I am sitting in my comfortable camp chair gazing at Mansfield dam

-

(Nov. 17, 2013)

 I am sitting in my comfortable camp chair gazing at Mansfield dam. I can't help but remember the first time I saw this dam and compare it to today. It was 1968 and I had drive fro Alabama to Austin for a conducting workshop at the University of Texas. I had a free afternoon and decided to spend it exploring the area. I drove from the University out a wonderfully winding and scenic little two-lane road, Ranch Road 2222, which is  a major arterial today.  I came to an intersection with ranch road 620.  Not knowing anything about the area and having no particular agenda, I turned left on a whim.  It was a wonderful drive through land that was pretty much as God intended it to be. I saw quite a it of wildlife, in particular white-tailed deer.  At that time, deer were rare back in Alabama and I was thrilled to see so much wildlife.  It was that drive that convinced me to become a Texan.


Today, the dam is still the same, but the road that ran across the top has been blocked off.  Today a six-lane highway routes around below the dam.  Even sitting high above it, I can hear the constant sound of traffic. The area immediately below is now a scenic overlook of the dam.  The top of the hill is a semi developed picnic area. It would not be a bad spot to boondock for a night or so if I were visiting.  No water or restroom nearby but still a relatively quiet spot with a fair view.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 4th of July

-
Image
Not the most beautiful place to awaken, but it was nice to have hot coffee waiting for me! Spent last night in the parking lot of a small truck stop in the town of Riesel. It sounds much worse than it was. The Casita has blackout coverings over the windows and is insulated well enough that little sound from outside gets through. And, of course, it was quite nice to walk inside the truck stop this morning and find fresh coffee ready and waiting. We had looked for a more aesthetically pleasing spot, including one rather long, after dark tour of a series of narrow gravel roads. The roads cut between crops of corn and sorghum that seemed to tower over the FJ, Once I had started down the road, there was no place wide enough to turn the FJ and Casita around.  Our luck held and we wound around and came out back in Otto, where we had started. That is when we decided to go back to a more traveled road and found the truck stop. We got up at 6 am so we could get t...
Read more

Why is it called "Playing" when you make Music?

-
As I woke this morning, that is the question that was rolling about in my otherwise empty head. Most people would dismiss such a useless question as merely the result of indigestion from the prior evening's meal of greasy canned meat, but I could not so easily dispose of the thought.    I don't suppose that it makes much of a difference, but, yes, the words we use are important. The denotative and connotative thought patterns associated with the word "play" are diminutive:  engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose For at least the last 2500 years, philosophers have considered music to be an essential element of being human. They have considered music to be a foundational cornerstone to education and life. Why, then, do we use the word " play " when we talk about making music? It seems to me that music has a serious and very practical purpose: music allows us to communicate things that cannot be communicate...
Read more