On the Trail
Home again. Home again. I love being on the road. I love being home. There is nothing quite like your own bed. But then again, there is nothing like sleeping on a trailer’s dining room table that folds into a bed, especially if you have a self-inflating mattress, which I do. That’s where I spent the last four nights as we camped and hiked the trails of Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I’d leave tomorrow to do it again, but I have other obligations. So, for now it’s a terrific memory and I’ll be back next year.
Meanwhile, I have another geologic story to learn, right along with the one that started it all, Big Bend National Park. My go to book is a hefty tome called Texas Through Time recommended to me by a geologist friend. I’m supplementing it with various volumes I pick up along the way. Big Bend is all about volcanoes, while the Guadalupe Mountains are all about an ocean. What I’m trying to do now is see if I can picture how the two stories unfolded together, because they obviously did, seeing as they’re in the same state.
Of course, there’s this trick about geology that we forget. The continents and Texas as we know it have been all over the place and in various shapes as tectonic plates float around and smash into one another. In other words, the land we now occupy was cobbled together over millennia and it’s still happening. So, it’s a time lapse story. Couple that with a mind-bending list of geologic time periods and you can see why I majored in Literature. But I’ve heard people say you might be able to teach an old dog new tricks, so I’m giving this a shot. Wish me luck.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale