on Zoom. We were grateful then for the technology that allowed that opportunity, but the ducks, geese and coots squawking on the water nearby reminded us that as smart as we think we are, we’re still beholden to the creator who makes all things possible.