Water Wilderness

Well, hello there ....

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:54:00 +0000

I just noticed that it's been two years, to the day, since I posted on this blog. That seems like an awfully long time.

It's been a busy two years, and the theme has been change -- professional, personal, geographic. Maybe I'll write about some of that here.

I'll think about it; consider which stories I want to tell. There are some doozies, from the past 24 months.

In the meantime ... howdy.

Old Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:52:00 +0000

It's been a friendly week. Monday, an old college buddy arrived from South Africa, via Minneapolis, with her husband and as-yet-unborn son. That of course occassioned a mini-reunion of the UD Class of '91.

And even though not all of our lives have been unalloyed joy over the past nearly two decades, reconnecting was.

Wednesday, I drove to Austin and spent time with Patrick, and my sister, and met Jesse Sublett for coffee and Jon Dee for music; at the Continental Club I ran into more old friends.

Last night, Danny Paschall and his lovely partner Lindsey landed on our doorstep and we all drove down to Greenville for a Bob Schneider show, where we hung out with yet more old friends.

"Old," is, of course, relative. I've known Angela since 1972, and I'm so proud to call her a friend today. Carrie and I enjoyed (and I do mean enjoyed) our first date in 1984. Danny and I have adventured together in nearly a dozen different countries over the past ... gosh, 14 years now? We still can sit and talk until 5 a.m.

I've known Shannon and Il Duplicates more than half my life.

Other friends are of more recent vintage, but I have a feeling they'll stick: Sweet, stylish, smart Molly, for instance. She soldiered through the Jon Dee show Wed. and will be our houseguest next weekend. And Hermann, and not just because he's part and parcel of the Shannon experience.

One thing I've learned over the past four decades is that true friendship takes time, and it takes work, and because of that I've grown ever more discriminating in whom I attempt that with.

It might just be laziness.

But old friends, the ones with whom a connection -- 20 years or two years in the making -- is true and strong, make that work a pleasure.

And for that, today, I'm very grateful.

William Butler Yeats wrote this:

Though you are in your shining days,
Voices among the crowd
And new friends busy with your praise,
Be not unkind or proud,
But think about old friends the most:
Time's bitter flood will rise,
Your beauty perish and be lost
For all eyes but these eyes.

Pea-Eye, If you'll be my Mayberry, I'll be your Huckleberry

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:51:00 +0000

Patrick wasn’t really sure he wanted to go to Port Isabel to begin with; it was the seven-hour (from Austin) drive that gave him pause. It’s a long time for a 10-year-old to sit in a truck.

On the way home last night, he still thought it took far too long to drive to the southern tip of Texas but had decided it’s worth doing.

I agree.

Rockport, my hometown, has been my favorite place all my adult life. I called it “Mayberry-by-the-Sea.” Partly it’s the memories of a pretty good childhood there. Partly it’s the dozens of family members who still live there. Partly it’s the fishing.

Used to be, I’d make a trip at least once a month. Sometimes more often than that. Since last October, I’ve been home just three times. But in the same time I’ve made that seven-hour drive to Port Isabel five times.

Not as well-known as South Padre Island, its sister city across the causeway, Port Isabel maintains the charm and small-town friendliness I remember from 1980-era Rockport. With a population just under 6,000, it’s big enough to offer modern conveniences and small enough to easily navigate and meet the same people over and over again.

And the fishing can be phenomenal.

This weekend, Patrick out-fished both me and his Uncle John about five-to-one. He landed 18 fish of three different species and had a ball doing it. Our fishing guide Saturday, Capt. Carlos Garcia, has kids of his own the same age, and he was a patient and engaging teacher.

It was all about fun – feisty mangrove snapper, acrobatic ladyfish and hard-pulling jacks – and the promise of snook.

Port Isabel is ground zero for the Lower Laguna Madre’s burgeoning snook population. Anglers from around the world build multi-thousand dollar itineraries around the legendary game fish in South Florida, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Belize.

And despite the fact the Texas record for common snook is a couple of pounds heavier than the world record for the same species, robalo are not much more than a footnote for most Texas anglers.

My brother, John, jokes that it is all just a vast conspiracy; he has yet to see his first big snook for himself. That didn’t change over the weekend, when 30mph winds turned the bay to chocolate milk and made fishing a bit tougher than usual. But we’ll make a believer of him yet; snook are just now moving out of the refuge of the Brownsville Ship Channel and out into the shallow waters of South Bay, Mexiquita Flats and other areas heavy on structure and bait.

A big linesider would have just been lagniappe this trip, anyhow. My son wants to be a battlefield archeologist when he grows up. Fortunately for him, my friend Rod Bates of Rio Bravo Gallery is a passionate and expert chronicler of the Port Isabel area’s rich history.

He told us the story of the 9-mile running battle between Union and Confederate soldiers that resulted in a victory for the South, 149 years ago and more than a month after Gen. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

Then he presented Patrick with Minie balls and uniform buttons from the battlefield – items Rod discovered on private land the battle crossed. Rod dug deeper into his collection and into history and found a couple of musket balls – one had obviously impacted someone or something – from the nearby Palo Alto Battlefield.

Palo Alto was the first major engagement of the Mexican-American War. You know, the one that gave the United States New Mexico and Arizona and California, as well as settled lingering border issues from the Texas Revolution a dozen years earlier.

From even farther back in time, he produced a silver coin from a 1554 shipwreck on Padre Island. Three Spanish treasure ships went aground in a violent storm then.

It was the last year of Charles I of Spain (he was Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire), and the coin bears his coat-of-arms and personal motto: “Plus Ultra.” – further beyond. Charles ruled much of Europe at the time, and the motto suggests a sort of transcendence and wide-armed embrace of, well, everything.

Which brings me back to Port Isabel. Looking for the best Gulf beaches in Texas? They’re right there – just a couple of miles over the causeway.

Want to tangle with a tarpon or battle a snook? For the next six or seven months, they’ll be everywhere around the town.

If history is your thing, or birds and butterflies, or antiquing or the best blackened fish tacos you’re likely to taste, Port Isabel has all of that.

It’s a town with a lot of character, and a lot of characters, too. Sort of like Andy Griffith’s fictional Mayberry. Only, by the sea.

Fear of Falling

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 07:08:00 +0000

It’s not so much that I’m afraid of flying; I’m afraid of falling, rapidly, from a very great height.

It hasn’t always been that way. I love airplanes. As a young boy, I spent hours pouring over books about aircraft –Spitfires and Mustangs, Sopwiths and Electras. I thrilled to the Blue Angels at the annual air show in Corpus Christi.

And later, after those first nervous, tentative steps skyward, I remember the sheer joy of swooping through the skies with cousin John in his Mooney; the excitement of taking the controls of a Bell Jet Ranger bound for a super tanker anchored in the Gulf; the ease of those first hops on Southwest Airlines, and the fun David Robertson and I had cadging maintenance test flights off PHI pilots at the Aransas County Airport.

Youngsters just don’t know any better.

Later, after college, I took a part-time job with US Airways just so I could avail myself of the company’s generous travel benefits. For more than a year I made the D.C.-Austin roundtrip on an almost weekly basis, often in first class. Air travel was a mundane, unremarkable part of my life.

Somewhere along the way, something changed. It could have been the commuter flight from Chicago to La Crosse, Wisconsin in a blizzard. We circled and circled in the blinding snowstorm; laughably, the pilot told us we had an air traffic delay. Really, he was just dumping fuel. I could see the flashing blue and red of emergency vehicles lining the runway, and I remember feeling very calm, and slightly disgusted, that I was going to die with a bunch of very large, very white Wisconsinites all wearing polyester and barfing into little bags.

Or maybe it started with that engine fire on the ramp at McGuire AFB. A mechanic had left the oil fill cap off the number four engine of the C-141 we were taking to Germany. We left on the same plane the next morning.

In Bosnia, on a UH-60 Blackhawk with the Sergeant Major of the Army, we circled and marked an undeclared Serb surface-to-air radar site and lost an engine. It was a long, careful glide back to Tuzla Air Base.

On another trip to Bosnia, we lost the number two engine on a C-130H Hercules somewhere over the Czech Republic, forcing a return to Germany. When we finally did make it into Bosnian airspace that trip, the combat descent (think: falling, precipitously, from a very great height) was terrifying. A captain from Maryland suffered a ruptured dental abscess on the way down and was escorted sobbing from the aircraft.

Later, on a return flight from Ecuador to Howard AFB in Panama, the sturdy little C-27 “Spartan” in which I was the only passenger lost an engine high over the mountains of a particularly unfriendly portion of Columbia. On another flight, hopping back to Texas from Honduras aboard a C-23 Sherpa, an airliner smeared itself across the only runway at Phillip S.W. Goldson International Airport near Belize City minutes before we were to land. It was our mid-point fuel stop, and that was a problem: military aircraft can’t just put down at the nearest airstrip without causing a diplomatic hoo-ha.

Then there was the American Airlines flight from Austin to Miami, on the way back down to Panama. Somewhere over the swamps of southwestern Louisiana, we heard a sharp bang* from the rear of the plane. Suddenly the aircraft – an MD-80, or perhaps an MD-90 – began see-sawing through the air in the same way a boat would roll in heavy seas. Then the cabin suddenly depressurized and the masks dropped.

“Don’t worry,” I told the terrified spring breaker on my left, “I’m sure they’ll get us back down in one piece.” And they did, in New Orleans, and then tried to put me back on the same plane later that night. I declined.

Returning from that same trip aboard a brand-new Airbus A-300 which had just gone into service with American, in blue skies over the Caribbean, we suddenly dropped hundreds – perhaps even thousands -- of feet in just a few seconds. Food service carts hovered in the air. Unbuckled passengers and flight attendants shot to the ceiling. The pretty perfume buyer seated next to me dug her French-manicure into my left arm. It’s a phenomenon called “clear air turbulence,” and typically is caused by vertical wind shear.

It’s scary as hell, but somehow better with a pretty, tri-lingual brunette clinging to your arm.

Once, near Patuca, Ecuador, I volunteered for a flight into the disputed zone between Ecuador and Peru. It was Brazil’s turn to take the aviation part of the peacekeeping mission that year, and we flew aboard the $4 million version of the UH-60 Blackhawk. It was like the base model of a mid-sized SUV. Where I was used to seeing GPS and myriad other electronics, there were huge blank spaces in the cockpit dash.

We got weathered-in somewhere in the foothills of the Andes; it was the rainy season, and feathery cascades poured off the cliff faces and peaks around us as clouds enveloped the aircraft. The Brazilian pilot held the helicopter in a hover over a jungle river and waited for visibility to improve. As he did, I carefully watched the twin row of LEDs that indicated fuel levels blink down to almost nothing. But I did see a flock of macaws below us. That was cool.

I’ve taken steps to overcome what I know is an irrational fear of falling when I’m supposed to be flying. Despite frequent propulsion issues, I’ve always been more comfortable on military flights because I typically knew or got to meet the crews, even hang-out in the cockpit or at least listen-in to the chatter. When I discovered that United Airlines actually offered a channel with pilot-tower comms on their complimentary headsets, I jumped at the chance.

I remember well the day we took off from the airport in Boise, Idaho; a pall of dirty brown hung all around the city (fields were burning), and the 737 had to make a particularly steep climb to get over the mountains. In my cushioned headphones, I suddenly heard the TCAS (Traffic and Collision Avoidance System) alarm go off. I was familiar with the computer voice from military flights. The pilot queried air traffic control. ATC insisted the plane was fine and there was nothing in our way. The captain, though, wasn’t taking any chances, and stood that big jet on its wing. It was an exciting moment.

Look, I know the stats: only a one in 10 million chance of dying in an airline crash; five times as many people die in boating accidents, and the risk of travel by automobile is something like 20 times greater. And, indeed: I think many aircraft are beautiful; form follows function, and anything that harnesses lift in the atmosphere (planes, sails, windmills) is likely to be pretty to my eyes. And I still fly, because sometimes it’s the only way to get where I want to go.

But I don’t often fly sober.

*My boss at the time, USAF Maj. Gen. Danny James III, an experienced military and civil aviator, told me that was the sound of the “yaw damper” going out, and the cabin depressurization was unrelated. To see what the yaw damper is supposed to prevent, go here.

At a loss for words

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 21:36:00 +0000

For a little more than a month now, I've tried to find the words to close-out my Ike reportage. They won't come. I've even tried to arrange my thoughts in verse; the rhyme and meter didn't work out either (everyone breathe a sigh of relief).

Today, more than two months after the storm, the Laura Recovery Center still lists the names of 53 people believed to be missing as a result of Hurricane Ike. The Houston Chronicle's list runs to 144 names.

With the exception, no doubt, of the people who lost their loved ones or their homes, the rest of the world has moved-on. Me too, sort of.

Beginning Sept. 11, I drove east three times and spent 16 days in Chambers and Galveston Counties. One of the game wardens there told me, the day after the storm, that an event like that restored his faith in humanity.

"If you're any kind of cop long enough," said 22-year-veteran Bobby Jobes, "you get pretty cynical. Something like this brings out the best and the worst in people, but mostly the best."

True, that. But it also takes a toll on everyone.

For me, part of the process of moving on has been making-up with my old friend, the Texas Gulf Coast -- that magical meeting of sea and sand and sky that has, for almost four decades, been my playground and workplace and chapel.

A week after my last trip to Chambers County, I took a few days off and went fishing at the other end of the Texas coast. In Port Isabel and in South Padre Island, blue tarps still covered the roofs of businesses and homes. Sunken fishing boats and yachts lined canals and bulkheads.

Workers, locals told me, disappeared after Ike hit -- heading north for more lucrative and long-lasting work. Dolly and Ike were the bookends of the 2008 huricane season in Texas. Between the two are volumes of hope and heartbreak, resilience and self-reliance and despair and destruction.

That trip to Port Isabel restored something for me; hanging out with friends old and new, catching fish and just making peace with the raw edge of Texas. It was good.

More on that in a bit, but -- for a while at least, maybe a long while -- I think I'm done talking about hurricanes. My hastily-created Ike photo site got something like 75,000 page views. Many readers wrote comments or sent me e-mails in response to my blog posts. Thanks for that.

Stick around, and maybe we can have a conversation about the happier side of this water wilderness.

[Fly fishing photo by Erich Schlegel.]

After Ike: Tuesday, Sept. 16

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 17:48:00 +0000

The CH-47 Chinook has been canceled. Instead, game wardens are driving in to Crystal Beach across the one, cracked lane remaining at the Hwy. 87 bridge across Rollover Pass.

We check-in with Capt. Audie Nelson, who is manning the TPWD command post at a bay-side boat ramp. I’ve launched here before, to fish the rich shoreline of Big Bayou and the Sunoco Lakes across the Intracoastal.

Airboats have run all the way down to Port Bolivar and game wardens are methodically searching for survivors house-to-house in the canal subdivisions. Elsewhere, other game wardens are fanning-out on ATV’s, checking the homes that can be reached from the muddy, debris-strewn streets.

Earl clears the slab of a home to create a make-shift helipad. Game Warden Pilot Captain Lee Finch is inbound with TPWD Deputy Executive Director Scott Boruff.

We get word that an airboat crew has found someone who wants out. We wait. After about 30 minutes, the journalists with me are getting restless, so we move on.

It will be a strange, wrenching day.

Near the center of Crystal Beach we see four people walking slowly across the sand-choked highway. Houston Chronicle writer Shannon Tompkins recognizes his friends of 40 years, Tim and Laura Wolfford. With their two teenage sons, Tim and Laura have come across the bay by boat to check on their Gulf-side home.

In their hands they carry a couple of deer antlers, an alligator skull, the jaws of a 450-lb. bull shark Tim caught 20 years before and a white, 5-gallon bucket. In the bucket is the couple’s wedding photo. Altogether, it is less than eight handfuls of stuff, and it is everything – save what they packed for a hasty evacuation to Conroe – that they now own.

Some of the folks who had homes on Bolivar used them as weekend or summer retreats. They’ve lost some possessions and face the monumental chore of cleaning up and rebuilding, or not.

The restaurant where Laura worked is now a pile of splintered lumber. The Chambers County hunting lodge that employed Tim is gone. The couple couldn’t afford flood insurance on the house they built. All they have now is each other, and, as tears stream down Laura’s face, her two strong sons support her on either side.

Shannon is overcome; he can’t find the words to even comment on what has happened to his friends. And, for the first time in this long week, I look away and choke back tears. This scene, I think, will replay hundreds of times in the coming days. It’s just too much.

The Wolfford’s, who will need so much in the weeks ahead, decline anything from us. They won’t even accept a ride back to the waiting boat.

Across the street from the Bolivar Yacht Basin, we see yet another cow lying beside the road. Dead cows are everywhere, but this one lifts its head and struggles – unsuccessfully – to stand as we approach.

The animal is dehydrated and, we learn, has a broken pelvis. Shannon grabs bottles of water and pours them over the heifer’s mud-caked eyes. I try to get some down her throat.

An Associated Press videographer is capturing all of this and I feel like an idiot. A gun is what we really need, but I can’t raise any of the game wardens on my borrowed radio.

A little farther on we run across Norbert Kurtz and his springer puppy, Lucy. The lanky 50-something can’t stop smiling, and his sunny disposition amidst all the destruction almost defies belief.

“I prayed. I prayed hard all night,” Kurtz tells us. “I said: ‘God, if you’ll just let me survive this, I won’t complain about anything else that happens.’”

Like the fact that his two bait houses are demolished and he lost his old dog, his best dog, to the storm.

Kurtz lives two houses down from the weekend retreat built my friend Brandon’s grandfather. The stairs are gone and electrical lines dangle from the underside of the house. The sink where I once filleted a 25-inch trout is tilted at a crazy angle, but still there. So is the house. Paw-Paw was an ornery old cuss, but he built well.

Down the road we run across a convoy of Humvees led by 26-year-old Staff Sgt. Charles Boxley. The Texas Army National Guard soldiers – many of them wearing right-shoulder unit patches signifying service in combat – are delivering MREs and water to anyone who needs it. Sometimes, if they see signs of survivors camping out, they just drop of a case of food and a case of bottled water.

A combat medic travels with the soldiers, ready to render aid. And – strikingly – these lean, hard young men approach each of Ike’s victims with soft voices and evident compassion. It’s the third day after the storm, and many of the Bolivar residents who stayed and survived are still shell-shocked.

Maybe the young soldiers recognize PTSD when they see it. Maybe they’re just good guys with good hearts. Whatever is behind it, the respect and empathy they demonstrate must be at least as valuable as the food and drink they are carrying, I think.

By now we’re all so numbed by the improbable destruction around us, nothing much surprises. The emu hunting for food in a roadside ditch elicits a glance and a shrug. The skull peering mutely up from a grave the storm waters have pried open: shrug. The skittish, thirsty dog? Well, we can do something about that.

Shannon, who often says he likes most animals better than most people, fills a plastic dish with clean drinking water and leaves it for the dog.

We drive off the peninsula as dusk descends. Back at the sheriff’s office, Earl and I compare notes. He got his truck stuck near the Rollover Pass bridge, but got to fly with Lee and shoot some aerials.

Game Wardens Bobby Jobes and John Feist rescued a Los Angeles Times team who had gotten stuck in deep sand, and ended up part of their story.

Tomorrow, game wardens will lead animal rescuers in to collect abandoned pets. They’ll also help remove the lion and tiger that have caused such a stir.

Shackles, the lion that weathered the storm inside a church (along with eight or nine humans), loads up into a cage like a good bird dog. The muddy tiger, which has been having a very bad week, has to be tranquilized.

But all of that is tomorrow, and by the time the sun comes up tomorrow I’ll be home in Austin.

The $1.33 Billion Question

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:54:00 +0000

What is the value of one life? I found myself thinking about that when I returned from areas of Southeast Texas devastated by Hurricane Ike. It was about the same time the odds turned in favor of the house in what some commentators have called “casino capitalism.”

Because of the economic meltdown, news of the storm and the search for its victims was swept to the back pages of the national dailies and disappeared almost entirely from television. At the time, there were still more than 400 people reported missing.

In its place, headlines like this: “Wall Street Woes take Shine off Lavish NY Lifestyles” (Reuters). To be fair, Ike was still in the news, but a Google news search for Sept. 15-17 returns more than twice as many stories containing the phrase “Wall Street” than the phrase “Hurricane Ike.”

And the disparity has only grown over the past few weeks.

Among other things, “news” is about capturing the largest possible audience, because larger audiences mean more advertising revenue. Of course this serves other purposes – newspapers and television stations want to report news their readers and viewers care about, that is relevant to them. But the end result is the same.

So, I get that: most Americans care more about stocks and bonds and market liquidity and the mortgage crisis than they do about a natural disaster in one corner of distant Texas. The bottom line, for many, is the bottom line.

So, in financial terms, what is the value of one life? I found an interesting article in the New York Times, in which one Chicago economist placed an average value of $4 million on each life. That figure represents lost earnings, pain and suffering, lost experiences and more.

If we use $4 million as an average, four Southeast Texas counties currently have a collective $1.33 billion problem. It’s not a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street, and it’s not the $10 billion or so the United States spends on the war in Iraq each month, but it ain’t chump change, either.

On Bolivar Peninsula alone, more than 50 people are still unaccounted for. That’s more than one percent of the peninsula’s entire population. In the small towns of the Peninsula – Gilchrist, Caplen, Crystal Beach, Port Bolivar – a substantially greater percentage of each town’s population is simply gone.

Everyone who lived there knows someone who no longer does.

Of course, some of the currently-unaccounted for will turn up safe, if not entirely well, in distant cities or in hospitals or care facilities across Texas. But it’s a safe bet that many – a majority, even -- of the 333 people currently listed as missing after Hurricane Ike are dead.

This weekend in Chambers County, deputies, Texas game wardens, members of the Texas Task Force 1 search team and dogs trained in human remains detection will make a major push to try to begin answering that $1.33 billion question.

I’ll be there, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be thinking of the losses in economic terms. Neither will the people sifting through the rubble that once was Gilchrest and Crystal Beach and Caplen.

More likely we’ll all be thinking about the anguished mothers, fathers, children and other loved ones of those still missing, hoping for an answer to where they are now, even if that answer is not the one they most want to receive.

After Ike: Monday, Sept.15

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:42:00 +0000

It’s Monday, and we’re back on State Highway 124, this time with eight air boats and 17 game wardens. Medics and volunteer firefighters from Gilchrist and Crystal Beach also are on hand.

We’ve inched a bit closer to High Island as the storm surge recedes, but the bridge is still miles away.

Yesterday, Game Wardens Hector Gonzalez and Shane Detwiler rescued a man from the remains of a house on the peninsula; his skin was covered in chemical burns from the pollutants in the water, they said. They whisked him by air boat to an ambulance waiting at our staging area.

Bolivar Peninsula actually is part of Galveston County, and several Galveston County deputies have arrived with trailer loads of bottled water and meals-ready-to-eat. They help game wardens load the supplies onto air boats.

Thanks to several local reporters who camped out at the staging area the day before, the story of Bolivar’s annihilation has gotten out, and representatives from the Associated Press, USA Today, the New York Times, the San Antonio Express-News, CNN, the German Press Agency, the Beaumont Enterprise and more are arriving hourly.

Game Warden Bobby Jobes asks me if I’ll be riding with him again; I decline, thinking I will be more useful at the staging area. What I don’t say is that I feel uncomfortably bloated with destruction. Sadly, it’s a familiar feeling … from Bosnia, and from Mitch and Allison and Charley.

Embedlam

The Governor’s Press Office Saturday issued an edict that media would not be allowed to take seats on any state-operated boats, though they could accompany rescuers in other vehicles. If this stands, reporters will largely miss the entire unfolding story here.

I call back to TPWD’s Austin headquarters, and make the case for allowing reporters to embed with game wardens when operationally feasible. TPWD’s communications division director makes a gutsy call: subject to the on-site commander’s approval, go for it.

“Operationally feasible” means only if there is room and the journalists’ presence won’t negatively impact the mission. In addition to actively searching for survivors who need a way off Bolivar, game wardens are delivering food and water and ferrying medics and linemen and engineers who need to survey the damage to infrastructure.

Practically speaking, this means I have many more journalists to put on airboats than I have airboats to put them on. I begin a list: it will be first-come, first-served. The New York Times arrives on-scene after the San Antonio Express-News.

The Express-News gets a seat first. The Associated Press (eventually I’ll have five journalists -- print and broadcast -- from the AP on-hand) arrives after almost everyone else, an oversight at the bureau, one reporter tells me.

So, the AP, with perhaps the largest audience of anyone, gets tacked-on near the bottom of the list. It’s not an easy decision. I reason that, first, it’s a fair way to do things. Second, a great many residents of Bolivar and the surrounding area who are displaced are getting their news from local television and news media.

I am happily surprised when I get some help from the reporters themselves. Robert Crowe, from the San Antonio Express-News, gives up his seat for a Beaumont Enterprise reporter.

“This is their back yard,” he says. “My photographer is already out there … I can wait.”

In fact, all of the journalists are a good deal more patient and flexible than I would have expected. And let me tell you, I appreciate it.

It doesn’t occur to me that “embedded media’ might not mean the same thing to everyone on the scene. The first boat out, with KFDM-TV journalists Jennifer Heathcock and Jack Fitch, doesn’t return for hours.

I had suggested to the game wardens that they simply do their jobs, not to take detours or come back early for the reporters. They did just that, at one point dropping the reporters in Gilchrist while they continued house-to-house searches farther down the island.

“We’ll look for you on the way back,” one of the game wardens told Jack. “Better be there.”

The other reporters who get airboat rides are taken on roughly hour-long tours, which certainly gives some access they otherwise wouldn’t have had, but might not have been the best use of a game warden or an airboat.

It’s not what I intended, which was for one or two reporters to accompany each boat as it refuels and goes back out – if there is room. I mentally kick myself for not carefully explaining this scenario to the game wardens in charge and getting their buy-in at the beginning of the day.

I have two, seemingly contradictory jobs here: first, to try to keep the media from interfering with the work the game wardens and other emergency responders are doing. I'm here to answer questions, take heat, run interference.

TPWD game wardens are perfectly free to arrange their own ride-alongs with reporters and talk about just about any topic within their competence, any time. They are professionals, and sometimes make my job back at headquarters seem superfluous. On the other hand, they're very busy, stressed-out professionals with a lot of other things on their minds just now.

The second job is to help the reporters get their stories. Not just because it will place the agency I work for and the people I work with in a favorable light, but because there are thousands of people out there who are depending on these journalists for information about their homes and loved ones.

And, for better or worse, often it is true that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. This is true even, or maybe especially, for large-scale calamities like hurricanes. Policy makers and the people who allocate assets don't necessarily have an inside line to heavily impacted areas ... sometimes they get their information the same way everyone else does -- from the media.

As a former newspaper reporter, I think I understand what the journalists here need and I want to help them do their jobs. Several of the reporters tell me throughout the day that I've been helpful to them. Several game wardens tell me the same. I hope it's true.

Mid-afternoon I get a text message from Austin (oddly, even when cellular voice communications are down, sometimes text messages get through … cell service is non-existent, then spotty but improving by Monday). I’ve been spotted talking about the airboat operation on News8Austin, our 24-hour Time-Warner news channel. I walk over to reporter Russell Wilde: “Man, you guys are fast!”

They Own the Road

CNN also is transmitting by satellite, and when a Department of Public Safety sergeant bulldogs his way down the staging area, telling reporters they have to move their vehicles, I tell the CNN crew to wait; they’re about 15 minutes into a 45-minute transmission.

I pull one of our game warden captains aside: “Don’t you outrank that guy? Isn’t this our operation?”

“Well, yeah,” he replies. “But it’s their road.”

State troopers – more than 100 descended on Chambers County after the storm – are either very, very helpful or oddly obstructionist. Some allow reporters through barricades as soon as they see media credentials. Others insist I come and escort a photographer through. Early in the day Sunday, on the way to the staging area, two young troopers refuse to allow a game warden truck (towing an airboat) through a barricade.

When that incident makes its way across the airwaves, Chambers County Sheriff Joe LaRive wastes no time at all making his feelings known. By the time we get to the roadblock a few minutes later, in an identical truck towing a similar airboat, the troopers move the barricade aside with alacrity. I think I saw one click his heels and salute.

A Diversion

Media Relations Field Operations Rule #31: If you can’t get the media to the story, make up a different story.

Just kidding. I didn’t make-up anything. But, talk about a way to pass the time: more than a dozen cowboys ride through our staging area and through flooded pastures (in some places actually swimming their horses) to round-up cows that have taken shelter atop a levee.

The cows are not at all inclined to get back in the putrid, salty water they have so recently escaped, but the ranch hands clearly know what they are doing and soon we have a cattle drive funneling up Highway 124 between the emergency vehicles.

TPWD Chief Photographer Earl Nottingham’s photo of the event will make the New York Times, the Austin American-Statesman and his hometown paper, the Temple Daily Telegram, among others.

Finally, an airboat returns with more people aboard than it had when it left. Hector and Shane have done it again, rescuing a couple – and six of their pets – who had taken shelter in an attic crawlspace to avoid rising floodwaters. For two days they signaled in vain to passing helicopters. The couple’s gratitude is evident in their tears, and in the hug the woman gives Shane after she steps onto the highway.

“We’re ‘top boat,’” says Gonzalez, with a grin as he throws his arm over Detwiler's shoulder and poses for a photo. It’s part good-natured jibe, part pride and part cheerful challenge to his colleagues.

At the end of the day, almost all the boats are back and the fuel trailer is nearly empty. I still have nearly 10 reporters who have not made it out to the peninsula, and I’m feeling guilty as hell.

Somehow, I think, I should have been smarter about this.

The $6 Million Question

Sometime during the afternoon a Texas Army National Guard UH-60L Blackhawk helicopter circles and then lands on the highway behind us. A few days more than seven years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, local law enforcement and emergency responders and the military still can't talk to each other over their radios.

A crew chief jogs down the road, finds a ranking game warden and asks: "Do you have a mission for us? We're flying around and we have no idea what we're supposed to be doing. Do you maybe have some grid coordinates we could search?"

Detwiler, an Army veteran who served an active duty stint in Iraq, grabs a GPS and begins reeling-off 10-digit grids for the crew chief.

Another Blackhawk comes in and hovers over the flooded pasture. The crew chief runs back to his aircraft and both helicopter take off for the peninsula.

Each UH-60L costs taxpayers about $6 million, and -- last time I checked -- more than $3,000 an hour (including flight and maintenance crew costs) to operate.

Every Guard member I met in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike showed the same initiative; they were eager to help, desperate for missions. That these highly capable soldiers were put in the air in such expensive, sophisticated machines without a clear objective is mind-boggling.

For certain at least one Blackhawk provides a vital service today. A call came in overnight requesting that game wardens check on two elderly women who had stayed through the storm with their pets on Crystal Beach.

Armed with a neighbor's address, Bobby Jobes, John Feist and Rod Ousley set-out to find them. Not only do they find them, Ousley talks them out of their wrecked home.

Then, Earl (he was a Boy Scout, it turns out) signals a passing helicopter with a cracked car sideview mirror. The women, too frail for an airboat ride back across the bay, are airlifted (with their pets) to safety.

Nicely done, gentlemen, I think to myself. Very nicely done indeed.

Gilchrist

A couple of the game warden supervisors have driven their trucks through floorboard-deep water to High Island. Even though it's late, I decide to take the remaining reporters -- the ones who didn't make it onto our airboats -- over there by truck. The alligators on the road and in the water are a hit, especially with the New York-based journalists. We make it to High Island, and after talking to a local resident there who has driven as far as the Rollover Pass bridge, decide we may be able to drive as far as Gilchrist.

Even for the reporters who have seen images of the peninsula from the air, the devastation at ground level is shocking.

We stay there, near what had been the intersection of State Highway 87 and Paisley Road, as the sun sets over Galveston Bay. Print reporters wander among the Stonehenge-like ruins of stilt homes, taking notes, and TV reporters put together quick standups to send back with their packages.

One picks up a license plate and muses that it would make a nice souvenir.

“I’d really rather we didn’t pick up anything here,” I say. “Eventually people are going to come back to what were their homes, and any little scrap that is left might be important to them.”

Driving Out

In the distance, a pair of headlights wink through the darkness. We await the approaching vehicle, knowing it must be a resident of one of the devastated towns further west. As the battered, black truck pulls up next to us, I recognize Bobby Anderson.

Immediately he is bathed, through the driver’s window, in the harsh glare of camera-mounted lights. He looks exhausted, and explains that he had rebuilt the starter on the truck – cleaning out sand and shells – and that he is hungry and thirsty. I pass three plastic cups of mandarin oranges trough the reporters, and a case of water.

Bobby tries to refuse the water, saying he doesn’t need that much. He finally takes it, saying he’ll give the extra to someone else if it’s needed.

He declines to repeat for the reporters the story he’d told me the day before in Crystal Beach, the story of his friend Sandy being swept out of the rafters of the Rancho Caribe golf shop.

Bobby does complain bitterly about a civilian search and rescue team from California that threatened to commandeer his truck, and who – he says – he witnessed breaking into sheds and utility rooms taking tools “for the rescue effort.”

“They might have started by bringing a little food and water,” he observes.

I silently wonder why I don’t have a case of MREs in the back of the truck right now.

The pillaging California rescue crew is a story I’ll hear at least three more times from different residents of the peninsula in widely scattered locations. I still don’t know if it really happened, but it seems like a profoundly bad way to conduct business. As far as I know, no one there that night – nor any other news organization – has followed-up on that story.

We pick our way through the debris under a nearly-full moon, and I am relieved to find that the water across Hwy. 124 is no higher than when we came in. Maybe a little lower, even.

After dropping the reporters at their vehicles, I follow them out through the roadblock. In Winnie, I keep going to the Interstate, thinking I’ll find an open gas station. I turn West. I’m looking for the lighted sign at J.J.’s Chevron, but of course it – like every other gas station in Chambers County – is dark at 11 p.m.

For the first time in five days, I switch the radio from KTRH-AM to a country music station, and just drive. I drive all the way to Baytown, nearly all the way to Beltway 8 in Houston, before I find an open gas station that actually has fuel. I get in line.

The store shelves inside the Texaco are stripped nearly bare, but I find a couple of packs of cigarettes – Bobby Jobes had given me one of his last packs earlier in the day – some bottled iced tea and a package of cookies.

Along the way, I call district supervisor Capt. Rod Ousley and the incoming strike team supervisor to find-out the plan for the next day (an Army Chinook helicopter, ATVs and house-to-house searches on the peninsula). I make more calls, letting the day’s media contingent know what we’ll be doing and when and where to meet.

Mostly, I just drive. I’m tired. It’s now been five days since I left Austin, and in that time I’ve managed maybe 16 hours of sleep. It’s good to know the highway is open and I can just leave if I want to.

I want to, actually, but I don’t. Not yet.

[Photos 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8 courtesy Earl Nottingham/TPWD]

Rites of Passage: Friday, Sept. 12-Sunday, Sept.14

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:02:00 +0000

7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12

The last stop of the day is at Game Warden John Feist’s house. The power is already off, and John hurriedly empties his refrigerator and freezer and grabs some essentials for what he figures will be a long couple of days camped-out at the sheriff’s office.

On the way there, a motorist tells us a homeless man is camped-out at the Army Corps of Engineers park up the road. John radios the sheriff and lets him know we’re going to get him. The Sheriff calls back: no way. Essential personnel were supposed to be back at the shelter of the office an hour ago.

The DPS troopers are hunkered-down at the county maintenance facility, and all of the deputies are in. We’re the last law enforcement vehicle on the roads, and we’re late. John is clearly torn, but as gusts buffet his truck, he clicks the radio back in place and we race for safety.

10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 13

The winds have died enough (they are still gusting to more than 40mph) for us to venture out. We stop half a dozen times to clear trees from the road. It takes us two hours to go less than 10 miles. Power lines are down everywhere.

Feist, Boatmate Scott Evans, Chief Photographer Earl Nottingham and I begin making the rounds through the parts of Chambers County we can reach, checking on people we know rode out the storm. In the Channelview neighborhood of Anahuac, entire houses have been swept from their foundations.

Wind and waves have peeled the bark from oak trees.

The storm has wrought havoc with communications. Cell phone towers are down everywhere. Radio repeaters are down. Tin cans with strings, when the string is intact, still work.

The game wardens are frustrated; before the storm, they moved their boats north to Silsbee, out of the worst of the hurricane’s projected path. They want them back. In the meantime, they cover as much ground as possible in their 4WD trucks.

Towards the end of the day, John makes it to the Corps of Engineers park. There, he finds Mr. Genesis Trinity, the man who weathered the storm in a tent atop the birding platform. He was, he told John, collecting data for NASA, and had clocked winds between 175mph and 250mph. He says he’ll ride his bicycle down to the Johnson Space Center to deliver his findings as soon as the roads are clear.

7 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 14

We awaken with a sense of purpose. Before the storm, district game warden supervisor Capt. Scott Ousley made a fallback plan in the event communications went down: meet at the Beaumont office at 8 a.m.

Overnight, Maj. Rolly Correa’s strike team has moved-in and literally set up camp in the parking lot of an old Academy store. More than 30 game wardens form five teams with boats: one to Port Arthur, which is badly flooded; one to Pleasure Island; one to Bolivar, or as close as they can get … and so on.

Earl heads-out with game wardens who have been assigned Sabine Pass. I opt to stick with the Chambers County game wardens. By mid-day, we’re launching air boats off of State Highway 124 – as close to the town of High Island as we can get.

It’s not very close; we’re still more than 6 miles from the bridge that crosses the Intracoastal.

Game Warden Bobby Jobes, a Chambers County veteran of more than two decades, runs his air boat down the flooded ditch along Hwy. 124, sometimes down the roadway itself. Debris in the canted power lines nearly 30 feet overhead show how high the water was, or at least how high the tops of the waves were.

We pull up where the highway emerges again from the water at High Island, built on a 38-foot-tall salt dome. A crowd that includes the assistant fire chief is waiting. We’re the first boat they’ve seen, they say, though the assistant chief has been in radio contact with the Emergency Operations Center in Galveston and several residents have working landlines.

The High Island residents are okay. About 120 stayed, and property losses are relatively light, especially – as we will see – compared to the rest of Bolivar Peninsula. The town’s elevation and grove of massive oak trees have shielded residents from the worst of the storm.

From High Island, we skim west along the bay-side edge of the Peninsula. All of us are shocked when we recognize Rollover Pass; the 200-odd houses that once stood there are gone. Literally, nearly completely, gone. I’ll be quoted later by the Associated Press saying that it looked like someone took a razor, and “pffft.”

I said a lot of things about the destruction I saw Sunday, but I don’t really know how to make that sound and I’m pretty sure I didn’t say that. Still, it’s an apt description of what we encountered. Only – if it was a razor – it was a dull blade indeed, and left a stubble of pilings and overturned vehicles and – in rare instances – unshaven patches where houses still stood.

We beach the boat and walk in at the places where each of the lower peninsula’s three incorporated towns stood. Gilchrist is a memory, and the post office there is just a slab. In Crystal Beach, perhaps half the homes are left standing.

Port Bolivar, the westernmost town on the Peninsula, appears to have fared better, though the water line just below the second floor of some of the homes hints at the destruction within.

In Crystal Beach, we meet Bobby Anderson, walking up what used to be State Highway 87. We ask him if he wants to leave: no, he wants to get his truck running and come out on his own. Does he need food or water? No, he’s okay for now. Anderson is a builder and owned three homes on the Peninsula. He rode out the storm near his house on Jack’s Road, and asks about Gilchrist.

I shake my head: “It’s pretty much gone,” I tell him.

Bobby then asks if we’ve seen a woman, and begins to describe her. He and his friend Sandy had climbed into the rafters of the sturdiest building they could find. As rising water came through the walls below them, an angry swell reached up and plucked them from their perch. Anderson reached for something solid, and reached for his friend. As she slipped from his grasp, he shouted for her to swim back.

“No,” I tell him. “We haven’t picked-up any women, and we haven’t heard anything about her.”

Anderson turns and walks a few steps away. I see his shoulders heave once, twice, and then he rubs his red-rimmed eyes and walks back.

A postal inspector who had hitched a ride with us walks up just then with a big grin on her face. She is, she has told us several times, having a grand time. She cheerfully asks Anderson how he’s doing.

“I was doing okay,” he says, with a forced laugh. “But then I got over it.”

We make it to Port Bolivar – more than 30 miles from our launch site – before turning back. We’ve seen a handful of survivors on the peninsula, and none have wanted to leave the wreckage of their homes. We’ve told them we’ll be back the next day with food and water.

9 p.m.

Darkness has fallen and a full moon spangles the waters of East Bay and the water over marsh and pastures, water that shouldn’t be there. It’s a beautiful night, and if not for the images of the day etched in our minds, it would be hard to believe anything was amiss.

A slideshow plays as I close my eyes:

(click) A Gilchrist Volunteer Fire Department ambulance floating in the Intracoastal.

(click) A house lodged on Goat Island, where no house has ever stood, roof intact and windows still boarded-up.

(click) Sunken boats littering the canals in Crystal Beach subdivisions.

(click) Dead animals – nutria, muskrats, rabbits, cows – floating, swollen and stinking, on the outgoing tide.

(click) An elevator cage standing between the shorn pilings that once supported a home.

(click) Bobby Anderson, grasping at a last, thin thread of hope.

What floats: Sunday, Sept. 21

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 02:22:00 +0000

Refrigerators float. Mattresses float. Walls and windows and staircases and roofs float. Boats float, of course, and so do life jackets, coolers and bottles of vegetable oil.

Shoes float; so do plastic toys. Surprisingly, televisions float. Stuffed animals, dressers, hats and mardi gras beads float. Collanders float, cows float, and armadillos and marsh rabbits and horses and snakes float.

The theory is that people will, too, and that’s why we spent the day searching a massive debris field in southern Chambers County.

Apparently no one really knows how many Bolivar residents are still missing a week after Ike. We do know that much of what was Gilchrest and a good chunk of Crystal Beach is now a splintered jumble against a treeline about 5 miles inland of East Bay’s northern shoreline.

That’s where we took the cadaver dogs today. Five teams spread out across Chambers County – some traveling by all-terrain vehicle, some by airboat, some by swamp buggy. We searched shorelines and ranches and refuge marsh.

No one has yet found a body.

Everyone agrees that doesn’t mean one or more isn’t out there; it’s just that there’s so damned much debris on the ground, and so much death stink in the air, it’s awful hard to know for sure.

But Chambers Co. Sheriff Joe LaRive – and the game wardens and deputies and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees and dog handlers – all the good people out there today, feel a certain duty to be as sure as they can possibly be.

For Bobby Anderson, who says his friend Sandy was swept out of the rafters of a Crystal Beach building at the height of the storm. For the people Game Warden Hector Gonzalez talked to who, one moment, saw a dozen people on the roof of the house next to theirs; the next moment, nothing.

This low country has a habit of keeping its secrets on a schedule all its own. Like the story I heard this morning about a skull that washed into a duck blind a couple of seasons back; turned out to be the noggin of a fellow who had disappeared a decade before.

Not finding bodies a week after the hurricane ... is that good news or is it bad news? It's awful hard to know for sure.

Don't Like Ike

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:57:00 +0000

Before Ike, before I went to Anahuac and the Bolivar Peninsula, I wrote that I actually like tropical storms. Not so much, now. The devastation I have witnessed and so many have lived in Southeast Texas is sobering.

There's nothing malicious about a hurricane: it just is. And if we did not choose to build and live and work and play at the edge of the sea, hurricanes would be benign or even beneficial events.

But, of course we do. My grandparents did. My parents did. So did I, for a time. And with good reason: in Texas, the scape where water and land and sky come together is truly magical.

I'll be posting more blog entries from Ike's aftermath as I have time. Just wanted to get that out there.

For more Ike photos and news coverage, visit http:hurricaneikebolivar.shutterfly.com.

During the Storm

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:35:00 +0000

It’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep. The wind outside the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office is a ravening beast. Rainwater is blowing beneath the door at the end of the hall, creeping across the carpet. Leaves, too.

Ike has arrived. The eye is crossing Galveston Island now, and soon we may have a few moments of calm here. Then, the storm surge will come.

We lost our T-1 Internet connection several hours ago, when the electricity went. Here, the generator kicked-on immediately. The generator across the parking lot at the courthouse – also the emergency operations center – flickered to life briefly, then died.

My wireless modem works intermittently.

Earlier, game warden Jon Feist and I stopped to see what was up with the massive truck parked at the end of the runway at the small county airport here.

Turns out a team of scientists from the University of Alabama at Huntsville picked Anahuac as a good place to observe the approaching storm with their X-Band, dual-polarized radar. Not really sure what that is, but it can see a long way and tells them quite a lot.

One of the things it told the researchers this afternoon is that the eye of this storm had shrunk from 80 miles in diameter to a mere 60 miles, and that the eastern eye wall would likely pass directly over us.

"It's looking a lot better," one of the researchers said.

"For us, you mean?" I asked.

"Oh, no," he replied sheepishly. "I mean the storm is looking more organized. That's not better for us."

Outside, leaves and branches and debris are rocketing through the air. The trees in front of the courthouse are whipping through an arc of about 45 degrees; surely they’ll snap.

I’m surprised we haven’t had more rain. There’s some, and it’s pretty much horizontal, but not the torrential downpour I was expecting to see.

Talk about the “fog of war …” I wrote earlier that 12 people were trapped on a roof over near Sabine Pass. Some still swear that was the case. Someone else said it was a couple of oilfield workers trapped in their truck on the road.

That ship 60 miles offshore? Maybe it was 100 miles offshore. Or 120. And the Coast Guard did attempt a rescue, to no avail. Or, at least that’s what I heard.

The folks here in Chambers County have been unfailingly kind and hospitable, especially notable in a time as stressful as this. It’s beautiful country around here – at least it was, Friday. I was surprised to discover how many ranches dot this marshy prairie. There are thousands and thousands of cows in this county. Or, there were.

Now? That’s anyone’s guess.

And now, Ike

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:23:00 +0000

At the Chevron Food Mart on Interstate Highway 10 East in Anahuac, four game wardens, 11 DPS troopers and a Texas Ranger converge for lunch. The manager of the Blimpie’s sandwich shop here is family, and it’s a popular mid-day stop for law enforcement officers.

Overhead, gray clouds scud by, occasionally spitting rain into a freshening breeze. The weather at this moment is unremarkable; it could be any day of the year. It is, quite literally, the calm before the storm.

On Galveston Island, waves are topping the seawall. At Sabine Pass about two hours ago, a dozen residents in a mandatory evacuation area called from a rooftop. Game wardens responded, but were blocked by high water. Winds gusting to 40mph ruled-out an airboat rescue. There may be absolutely nothing rescuers can do for those folks who waited to long to get out.

God help them.

About 60 miles offshore, a heavily-laden tanker lies helpless in the storm’s path. A Coast Guard representative said this morning it’s not certain the crew will be rescued.

The Coast Guard is evacuating residents of Bolivar Peninsula by helicopter today. Most of the people who did not evacuate yesterday or the day before woke up this morning and (wisely) second-guessed their earlier decision. The road out through High Island is impassable, and the Bolivar ferries are no longer running.

Hurricane Ike is still 165 miles southeast of Galveston, moving west-northwest at 12mph. It’s a huge storm, with hurricane-force winds extending well over 100 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds forecast for more than half the Texas coast.

With such a huge wind field, a major concern is the storm surge. Wind pushes water into a big hump that travels ahead of the storm across the ocean. Low pressure allows that water to rise higher. A waxing moon, nearly full, pulls tides higher still.

The National Weather Service is predicting all of Galveston Island will be under water by late tonight. In Port Arthur, on Sabine Lake, bay waters will overtop the seawall and cover the city to depths of three to six feet.

South of Houston, water is creeping up over the access roads on Interstate Highway 45, the Gulf Freeway. My friend Brandon, in Fort Worth, has friends in Clearlake who declined to leave even though they are in a mandatory evacuation zone. If they leave right now, they may yet make it out.

Earlier today, U.S. Rep. John Culverson said in a KTRH radio interview (listen online to the non-stop storm coverage) that the Department of Homeland Security chief of staff told him that anyone remaining on Galveston Island this evening faces “certain death.”

That’s strong language, and probably overblown, but certainly indicates the seriousness with which authorities are viewing this hurricane.

Listening-in to the twice-daily emergency management conference calls, I can tell you that I feel better knowing that Jack Colley is coordinating this effort for the State of Texas. It appears to me, now, that across-the-board, state and local agencies have prepared thoroughly and thoughtfully for this storm.

On IH-10 heading east this morning, we passed long convoys of more than 20 ambulances speeding to safety with critically ill hospital patients. It’s an effort that has been underway for several days now.

The focus – at Colley’s direction – has been on evacuating people who, for whatever reason, cannot evacuate themselves.

I’ll spend tonight at the Chambers County Sheriff’s Office in Anahuac. My guess is that there are more people in this area who should have left but did not. My guess is that the game wardens with whom I am embedded will be called to help them. My guess is they’ll go, because that’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done, since 1895.

[TPWD photo by Earl Nottingham; Game wardens near Sabine Pass, Sept. 10, 2008]

Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:20:00 +0000

I listened-in on a conference call with the National Hurricane Center early this week as the remnants of Hurricane Gustav spun lazily across northeast Texas.

The forecaster presenting the tropical weather outlook to emergency responders and government officials noted that Sept. 10 marks the peak of hurricane season.

Even without that reminder, a look at the satellite image of a swath of ocean stretching from Africa to Texas told the story: storms lined-up like MD-80s awaiting takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

Batteries. Ice. Bottled water. Gas for the generator, if you have a generator. Radio. Full tank of gas. Bathtub full of water. Candles. Easy Cheese and saltines. That's some of what you'll need if you decide to ride-out a hurricane on the central Texas coast.

My acquaintance with tropical cyclones began early; when I was a young child, Grandma had two cats, Celia and Beulah, who had shown up on her doorstep a few blocks from the bay during their namesake storms (1970 and 1967, respectively).

Aransas County schools didn't have snow days built-in to the schedule, but we did have hurricane days, and a tropical storm could trigger a closing. I remember the feeling of awe I felt the first time I watched the harbor rise and cover downtown streets, including the old H-E-B parking lot.

Hurricane Allen, which made landfall in early August of my 11th year was memorable for being a three-time Category-Five storm. It weakened before making landfall between Brownsville and Corpus Christi, but not before my father had evacuated the family to higher ground.

Whether you stay or you leave, you'll want lots of plywood. Seasoned hands keep it on-hand to avoid lines and shortages right before a storm. The plywood, by the way, will cover your windows.

Some of the costliest storms haven't been ones with big Saffir-Simpson numbers (the scale, from 1-5, categorizes storms according to sustained wind intensity with Category Five being the strongest).

I recall one storm in the 1980s that we didn't take-off for. I remember the way the sky turned green in the east and the eery stillness of the eye. And I remember boats pushed across Highway 35 and piles of shell on beachfront roads and the wreckage of piers and snakes ... lots and lots of snakes. In the bayside towns of the Texas coast, we especially watch out for rattlesnakes. The storm surge and pounding surf on the barrier islands sweeps lots of wildlife off toward the mainland.

Tropical Storm Charley was the one that introduced me to cyclones as part of my work. The storm came ashore Aug. 21 right over Rockport before hanging a left and moving across the South Texas brush country. Over Val Verde County, Charley dumped more than a year's worth of rainfall in 24 hours.

A flash flood wiped-out the oldest section of the town of Del Rio, century-old adobe homes. Some of the inhabitants were never found. I spent the second night of the storm riding a 5-ton truck, picking up people who were stranded and handing-out bottled water at local shelters. I spent the next day chronicling the experience and making sure the AP had a spot on a helicopter.

In September, I chased Frances, a strong tropical storm, from Corpus Christi to High Island.

I like to have a couple of Jimmy Buffet cassettes, or nowadays disks or mp-3s, handy in a battery-powered boombox. "Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season" is a great one, obviously. The Internet is a real boon in this regard; with enough advance notice, you can probably put together an entire album's-worth of songs that either mention the name of the upcoming cyclone or the word "hurricane."

