I’m not a professional writer and that means, among other things, that I haven't developed My Voice when I write. Often, for lack of a definite plan, I mimic the style of the latest person I’ve read. So with this post, y’all get to see me try to approach Joseph Jones' laid back Texas style from his Life on Waller Creek (1982).
I learned about this history of Austin from Dr. Kevin Anderson, currently heading up the Center for Environmental Research program at the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Plant run by the City. Yes, he deals with your shit on a daily basis. But on a monthly basis, he presents a first-rate lunchtime lecture series, which I've had the pleasure of experiencing since last May. He hauls books to every lecture, so we can touch and feel his recommendations for further edification. Alas, they are only samples to whet our appetite, so I had to wait until the good folks at the Austin Public Library put a hold on a copy just for me. (It was my first Hold request, and it felt like Christmas to see my name on the bright yellow Hold tag.)
Jones' history of Austin is punctutated with italicized sections of an unconventional, occasionally irreverent, and often meandering "Inventory" of Waller Creek. I was quickly enamoured of this storytelling technique, and knew I had to try it myself, with an Inventory of Dry Creek, a more modest Colorado River tributary a few watersheds north of Waller, passing over, in order, Shoal Creek, Taylor Sloughs South and North, and Johnson Creek.
To begin with, an "Inventory" it isn't. Not in the sense of a list made to help you assess where you stand on the availability of certain items important to you. Rather, it's a stream-of-consciousness list of things, ideas, descriptions, and impressions each separated by wide ellipses. I found myself taking those dots on the page as direction to pause and form a crisp mental image of the inventory item, or reflect on an opinion the Creek raised in Jones, and how well it has stood the test of time since the early 80s.
To create my Inventory of Dry Creek, I gave myself one hour and 100 yards along the south/east bank, within 300 yards of it emptying into Lake Austin (the current impoundment of the Colorado River at this location). The Dry Creek watershed is now firmly nestled, if one may use so genteel a word, inside Austin's urban core. Yet a good deal of it's banks have been spared development by a combination of factors, including finding itself in an affluent neighborhood with folks who desire (and have the means to fulfill their desire) for large, private yards backing up to the creek, as well as a pair of sisters who are in some level of compassionate collusion with a nearby Nature Preserve to keep Dry Creek in a more or less natural state on the land they own. It is on the sisters' land I find myself with the great fortune of living on, and being welcome to walk upon.
In alignment with Jones' overall Inventory approach, I intentionally varied the scale and subject matter of my observations and musings. I offer them up here:
A communications plaque. The plastic words on top read "Remove this part to see FCC information." Looks like someone did just that, at some point. Removed, and then put aside, discarded or forgotten. Or perhaps it was flung away from a nearby habitation out of disagreement with what the FCC had to tell them.
On this fine sunny day, an abandoned dock and empty chairs beckoned. The oak had not 'made it', as they say, most likely the work of a recent flood event. And now the surviving ligustrum is lording it over her dead self. I swept some of her leaves off the chair to have a short sit in the sun.
I sat long enough to identify the soft rustling in the cattails on the small island opposite the dock as the cafeteria plan of a tiny bird. If he was catching half as many insects as he was flushing, I’d say he was well on his way to a full belly.
Sometimes vines can tell time. This one tells me that this fishing rod has been here, undisturbed, since at least last summer. This vine also tells a tale of local fish mouths that are whole and un-ripped.
The layers of our garbage are so old that they already appear to be uncovering from in between rock layers.
While just a few feet above those rusty carcasses, the newest layer has arrived, spring-like, in a blaze of royal purple. Such treatment of the poor personal trampoline speaks to the growing obesity of our citizens, perhaps? I doubt anyone will go bouncing into Graceland on that.
Though what have we here? Just across the creek, someone is making a more vigorous specimen bounce them into the water. A vigorous bounce likely to produce a state of grace, I’m sure. How I’d love to be invited to experience that grace, in warmer times ahead.
As I turn to proceed along my 100 yards, I flush a king fisher further downstream. I’d like to think it’s the same, or kin to, the one I’ve seen the last five years here.
Oh joy. Oh agony. The source of cedar fever is beautiful until you know what you’re looking at. What the reader can't see is the wad of tissues in my pockets - one pocket of fresh, the other of used. And the frequent snotty interruptions to my observing, picture taking, and writing.
I’ve lived here for five years and this is the first time I’ve seen one of these chairs move an inch. Since one has decided, or has had it decided for him, to do a 180 and rudely face away from the creek, I must sit, and see what new view it provides.
Oh my, is that an Escarpment black cherry? It’s top half, with its brilliant white bark, speaks to that lineage at first. And it appears to have been grafted rather inexpertly onto a dark, rough oak trunk. A rude half breed? Before I submit an embarrassing iNaturalist Observation, a more careful analysis reveals it's all oak. (But still, that rough beast of an interruption in growth is startling.)
A particularly violent sneeze hijacks me (and the 'used' pocket gets more crowded). It also flushed three ducks who complained just as loudly back to me.
Souvenirs from the essentials of life: water, water with, I'm sure, essential electrolytes added, oil, a celebration of motherhood (the balloon reads "Happy Mother's Day"), and footwear from the goddess Nike.
I reached the end of my allotted yardage at this cedar which had decided to trinitize itself early in life. Three roads diverged in this wood, but there was a farm house near, and it was time for me to turn back.
And so ends this inaugural Inventory. Perhaps you'll find some use, or at least entertainment, out of it.
