Coveting Another's...

In the last few months I have discovered what covet truly means. As a good and faithful Sunday School attendee all my childhood and youth I knew it was one of the top ten. I found it a bit silly; no one could want what someone else has so badly the want will send them to Hell.

I grew up.

I have worked in a profession that is also my passion for 23 years.

Then my friend Dave quit his job and retreated to a cabin in the Rocky Mountains to edit the novel he had written on a previous sabbatical.

I covet his experience.

The introvert me covets the isolation.

The exhausted me covets the time.

The stressed-out me covets the escape.

Every time I encounter an unexpected situation; every time the stress begins to build, my mind asks, “where’s my cabin?” Coyotes, bears, and hailstorms be damned - they’re easier to deal with than people. I ponder the question, “what would happen if I loaded the car and left?”

The answer is immediate: the student loan people will still track me down.

The fantasy ends that quickly, but the coveting does not. I have been working in my house lately to build my own cabin. The garage (too small for a car, I don’t know what the builders were thinking) is becoming a workshop for handiwork crafts. My office finally has enough shelving that I do not have piles of books covering most of the floor, and as soon as I refinish the old wooden desk I have, I will have my personal reading and writing space. I do what I can with what I have.

None of this is far removed from society - I still hear the planes arriving and departing. There are no wild creatures - there are roommates. It is not the high altitudes of Colorado, but when my mind asks for a cabin, I’ll have an answer and maybe the coveting will move to wanting. I’ll plan a vacation accordingly.

March 2012 McKinney Falls 1

This post includes a few of my favorite shots from my hike at McKinney Falls State Park in Austin. It is only a few minutes from my house and just miles from downtown Austin, yet in that place one has no idea that an urban area is nearby.

I was thrilled at how this shot of wild onion blossoms turned out.

 And this shot of a bluebonnet just blew me away with its brilliance.

 These yellow flowers (probably a weed) were taller than me. They created for a nerve-wracking experience as I walked through them. I spent the day looking for snakes, but found none. I was certain as I made my way through these plants that I would surely hear the rattle of an unseen snake.

 I also enjoyed the bluebonnets against the stone jutting out from the ground.

Whenever I need a mental health break or a quiet time waliking away from the crowds, I make my way over to the park and spend a couple hours with my camera in the quiet.

Water Death

While observing the life around the pond, I noticed too, how precious life was by the creatures that lost their life there.

Some moths landed too close to the water.

Some frogs come out of the water to land on fire ants and were soon devoured.

You cannot see the frog because so many ants are covering it. I had to poke it with a stick to see what they were eating.

Some frogs were just dead - perhaps after trying to catch a bee instead of a fly.

And some flies were just dead because they landed on my leg and I swatted them. I do not have any pictures because there was not anything left to show of them.

The glories of life in its diversity was only made more valuable by the juxtaposition of death side-by-side.

I just have to be still and around me, I will see the entirety of the circle of life.

Being Still

This morning I went down to my parents’ pond - or what’s left of it - and took the time to really look. The Nature Channel on television has infinite documentaries on watering holes and the animals that use them, but I had never seen one on insects. 

I had never taken the time to look for them either.

This morning, the entire remnant of the pond was abuzz with various bugs that came for sustenance or supplies. Bees, wasps, and flies worked in abundance around the limited water that was left. Some bees and wasps gathered water while others gathered together bits of mud for their nest.

All it took was me being still for a little while.

Being still and watching what is happening. Listening for the quiet sounds. Stillness and listening. Two qualities we often overlook in this mad world as we try to keep up with all that is happening around us.

Being still I saw wild bugs hovering above the mud.

I do not believe I have ever taken a better picture. Even the newborn fawn does not compare to the hovering bug with its wing caught mid-stoke.

Being still, I saw a variety of moths landing on the mud.

Being still, I saw a red wasp land on the water and be blown across on the wind as the wasp gathered water for building it's paper nest.

Being still, I saw an amazing white-faced beetle crawling around the mud.

Being still, I saw bugs crawling out of the water and across the mud.

Being still, I saw life happening around me that I had never noticed before. No matter what I have going on in my life, I must take the time to stop, pause, and notice what is really happening around me that under other circumstances I would charge right past.

Being still, I must have patience and see the beauty that surrounds me.

Wilderness Skills

For the first time in many years, I spent multiple nights at my parents’ house in my home town. When getting back to their house after spending the bulk of the day at the hospital where my father was recovering from a recent surgery, I would do the chores that needed doing then head out into the pasture with my camera to catch what wildlife or other nature sights I could before the sun went down too much. 

Due to the ongoing drought, even though the time was middle-spring, areas that should be lush and green instead appeared dull, dusty, and stressed from lack of moisture. Armadillos were out well before dusk to begin their digging in search of grubs near the surface. I even managed to catch a rabbit in the middle of one of the right-of-ways cut through the wooded area. 