A little more than a month later, Hurricane Mitch slammed into Honduras. The deadliest Atlantic storm since the Great Hurricane of 1780, Mitch knocked the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 out of second-place on the list of deadliest storms.

Some 12,000 people died, with almost as many reported missing. I ended-up spending Thanksgiving and Christmas in El Salvador. Mitch was only a Category One storm when it made landfall.

By 2001, I was an on-call PIO with the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and ended up working nearly a month at the FEMA disaster recovery center in northwest Houston after Tropical Storm Allison dropped as much as 40 inches of rain over southeast Texas, leaving about 70,000 homes flooded and 30,000 people without even wet homes.

Now that I'm older, of course, I also make sure to hit the liquor store well before the eve of a hurricane. There is, in fact, a long tradition of "hurricane parties." Nothing worse than being stuck in a storm sober.

Hurricane Claudette was a strong Cat-One storm which made landfall just north of Rockport in 2003. For me, it is memorable mostly because my brother drove a brand-new Aransas County Sheriff's Office patrol car through a 4-foot-deep intersection. That was the end of the car, but John's law enforcement career continued.

I remember well Hurricane Rita, the second of 2005's one-two puch. For a week Rita appeared to be drawing a bead on the Port Aransas area. I worried about how best to prepare a 12-and-a-half ton sailboat to ride-out the storm.

In the end, for the Texas Coastal Bend, Rita was simply another harbor-over-the-parking lot event. Following so closely on the heels of Hurricane Katrina, Rita prompted the complete evacuation of Corpus Christi. Even the evacuees from Louisiana, sleeping on cots in the Corpus Christi Colliseum, had to go.

I was already doing hurricane-related duty at the time, as the agency I worked for attempted to reunite children and parents who had been separated from one another in the chaos of Katrina.

Have a family emergency plan that includes a friend or relative's phone number -- someone well out of the path of the storm -- where you can call to leave messages and get information if you're separated. Make sure the kids know the number.

Recently, preparing for likely questions I'd face on a TV morning show, I scribbled-down the effects of a hurricane on the natural environment. Hurricane Dolly had just come ashore around Port Mansfield. I looked at the answer I was formulating and thought: "I'd better check that."

If you're diabetic and your insulin has to be refrigerated, you get a lot of ice, just to make sure. A camp stove and bottled fuel is another good idea; even though it will be sweltering in the wake of the storm, you may want a hot meal. You also may have to boil water.

A coastal fisheries biologist confirmed the common wisdom I'd grown up with: "We need a good storm to flush out the bay." In fact, tropical weather systems are important sources of freshwater inflow and typically are good for the environment in the long term. I think of it as our corner of the planet breathing in, breathing out.

Truly, I view the approach of tropical weather much more calmly now that I no longer have a 30-foot sailboat to worry about and now that my elderly grandparents are no longer in Rockport. I'm also a good 200 miles from the coast and 500 feet above sea level.

With much of the rest of the nation, I was stunned by the immense suffering in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Our government can do better. I've seen it do better.

I have a confession: I like tropical storms. The feeling in the pit of my stomach when the bottom drops out of the barometer. The funky sky color. The wind and rain. I even like NOAA's pictures -- the fiery shades marking rainfall and wind intensity, the serene spirals of water vapor satellite imagery. The follow-the-dots tracks.

At least the National Weather Service is on the ball. They predicted Katrina's effects and path with great accuracy, and they've been pretty close to the mark on a lot of other storms recently. Take a look at what's out there now.

[Photos courtesy NOAA, Wikimedia Commons]

Hurtin' but Happy, Jon Dee Returns to the Continental

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 23:12:00 +0000

A few people may have thought it wouldn't happen at all, at least early-on, when the grim reports first trickled in. Almost no one thought it would happen this soon.

But Wed. night, a month and two days after a car crash nearly killed Jon Dee Graham, he reclaimed his place on the stage at the Continental Club. Michael Hoinski was there for the Austin American-Statesman, and interviewed Graham before the show.

"Something Wonderful," the set opener, fixed the tone for the evening. This performance, against medical advice, would be both celebratory and therapeutic. Graham has often called the Continental Club his "home office," and frequently speaks of the Wed. night gigs as something transcendent and necessary in his life.

Jon Dee followed-up with "Big Sweet Life" before taking a break to talk to the fans who packed the room.

"There are some rumors floating around," he said. "First of all, I'm not dead ..."

It was a close thing, though. At least three broken ribs (one of which is still "flopping around in there,") cracked vertebra and a ruptured spleen. They're the kind of injuries that keep people from walking, much less pacing a stage and slinging a guitar.

"I have a new lease on life, and I intend to fix some things," Graham said. "Though you may not all like some of what I'm gonna do."

Then -- and we figured it was probably coming -- Graham launched into a song that is clearly less than 30 days old: "Anyone else would have laid down and died/Me? I'm just busted up inside," he sang about his near-death experience.

"Pharmacologically speaking, I've got about 32 minutes left," he joked with the crowd, before launching into another of his relatively new songs.

Next up, "Burning off the Cane," a smoky-sweet remembrance of his childhood on the Rio Grande, then "Not Beautifully Broken," an early 2008 debut that has quickly become an audience favorite.

Before that last song, Jon Dee turned to face his drummer, and -- hunched over -- grimaced in pain. It's doubtful that many in the audience saw it, but the weariness etched in Jon Dee's face as he called for longtime friend Jesse Sublett a few minutes later was obvious.

Graham told the audience about Sublett's daily visits since the accident. "He said, 'Man, if you need someone to spell you ...'," Graham recalled, turning to Sublett. "I need someone to spell me now."

Jon Dee was, he said, off to "chew some OxyContin." It's that kind of pain.

Turning over his gold Strat to the Skunks bassist, Graham disappeared into the Continental's green room. Sublett sang two of his own songs, followed by frequent Graham guest Ben Todd, who gave the audience a lovely, downbeat rendition of "Swept Away."

"You know, it's true that if you chew pain pills, the work a lot faster," Graham joked as he retook the stage. Next up was an extended version of the songwriter's new murder ballad, "How Do You Like Me Now?" followed by what has become Jon Dee's traditional closer, Dan Stuart's (Green on Red) "Muhammad Ali" -- a song about beating the odds, and a call for hope.

It was a short set, for Jon Dee. Short and very, very sweet. He'll be at the Saxon Pub Saturday

Music and more

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:49:00 +0000

The summer sure has flown by. Tam and I returned last week from a six-day Pacific Northwest tour, which she has written about for RoadTripAmerica.com (look for the article next weekend).

I'll post a blog about it shortly. School starts for Austin kiddos next week ... Patrick's looking forward to the 4th grade after discovering a couple of his best friends will be in his class this year.

The words around Abilene Trail this month are moths and snakes.

As many of you may know, my all-time favorite songwriter and friend Jon Dee Graham (site, MySpace) was involved in a terrible car accident at the end of July. Word is he's recovering well, if painfully, and he'll be back at the Continental Club this coming Wednesday. Come on out and show your love -- it should be a great show.

It may, however, be a different show. One of the outcomes of the accident (other than huge hospital bills and the loss of Jon Dee's Volvo -- see Greg Garrett's blog entry if you'd like to help) is that Graham had his spleen removed.

Medically, it's sort of a big deal; but the body adapts and, in fact, there's a statistically significant number of folks walking around sans spleen. My concern is what it will mean for the man's songwriting and performances:

According to Wikipedia:

In French, spleen refers to a state of pensive sadness or melancholy ... In German, the word "spleen", pronounced as in English, refers to a persisting somewhat eccentric (but not quite lunatic) idea or habit of a person .... In modern English, "to vent one's spleen" means to vent one's anger, e.g. by shouting, and can be applied to both males and females; similarly, the English term "splenetic" is used to describe a person in a foul mood.

Jon Dee Graham without a spleen ... is it the end of the hugging booth? Come to the show and find out.

If you can't make it out to the Continental Club for the comeback show, there's always the next Wednesday, and the next ... and Saturday, Aug. 31, Jon Dee will play an 11 p.m. show at the Saxon Pub.

Last night, a happy hour drink with a colleague at my favorite neighborhood bar turned into a few drinks with friends Valerie Fremin (rock photographer: MySpace) and Will T. Massey (rock star: site, MySpace).

Bonus: we got to hear porterdavis (site, MySpace). I knew Mike Meadows (site, MySpace), the band's percussionist, from his gigs with Will T., but I'd never heard the whole band together. Wow. They're really great. A whole lot of sound from a box, some bells, a mouth harp and one six-string guitar.

Catch porterdavis at Tyler Junior College, 8 p.m., Aug. 26, at Schreiner University in Kerrville, 5 p.m. Aug. 27, at Lorraine's in Marble Falls Aug. 29 (9 p.m.), at the Corner Pub in Conroe Sept. 4 (9 p.m.), at the Blues Boot Camp in Dallas Sept. 27 ... and finally, back in Austin at the Saxon Oct. 11.

Speaking of Will T. Massey, his spanking-new album, Wayward Lady, comes out Sept. 9. It's a bold return to folk music roots with political and social commentary and comes with a pretty astonishing backstory.

James McMurtry (site, MySpace) may be pissed-off by what's going on in this country, Will T. is heartbroken. Catch the CD release shows at Flipnotics (Barton Springs Rd.) Sat., Sept. 6 at 11 p.m., at the Opening Bell in Dallas Sept. 13 or Threadgill's North in Austin Friday, Sept. 19.

For you Coastal Benders reading this, you should know that Austin's favorite redhead, Idgy Vaughn (site, MySpace), is playing the Third Coast Theater in Port A tonight with Will Sexton (Sexton also plays on Will T.'s new album). Show starts at 8 p.m., tickets are $15 (and worth it, in my opinion).

Then she's on the road for a while, with a stop in Rhode Island at the Common Fence Music Concert Series in Portsmouth Sept. 27. She plays Austin next Oct. 7 at Waterloo Icehouse, and Oct. 17 at the Cactus Cafe

Speaking of the Cactus Cafe, Ari Hest (site, MySpace) will be there Tues., Sept. 2; Guy Clark (site, MySpace) with Ramblin' Jack Elliott Sept. 18; Lil' Cap'n Travis (site) on the 19th and Jimmy LaFave (site, MySpace) Sept. 27. October brings Carrie Rodriguez (site, MySpace) back home for two nights, Oct. 23 and 24. Carrie has a new album out and it's pretty terrific.

David Wilcox (he had just landed his A&M recording deal when I booked him at UD's Rathskeller back in ... oh, 1989?) (site, MySpace) will be at the Cactus Oct. 29. Wilcox is playing some protest songs these days as well. To round-out the month there, Dar Williams (site, MySpace) and Shawn Mullins (site, MySpace) will play the Cactus Oct. 30. Finally, Nov. 8, Dah-Veed Garza (site, MySpace) plays two shows at the Cactus, 7:30 and 10 p.m. Phew!

