Spring at ERock

What an incredible season to live in the Texas Hill Country! Lady Bird Johnson’s gift of wildflowers is abundant everywhere here. There were days we hardly recognized we were in Texas; all the rain made for misty views on rolling green hills as we walked the peaks of granite. And every week some new plant or animal showed up. Spring is such a dynamic season of new growth and new life after the resting period of winter.

Strangely, we find ourselves in a waiting period at the end of this planned visit to Enchanted Rock. In fact, though we laid out and started this website in early March, we were hesitant to roll out news about us in the midst of the startling news about the Coronavirus pandemic. It just seemed out of sync. So we put it on hold. And our plans seem to have followed suit. As Texas slowly rolled out closures in mid-March, Becker Vineyards shut down their tasting rooms putting Khara out of work, and then Enchanted Rock even closed to the public for all of two weeks at the start of April, reopening eventually for limited day use. Our plans to head to Colorado for the summer tourist season have gradually been postponed due to so many uncertainties.

Fortunately for us, the ranger staff at the park was able to extend our stay here. So we have been laying low in the beauty of nature. Khara’s brother Zach, made it back from New Zealand on the last flight at the end of March and came to stay with us until his own future plans become clear. We three have been putting in extra service hours in the park to make improvements during closures and lighter attendance. With so many unknowns, it feels good to have concrete, productive work to do here: tree stump grinding and hole filling, deep cleaning, conducting inventories, painting fire rings and so much mowing, pruning and weeding to make community areas clear and safe. For a short time, the park staff and hosts enjoyed the park privately. Without visits from the public, the wildlife grew more comfortable and nature spread out and took over. On hikes (and trails runs for those of us with such inclination), we spotted tadpoles in creeks, snake tracks on the trail, families of wild pigs with piglets in tow, turkey vultures riding thermals off the rock, and so many happy butterflies and birds. Cactus, trees and wildflowers bloomed in waves and the ecosystems of vernal pools on top of the domes grew explosively fast. Short drives to Llano or Fredericksburg laid out all the blankets of wildflowers for us.

We have also taken this time to reconnect with friends and family through phone calls (What? People still do that?!), texts, FaceTime, Marco Polo, and Zoom etc. It is an interesting pattern to witness, how during troubling times for humanity, we reach out to humans we care about, even those we haven’t spoken to in some time. Though separated physically from some of the spiritual communities we visited regularly in Austin, we suddenly got to enjoy meeting with them virtually.