Where Water Was

Texas has spent most of the last decade in drought conditions. Intermittant floods have hidden the fact that despite a massive amount of rain in a short period, the drought has continued. Urban dwellers and those outside the heartland of the United States have a hard time imagining and understanding just how severe this drought has been.

  Limbs, lying on the ground like corpses on CSI, demonstrate the extent of damage to the trees of years of drought. Making my way around my parent's property, I came across countless dead trees. The agriculture department has estimated that 10% of the trees in Texas have died. In the forrested areas of my parent's ranch almost every post oak and pin oak have died. Live oaks that are hundreds of years old are shedding huge limbs - giving up much of the effort they have expended since Columbus landed on the continent.

My brother (and the rest of the family) used this flat-bottomed boat to navigate around the pond when it was at its peak. Now grass and weeds have grown up around it.

The nearest water, compared to where the boat sits, is over 100 yards away, near the treeline in the distance. One-hundred yards. For a pond! That's how bad the drought is.