Back at the Saxon on South Lamar, Matt the Electrician (site, MySpace) continues to play the 7 p.m. show Monday nights, ahead of Bob Schneider (site, MySpace). Tuesdays are Bruce Hughes (MySpace) at 10 p.m. with some edgy, world-class funk-inspired pop. Through August, the Band of Heathens (site) have been playing the 8 p.m. show at the Saxon, ahead of Bruce. It would be cool if that continues.

Speaking of Matt, he'll be playing the eighth Wyldwood show of the season with buddy Southpaw Jones (site, MySpace). Come on out and groove and laugh under the stars in Amy and Andrew's HUGE back yard. S'mores at intermission, kids welcome (and they get in free).

In the miscellaneous category, Martin Sexton (site, MySpace) will be at the Handlebar in Greenville, SC, Oct. 15, at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta Oct. 17 and at Antone's right here in Austin Oct. 19. He'll also be at Seattle's Town Hall Oct. 25.

The Mother Truckers (site, MySpace) are still burning up the road on their Let's All go to Bed tour. I bet Josh and Teal's dog, Ajax, really misses them. They'll be back in Austin at the Continental Club Oct. 4 and at Threadgill's Oct. 25. They'll be in Portland, Ore., at Berbati's Pan Nov. 21.

Finally, check out M&S Artist Development's free happy hour shows. Mark and Sarah rep Joel Guzman and Sarah Fox (site, MySpace), No Show Ponies (site, MySpace), Shawn Nelson (site, MySpace) and more.

That should be enough to keep everyone's ears happy for a while. I'm sure I'm missing some really good stuff, but I promise the shows mentioned here don't suck!

If you're not fortunate enough to live in Austin ... if you live, say, on the Olympic Peninsula but are planning to visit Austin soon, check out some of the links and get a preview of what you might hear when you get here.

Even if you're not planning on visiting Austin anytime soon, check the artists' individual schedules; Austin musicians travel, maybe they're coming to a venue near you.

Ransomed

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 02:42:00 +0000

When I think of my brother John, one word that repeatedly comes to mind is "intrepid." He's a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy: tow a buddy's truck out of the mud? Sure. Rebuild a marine diesel transmission? Why not? Get in a meth lab operator's face and then take him to jail? Done that.

One thing I really didn't expect him to try his hand at is history. History, after all, is what our sister does with that fancy master's degree from New York University.

We're a family of amateurs, though -- amateur paleontologists, amateur marine biologists, amateur literary critics, amateur botanists and amateur rock-and-roll reporters, to name a few of our avocations.

Now my brother can add amateur historian to that list.

There is, in Redfish Bay, a crescent of sand and shell less than a mile from Hampton's Landing marina in Aransas Pass. I know it as a pretty good place to fish, especially in winter when the protected inside waters are gin-clear and trout lurk in the deep seagrass beds.

John was more interested in the old shellcrete and cement ruins on the island, many now crumbling into the bay on the seaward side. Initial explorations turned-up a treasure trove of antique bottles, many dating to the 1920s.

My brother got curious, and spent hours on the Internet, searching in vain for information about the history of the place. When he came up empty, he and his wife Stephanie trekked over to La Retama Library in Corpus Christi and started spinning microfiche.

Sure 'nuff, in the archives of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, he found scattered references to a pre-war clubhouse that was a favored party spot (and there are scads of old pint bottles out there), city park plans that never materialized and fleeting hints of folks who actually lived there until a hurricane undid them.

John's research is ongoing, but he was kind enough to give us a tour last weekend. The dog and kids swam, and we picked up a couple of pretty cool old bottles.

Growing up in Rockport, it was easy to believe that civilization has only a tenuous foothold in the area -- that our stay there is only half a century old. No surprise, since tides and wind work relentlessly to erase and bury the signs of our presence at the southern edge of America.

But there are plenty of clues out there, covered in sand and water, sometimes just below the surface.

Big Bend Inspires

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:57:00 +0000

It has been nearly two decades since my friend Vince first suggested I accompany him to far West Texas to see Big Bend National Park. Last week, I finally went.

Over the last 18 years, while I dithered, my uncles and cousins and my father have all made the journey west to the Chihuahuan Desert. Vince has made the thousand-mile trip more than two dozen times; that's about the equivalent of driving entirely around the earth.

In deference to my editor at RoadTripAmerica.com, which will publish a story on this trip next summer, I'll limit this blog entry to just the highlights.

It was hot. No kidding, the desert in mid-July is baking. The highest temperatures we recorded during four days were right around 116 degrees Fahrenheit. Higher elevations, in the Chisos Mountains for instance, can be 20 degrees cooler.

Despite the heat, even the lowlands never felt terribly uncomfortable. I'd have to dig to find the formula to figure out heat indices, but I'm guessing that 100 degrees in muggy old Austin may feel worse than 116 at the Croton Spring campground.

Turns out July and August are great wildlife viewing months, since these are the months when the park gets most of it's annual 12 inches or so of rain. The park, as one ranger told me, was "fat."

While we never got rained on there, we did see rainshowers off in the distance, and many of the washes and dry creeks in the park held evidence of recent runoff. There were even pools of standing water in some stream beds.

Millipedes were everywhere, and -- after dark -- so were tarantulas. Leopard frogs dove for safety in the tinajas as we hiked past, and red-spotted toads wandered the tarmac at night. We spotted the park's two largest lizards -- a colorful male western collared lizard and a delightfully polka-dotted longnosed leopard lizard. The leopard lizard was nearly 15 inches long.

I was entranced by the canyon towhees and Mexican jays, birds we don't often see in Central Texas. The large ravens -- I couldn't tell if they were common ravens or Chihuahuan ravens -- seemed as curious about us as we were about them.

Javelinas, jackrabbits, cottontails and kangaroo rats -- the last are fearless nocturnal visitors I know from Padre Island National Seashore -- were abundant.

In the desert, three species of ceniza bloomed. This is the plant that we've always called "purple sage" or "sageb(r)ush," but of course it's not at a salvia at all. Creosote bushes were blooming in yellow, as was esparanza, or trumpet flower. With the exception of a few strawberry pitayas, the cactuses were mostly bloomless.

Big Bend National Park encompasses about 1,100 square miles of desert, alpine and riparian habitat. It's the 15th-largest of the national parks but in 2007 ranked 138th in number of visitors among the National Park Service's 360 units. Padre Island National Seashore, by comparison, receives about twice as many visitors (more than 600,000) in a year than does Big Bend.

The park also is a geology buff's paradise; a cheerfully jumbled monument of metamorphic, igneous and sedimentary rocks in a rainbow of colors. There are bears, too, and mountain lions, and pictographs and petroglyphs.

But mostly Big Bend is vast, largely empty of people. It's one of the very few places left in Texas where one can camp under the stars and not see an electric light from horizon to horizon.

I find that spirit-expanding emptiness inspiring.

Yeah, I know it's lame

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:48:00 +0000

That I haven't written anything here in ages ... been busy, ya know?

There are two new posts up at my other blog, Abilene Trail Chronicles, and scads of photos up at www.AaronReedPhoto.com, and I'm going paddling soon.

Really. I am.

Fossickers

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:54:00 +0000

Fossicking is a term found in Cornwall and Australia referring to prospecting. This can be for gold, precious stones, fossils, etc. by sifting through a prospective area. In Australian English, the term has an extended use meaning to "rummage". The term has been argued to come from Cornish. -- Wikipedia

Last week Tam and Patrick and I trouped down to the AGMS building on Burnet Lane for the monthly meeting of the Paleontological Society of Austin. I can barely say "paleontological," (seven syllables, count 'em), so I just call it "the paleo club."

Sometimes they refer to themselves as "dirt diggers."

We paid a whopping $20 for a family membership, and I think -- between the featured presentation and the expert IDs of some oddball specimens -- we got our money's worth the first meeting.

Good people. No surprise since, as my buddy Vince says, you can tell a lot about someone by how they feel about rocks. I was pleased to see Paul Hammerschmidt, a TPWD coastal fisheries biologist, there. Paul and I -- along with his son and some other folks -- went rock-hopping together at South Padre Island during the Texas Clipper sinking event. Nice guy with the kind of all-encompassing curiosity and enthusiasm that I identify with the very best scientists in any field.

Vince's office-neighbor Bill Kidd was there as well -- he and his wife are regulars -- as was Vince himself, with two of his daughters.

I heard the term "fossicking" for the first time twice in one night, from two different people. I like it; to my ears, it has overtones of "frolic" and ... well, it's just a fun word.

That was back in ... January, at our Twelfth Night party. Aimee, my cousin Geoff's geologist wife, gleefully sang out the word when I showed her some recent find. She had picked it up while fossicking in Australia.

Later in the evening, my friend Dub, also a geologist by trade, said: "Man, you guys have really been doing some fossicking ..."

Dub arrived after Aimee and Geoff left for the evening, and brought with him a housewarming gift of a beautifully cleaned and preserved exogyra ponderosa. It's the single best housewarming gift anyone has ever given us, and sits on the mantle now.

On the way home last Tuesday, Patrick broke a short silence with: "Daddy, that was fun!" It probably didn't harm his appraisal of the event that he left with a box full of give-away fossils (including some small ammonites and some very cool gastropods ... er, snails).

Magic

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:05:00 +0000

A good friend and fine fisherman who has just entered an MFA program in creative writing in deep South Texas sent this the other day:

"But he couldn’t keep away from the Valley. He would run like a hooked fish until the drag of his dying cells tired him out, and the Valley reeled him in."

It's a quote from a William S. Burroughs book, and nearly perfectly evokes the taut and persistent connection I feel to the low country of my childhood.

A couple of weekends ago, Tamara and I made a dash for the coast during a spell of warmer weather. Sunny skies and temperatures in the low 70s greated us at Padre Island National Seashore. We took the long, sandy trail south -- down island to the tip of the park.

The details of the trip, and the memories it brought back for me, can be found at RoadTripAmerica.com beginning Feb. 1.

The trip Tam and I took this month is one I've made probably more than 100 times. The first of those is beyond my recall, in my earliest childhood. They followed hard on the heels of my parents' courting, and of father-son trips in which my dad was the junior partner.

Padre Island held an almost mystical significance for my grandfather.

A child of the prairie, Grandpa must have felt at home in the wide-open emptiness of Padre Island. And, of course, there were fish there. The fish are what drew him to the Texas Gulf coast to begin with.

