August Rush- Disaster Strikes

   I knew we would not be making too many trips out west due to the fall semester starting. I have been going to school to get a degree in journalism and being in school full time while running a photography company makes things difficult. Most weekends are spent shooting weddings so we settled in for the long hot summer.
   August is a hot month and this August just seemed to be hotter than the last. Triple digits were killing all of my flowers and our water bill was over three hundred dollars, the highest it had ever been. I finally decided to just give in and watch it all sizzle away.
   Just a few weeks into my fall semester my nephew was diagnosed with cancer. We spent days at the hospital. I was missing classes and trying to stay on top by doing things on line. It was getting hard but I wanted to be there for Ronnie. He had just found out a month or so before that he and his fiance would be having a baby so all of this hit the family hard.
   On our way home from the hospital we saw smoke in the distance. I got a call from my son and he said that there was a huge wildfire. Stephen immediately called our firefighter friend. He said people were being evacuated so we went home to gather things up. We loaded up my sons rabbit, our four ferrets, the dogs, and finally convinced the cats to get into a pen. We spent the night at a church that was not in the path of the fires which were, by that time, burning all around us.
   The following morning we were told that we could go back into our homes so we took our pets back, unloaded the trucks, and headed back to the hospital to spend the day with Ronnie. He had just come out of ICU and was now in a room. This was a good sign but just after getting to the hospital we received a call saying that we were being evacuated again. So, we went back home and went to Stephen's parents house to wait it out. Later that evening we were let back in. The fires had come only four miles from our home.
   It would take over a month to get the Bastrop wildfires out and thousands of people would be homeless with over thirty-four thousand acres burned as well as almost two thousand homes. Life became stressful for us, for our family, and for our community. This was the moment when we realized that we just get through life day by day because anything more than that is not reality. At any moment everything you know can change and your life can become unrecognizable.

 

 

 

 

  

A Break From The City

   We decided that we needed a break from the Austin traffic and the stresses of every day life in the burbs so we headed out to spend a weekend checking out our land. We had not found the time to camp as much this year as we usually had so this was a perfect opportunity to do it. We left a bit later than expected so we arrived around dusk. Camp had to be set up quickly and the wood had to be gathered for a fire. It was strange to be in a place that had no burn ban in effect. It also seemed to be much cooler than home. By dark the temperature gauge in my truck read sixty-seven degrees. We were loving it.
   Even with the camp fire, there seemed to be a million more stars in the sky. Out in the desert it is so dark at night, the closest neighbor being miles away. Even though our property sits just off a dirt county road, the only traffic at night was from the border patrol switching shifts. We are only eight miles from the Mexican border but there is a very large mountain range between us and them. The desert silence can be deafening to someone who is so used to the non-stop sounds of city life.

   Around eleven we all went to bed and just a few hours later I woke up thinking border patrol was shining a flashlight in my face. It was the strangest feeling but when I opened my eyes, it was the biggest moon I had ever seen. It had come up over the mountains and was shining in on me with such brilliance that I never would have thought it would be the moon waking me. I realized how cold it had become and tried to steal a bit of blanket from Stephen who is a huge blanket hog.   
   One thing I discovered out there was that time seemed so different. There was about an hour less daylight due to the rise and fall of the sun in the mountains. I woke very early, about 5:30 or 6. The temperature in my truck read fifty-six degrees and it was July. It was amazing!
   We started to walk our property line. The property ran two miles across the front, along the road and then all the way back to the mountains. During the hike we found many things we did not expect to see in the desert such as dragonflies and turtles. There were also jackrabbits, butterflies, many colorful birds, flowers, and crazy looking bugs. It was streaming with life.

 

 

 

    The temperature rose to ninety-five degrees but had a nice breeze and felt cooler than back home. We were much more comfortable and were relieved to be rid of that hot sticky feeling. We had taken our sons, Billy and John, with us and they were enjoying the freedom to run wild... even though they were 18 and 16. We gave Billy a new nickname... Billyjack. He received this name for two reasons. First, he ran through the desert, jumping bushes, and chasing rabbits as if he had been one in a previous life. Second, he tried to ride dust devils by running and jumping into them. One was so powerful that it pulled his shirt all the way over his head with it hanging on by just one of his arms. It was a sight to see.... crazy boy!
   My youngest son, John, spent the weekend hunting jackrabbits. He never gave up and just before we were leaving he finally got one. He brought it home and made jackrabbit stew.... I had none! The guys all said it was amazing.
   This was the beginning of the end for us. Life as we knew it had changed and we really felt it when we arrived back home to over one hundred degree temps and no breeze; even the evenings were barely below ninety. People started asking us why we would buy land in West Texas and we knew that no matter what we told them, they would never understand.
   
  

The Purchase

     I have always wanted some land in West Texas. For the past ten years I have tried everything to get Stephen to agree to buy at least 5 acres out there. He always said no. This past year he finally agreed to getting "a couple acres" out west. I found a twenty-two acre parcel through a land company and convinced him that twenty-two acres was not too much. I purchased the land and made an agreement with the company that we could switch parcels if for some reason we felt another was a better fit for us. Once everything was agreed to and the contracts were all complete, we decided to take a joy ride to check out our new property. Eight hours, in a car, later and we had arrived. The land was beautiful and full of life... hidden in a valley; in the mountains of the Chihuahuan Desert. We spent the weekend camping out and enjoying the peaceful quiet the desert has to offer. By nightfall we had purchased an additional eight, twenty-two acre parcels.