The most amazing sight, though, came when I walked upon a doe that was preoccupied with something besides my approach. Long after I snapped the first picture of her, she remained with her head turned aside. Finally she turned aside and I could see something that from the distance appeared to be a cat crawling around below her.

Moving around to gain a better vantage, and with the benefit of my zoom lens, I was able to see the new-born fawn that lay flat against the ground as soon as the doe moved away upon noticing me.

I remembered all the times as a youth I had used my wilderness skills to sneak up on the white-tailed deer in our pasture. I would get within yards of them and yell, “BOO” as loudly as possible just to see them about jump out of their skins. Looking back as an adult, I’m really glad none of them ever attacked me with their razor sharp hooves, but after again being able to sneak up on a deer and see the brand new life, I am glad to know I still have some of the skills.

"Lost" in the Greenbelt

Following the Palm Sunday reading of the Passion Narrative from Matthew, the college group and I went for a hike in the Barton Creek Greenbelt.  Even though we were at unseasonably high temperatures for this time of the year, the hike was, as usual, a nice respite from the city in the middle of the city. Going with the college group, who had never, been made the trip even more fun than usual.

Throughout the hike, lively discussions took place covering on such topics as whether, having been used to kill a bear (or fight off a mountain lion) would make a walking stick any more valuable on the walking-stick-market. I argued that a good story and the appearance of being a trustworthy instrument would make the walking stick much more marketable than just a plain piece of wood pulled from a tree. Marketing can be as important as substance.

The "Lost" hiking in the Barton Creek Greenbelt

Other deep theological questions along the hike mulled “To which Hogwarts house do you belong,” and “What ‘Lost’ character best represents each person on the hike?” While the superficiality of pop-culture themes may seem to dominate the questions, the discussions about placement and characterization lacked any level of superficiality. Instead they behavioral observations and character understanding dominated the points made as individual qualities and quirks were compared with the qualities and quirks of the fictional groups and characters.

Because I have not followed either of the the series (Harry Potter and Lost), I spent the time making observations and asking clarifying questions. More than I could have imagined,  the depth of answers astounded me as did the complexity of characterizations. I had the best time listening to the answers and perspectives. I learned so much about their views of character and the pragmatic approach to character traits. Both good and bad could be argued in different character traits as they apply to the individuals in their respective worlds and the situations in which they found themselves.

I look forward to the next time I get to hear the group talking about topics of interest they have and plumbing the deep wealth of their thinking.

Nowhere Corral

I am taking full advantage of spring break by doing strenuous physical activities. A couple of my friends also had Monday off, so we decided to go for a hike in Pedernales Falls State Park, a park not too far from Austin. We followed the river for a while and then connected with the main hiking trail in the park.

At one point we started to wander down a side trail with hopes that it would lead us to a cliff where we could look down on the river flowing below. We wandered a ways, but there was no sign of anything remotely resembling a cliff. On that detour though, we came across and old homestead with only the majority of the fireplace remaining. Even so, the time had washed away so much of the packing around the stones that it was a pile of stones, that continued to maintain the shape of the fire pit and the chimney.

Nearby we saw an old corral, with the beams sagging, often piled on top of one another instead of spaced up the posts.

We  traveled a bit farther down the trail and came upon some stone fences.

The construction of the fences really amazed me, as they followed the natural contours of the landscape, so the fence did not have to be exceptionally high, but connected to the shape of the land it made an effective barricade.

Though the house was gone and the fences were in grave disrepair, the level of effort and purpose behind the building of those structures amazed me. I cannot imagine how long it took to gather the rock, haul them to the right spaces and then lay them in - both for the fence and the fireplace - so that held their shape despite weather and time and stubborn trees growing up in the middle. The images of the corral especially stayed with me. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, stood a circular pen with no clear entrance, but the effort to create it demonstrates some genuine purpose behind it, and while it seems in the middle of nowhere today, at one time it was somewhere quite important.

More Greenbelt Spring

The Barton Creek Greenbelt in Austin does provide one of the greatest sanctuaries of any inner city hiking trail I know. The lush vegetation and depth of the valley quickly blot out any sounds of the surrounding metropolitan area and criss-crossing highways. Within minutes you can be lost from the hustle of the busy world and immersed in the outdoors.

Look closely and you can see the bird in the photo above. It took five minutes of listening closely and watching through the camera lens to finally catch the bird on a hop, but sure enough, there was the tiny wren, searching for bugs on the ground.


The well-worn trails make the hike easy, but the overhanging trees and bushes keep the intense sun from being too unbearable on hot and humid days. In a sort of labyrinthian way, the bends in the trail and the thick foliage create an adventure as one never knows what is around that turn or behind those bushes until one is upon them.


This shot down a smoothed granite gully to the creek has an almost rain forest or swampy feel to it - without the stifling humidity of either of those locations.