let me go and i. will. want. you. more.
Texas hill country is hot and dry and surprisingly green, green with little-leaved big trees that I don’t recognize from my northwest lessons. The rivers and creeks are rare, and radiate the quality of sacredness and sustenance unique to water in the desert. We were driving seventy in La’s Cadillac SUV. But at the water crossings we would stop, right in the middle of the empty highway, roll down the windows so the chilled air rushed out with the music. Lean into the sun and drink up the view.
At a shabby BBQ shack we ate coleslaw and sandwiches while Ella devoured a still-hot pork bone. We drove through Johnson City, home of LBJ, and at the roadside stand next to Cattleman’s Bank an older woman stuck a knife out from the shade with a sliver of Fredericksburg peach on it. And we could have driven all day, with Cake and the Jayhawks and Kelly Willis, but it’s my last day in Austin. There were Things To Do.
We stopped at Amy’s ice cream, and I got bittersweet chocolate with bananas and almonds mashed in. And we went to the Story of Texas Museum. It’s not called that anymore, but it once was, and I like that name best. They showed a movie about Texas, and when cattle stampeded across the screen our seats shook, and when a hurricane hit Galveston, mist filled the room. And did you know Texas really was its own nation for several years? It declared independence from Mexico long before it voted to join the United States. And when it finally became a state, the civil war erupted. And Texas realized it had made a mistake. Which really, explains a lot.
And back at home I packed a big box – a box that once contained hot rod parts – with my tent and my raincoat and my watercolors and all the other irrelevant Canada-appropriate things I’ve been hauling around. And when I have an address, which I’m working on, Lauren will send me this box. I will open it and pull these items out and probably feel sad again the way I did when I packed it, but in the mean time I feel ecstatically light, just me and my little bag and my laptop. And it seems that strangely, the more you plan, the more stuff you need. But being ready for anything takes almost nothing at all.
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