Boy, when mother nature decides to prune trees, she goes all in. I went to help a friend in Wimberley clear fallen limbs from the recent ice storm. I worked about four hours around three or four trees. I kept my chain saw humming and filled a 16-ft trailer with four foot high sides with branches. I made a dent, but I was spent when it was all over, and there is still a lot of stuff on the ground.

There’s a lot of stuff on the ground on the ground all over the Hill Country. Everywhere I drove yesterday I saw fallen limbs. Some were being cleaned up by those with the resources and the time. But others were obviously going to just lie there au natural and let time do it’s work. The danger, of course, will be this summer and fire season. All that debris will make for great kindling. I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll see.

Maybe this is how the landscape changes. It’s estimated the line that separates the moist east from the drier west has moved east two degrees from the 100th meridian to the 98th. So, we’re bound to get less rain. Trees will struggle, those requiring water will disappear and things will become scrubby. Basically, the desert will move east. Of course, the change will take a lifetime and it’s hard to imagine. But how many of us can imagine that Texas, once upon a time, was at the bottom of an ocean. For millions of years. But it was. And the desert is coming.

John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver's Tale