Grandpa cheered the acquisition of a large part of the island by the National Park Service. After he died in 1978, my father found a poem among his dad's papers. It begins like this: A dear old uncle left to me/A wondrous, beautiful legacy ... and chronicles some of the joys -- and history -- of the island.

The last lines of the poem go like this:

And now that my race is nearly run,
I can turn my face to the setting sun.
Knowing the battle has been won,
This spot will be left for you, my son ...

That your children and theirs forevermore
May build castles of sand on that golden shore.

Grandpa believed that the island was timeless, and changeless. The National Park Service advertises it that way:

Because the National Seashore endeavors to preserve Padre Island in its natural state, visiting the island is very much like stepping back into the past. With few exceptions, visitors can now see Padre Island as it has existed throughout most of its history and how it is described in the few extant descriptions by the early explorers.

In one sense, it is; the towering condominium developments of the extreme northern and southern ends of the island are nowhere in evidence here. Neither are cell phone towers, hot showers, fast food drive-thrus or any of the hundreds of other appertenances of "civilization."

But oil and gas exploration continues, mostly behind the dune line. The Sierra Club campaigned for a federal buyout of the island's mineral rights from the state of Texas and was flatly told "no" by Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson.

"We get a better deal for developing the resource over time than we do from some arbitrary buyout," Patterson said in 2004.

In 2006, Patterson leased submerged land off the southern end of the park for what could be the nation's largest wind farm. Spanning 40,000 acres of state land, 500 of the turbines would generate enough electricity to power 125,000 homes.

Worries about the turbines are many, and include their impact on migratory birds (the site is in the middle of the Central Flyway, and Padre Island is the first landfall for many birds who have made a long Gulf crossing). And at 400 feet tall, the turbines won't exactly be unobtrusive.

"Those who are concerned about view sheds shouldn't have a problem," Patterson said. "There's nobody there to look at it."

By that logic, Yellowstone would be a pretty good place for an open-pit mine, wouldn't it?

To be fair, the land commissioner is required by law to maximize revenue from public lands. The money funds things like schools, and Texas schools need that subsidy.

Wind farms are an interesting problem for environmentalists. On the one hand, they produce clean energy with virtually no carbon emissions. On the other hand they're not so good for flying critters -- though the danger they pose may be overstated, in some cases -- and they're really, really big.

And, for the size of it's footprint, the proposed Padre Island project would generate only a little more energy (about 20 Megawatts) than a single General Electric H-series combined-cycle gas turbine, which could be fueled with the abundant natural gas found beneath the Texas coast.

The wind farm off Padre Island may or may not go forward after meeting stiff opposition from the Lower Laguna Madre Foundation, among others. On the other side of the bay, a battle over wind power is raging between two South Texas giants who have long been important conservationists: the powerful Kenedy Foundation and the iconic King Ranch.

The foundation wants wind turbines on its ranch; the King Ranch says "not in our (very large) back yard."

It's an odd sort of fight that sometimes leaves sincere conservationists and environmentalists wrong-footed. I'm all for clean, low-emission energy generation. But I equally value the dwindling number of places in this state where I can turn 360 degrees and not see some looming human artifact.

So, on the one hand, there is something timeless about the island. But it also changes, all the time. Barrier islands are organic structures and grow and shrink and migrate ... washovers carve new passes and channels, dunes drift and cover them.

The swirl of longshore currents and pinch eddies that wash Padre Island's shores bring with them an ever-changing array of flotsam and jetsom: fishing floats, logs, buoys, hardhats, bottles, televisions and plastic; lots and lots of plastic.

The island's function as a sump for the Gulf's trash was noted as early as the 16th century, when Spanish surveyors noted the jumble of lship's lumber, gun carriages and other detritus strewn across the island's shores.

It's no surprise, then, that even after more than three decades of trips down island, there's still something new to see.

During our trip a couple of weeks ago, the novelty was a bloom of the dinoflaggelate Noctiluca scintillans, also called "seasparkle." In the light of day, the bloom looked like orange paint poured thick on the water. In the dark of night, the organisms blazed neon blue as waves tumbled them across the sandbars fronting the island.

My friend Brandon in Fort Worth saw a picture and said: "That's not Noctiluca, that's magic!"

I couldn't agree more.

[Third photo from the bottom is a shot of the Laguna Madre from the back of PINS, courtesy of that crazy Viking, Kendal Larson.]

Bless these men

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 15:42:00 +0000

Saturday I had the rare privilege of spending a couple of hours on the water with eight wounded warriors at Blanco State Park. The soldiers -- all undergoing medical treatment and various therapies at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio -- were there as part of a "Heroes on the Water" outing.

Heroes on the Water is the first project undertaken by Kayak Anglers Society of America, founded by my friends Brad, Ken and Jim. This was their fourth trip.

Some of the guys told me about their "duty day" at BAMC: morning formation, then various appointments all day long, then back to a spare barracks room. One of the guys admitted that, a lot of times, it's easier to just stay locked-up in that room on a Saturday than attempting to get out and deal with the world.

Maj. Cody Roberson, a Medical Services Corps officer who founded ArmyBassAnglers.com, does a good job of protecting the troops from the raw curiosity of sponsors and spectators alike. Cody knows first-hand some of what they went through in Southwest Asia: he commanded a medical company there early in the war.

Two of the soldiers were amputees; some were injured in blasts, others were burn victims. Some had no immediately obvious injuries; following Cody's lead, I didn't ask.

There's no doubt in my mind, though, that every one of them is in some way broken by his experience; as Jon Dee Graham sings, "not beautifully broken, just broken ... that's all."

The Heroes on the Water program gives these troops an opportunity to get out, almost on their own, for a few hours. Sure, there are therapeutic aspects to kayak fishing -- fine motor skills, balance, strength; it's the sort of thing that is good for anyone to practice, but especially if you're, say, learning to use prosthetic thumbs. Or new legs.

But maybe the best thing about these excursions is the opportunity for the soldiers to simply relax -- away from case managers and appointments and the same ol' same ol' of their barracks rooms. To watch a wild turkey fly across the river, or feel the tug of a fish at the end of a line.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for soldiers. As a kid, because I looked-up to them and admired them. As a young adult, because I was one. Now, because I remember.

I remember the difference it made to me when someone actually showed they appreciated my sacrifices.

I wonder at the kind of courage and strength it takes to even attempt to become truly whole again after the sorts of injuries -- and experiences -- these men have suffered.

Awe is not too strong a word for what I feel for these "warriors in transition," now that I have met a few of them.

Cabela's donated rods and reels for the outing, and the Blanco American Legion Post provided a late lunch. Blanco State Park staff opened their arms to the group and waived entry fees. Brad and Colleen Harvey of Heart of Texas Kayaks brought the boats. Such generosity is always humbling.

But a lot of it still comes out of KASA's -- Brad's, Cody's, Jim's and Ken's -- pockets. You can help sponsor the next Heroes on the Water trip (there's a waiting list 20 soldiers deep now) by donating online at http://www.kayakanglerssa.org/. Or, if you or someone you know would like to donate products or services -- fishing stuff, ice chests, transportation, PFDs, fishing garb or hats -- send Brad an email.

KASA is a non-profit corporation (501(c)(3) status is on the way), and donations are tax-deductible.

JDG is AOK

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 06:50:00 +0000

Tam and I just got back from the "anniversary" show at The Continental Club. The Continental Club is always standing room only, but it was even more so tonight. Big crowd.

Loud crowd, in the back; I assume they also paid $10 cover to get in and hear Jon Dee and the Fighting Cocks return to the stage after a 3-month hiatus, but they must have forgotten why they were there.

Bastards.

Seriously, it ticks me off. I'm all for drinking beer and BSing with my buds ... just not at the same time other people are trying to listen to music.

I've written elsewhere that Jon Dee Graham wields his guitar like it's a part of his body, another appendage. It's more than that. He is so utterly confident, so completely in control of the instrument, it's something else entirely. Something powerful. He owns that guitar, and the stage he stands on. And any audience he plays in front of.

Except for the guys in the back, who won't shut up.

Andrew Duplantis is always a pleasure to watch and listen to. Sometimes, like when he's on tour with Son Volt, he's not on stage with Graham. Then we have the pleasure of watching and listening to Harmoni Kelley, star of Naked 2007.

It's always an amazing show. It's real rock and roll, the kind where the guys (and gal) on stage are having as much fun playing as the audience is listening and dancing. It's also thought-provoking, heart-warming ... and a lot of other hyphenated adjectives.

Graham has talked publicly about his longtime struggle with depression. Some of his songs are about that; about the human condition, really.

Mark Finkelpearl, the director and producer of the forthcoming DVD about JDG's life, personally gave me permission to use that YouTube video, below, by the way. Of course, that's why he uploaded it. He'd like lots and lots of folks to post it to their blogs.

If you haven't already, give Jon Dee Graham a listen. You won't regret it.

Insider's Austin

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 21:36:00 +0000

As the deadline approached for my latest RoadTripAmerica.com contribution, I asked Tamara: "What's so great about Austin, anyway?"

"Our back porch, apparently," she replied.

I do spend a lot of time there, and I think maybe she was hinting that she would like to get out a little more than we have been lately. Okay, done. Tonight we'll head down to The Continental Club for Jon Dee Graham's CD release party.

The new, live CD is called "Swept Away" and is a companion to feature-length documentary that is scheduled to be released sometime in January. Both the CD and the DVD include bits of my first date with Tam, at Graham's Mercury Hall show early this year.

Cool, huh? I mean, how often does an established documentary filmmaker with National Geographic, Discovery Channel and The Learning Channel credits create a first-date keepsake?

I write just a little about Graham (see some thoughts on an earlier recording here) and a few other Austin singer-songwriters in the new RoadTripAmerica.com article, and also touch on some of my favorite local eateries. These are my opinions of course, and may be opinions that are not shared by other Austin residents.

My take on the city -- which for years I quietly labeled as "the most over-rated city in America" -- has changed. It's true that Austin is a bit full of itself. It's also true that it has diverse offerings that are possibly unique in this state, or even in the entire country.

One of those, of course, is my back porch. I'm heading out there now, but I'll leave you with a view of Jon Dee Graham on his back porch. This is the trailer for the upcoming DVD.

The view from the bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:00:00 +0000

Here is some really cool video from the Hi-8 "Bridge Cam" aboard the USTS Texas Clipper, courtesy of TPWD's artificial reef program folks.

Here's what my colleague Bob Murphy had to say about the event:

She fought hard not to sink as she slowly took on water when the valves for sinking were opened just before 11:00 am. She began to sink more quickly about 12:20 as water entered large openings in her sides, and then plunged quickly below the surface at 12:35 pm CDT in a plume of spray and bubbles.