Posted by on Mar 28, 2018 in Uncategorized | 2 comments

We’re enjoying our time here at the lakeside campground in central Texas. It’s a nice park in the Pineywoods, about 30 miles southeast of Austin. We’re meeting interesting people and enjoying the local museums, art centers and restaurants. We even went to the movies, and there was also a bowling alley, a bar and grill, and an arcade with the world’s largest Pac-Man game in the theater complex.

 

The weather has been mostly perfect with some very muggy days thrown in, and we like the work. We clean seven bathrooms with showers, and we’re responsible for the outside areas around the ten waterfront cabins. This includes emptying the fire pits, scraping the grills, and picking up litter. A paid maintenance crew cleans inside the cabins and collects all of the trash. They also do our jobs on our days off.

 

A lot of campers have been leaving hot fires in the fire rings, so we sometimes have to haul buckets of water to the pits to drown and stir the hot ashes, then come back the next day to clear out the cooled ashes.

It’s good, hard, physical labor, and it feels good. My shoulders are a little tight from the mopping and bucket carrying, but I’m feeling strong. And nothing hurts. And I’ve been walking almost three miles on working days. By the end of our shift on Sunday, when we’ve cleaned all ten cabin sites in one day, we are both exhausted, and glad that on Monday and Tuesday the bathrooms have less traffic and we usually only have the few cooled fire pits to clean.

The first week we were here it was spring break, so we had a full campground every day, but we didn’t actually start working until the weekend. There were kids and dogs, dogs and kids, and bicycles, and running races, and smoky campfires and, with our bedroom window open, we could hear our neighbors late into the night.

And then everyone left. And it was gorgeously quiet. We could hear all kinds of birds, and the rustle of raccoons in the brush. And the deer came out.

I took my kayak onto the lake one late afternoon, just me and two men in a small fishing boat moving through the green-brown water. They stopped to cast their lines along the reedy banks, and I paddled further into the narrows. A kingfisher lit from his perch and flew further down the waterway and I followed, stopping to watch him land on a branch hanging over the water.

I paddled past more than two dozen coots, the black-bodied ducks with the white tipped beak, that sound like a dog’s squeaky toy. They floated away from me and then suddenly, they all took flight. I loved the sounds they made running and splashing across the top of the water at the same time, like a giant paddlewheel boat.

I followed the inlet around a turn and further, until the branches were hanging too low and the reeds were thickening. I turned the boat around and sat in the stillness, the only sounds were the kingfisher in the distance, and the reeds rubbing against the vinyl bottom of the boat.

When I returned to the wider channel, a woman in an orange kayak paddled nearby and we exchanged gratitudes for being on the water. I told her about the kingfisher, pointing to where I had just been, and she said she saw a heron near the fishing pier, but it flew off.

I paddled past the pier toward where the lake opened wider, but the wind hit me as soon as I passed the bank of trees. I wasn’t up for a workout, so I turned around, and slowly made my way to back to the muddy beach where I had put in.

I spotted the heron on the shoreline, camouflaged by the tall dried grass. I pulled up to the dock and waited until he flew away before I paddled up the muddy bank and got out.

Marika has been enjoying the bevy of birds at her seed feeders, including cardinals, Carolina wrens, pine siskin, chipping sparrows, red bellied woodpeckers and white throated sparrows. And I was sitting outside with her when two young bald eagles flew overhead. She attended the local Audubon meeting where she met a woman who invited her over to watch a pair of Pileated Woodpeckers that are building a nest in the cavity of one of her trees.

Cody and I have been exploring the trails through the campground, and every weekday evening, the three of us walk down to the grassy park along the lake to play stick and check for birds.

It’s coming up on the weekend again, and all the campsites and cabins are reserved, which makes me very happy. Because people are getting out into nature, with their kids, their friends, their loved ones, and they’re fishing, and riding their bikes, and roaming the trails.

And I’m enjoying driving around the campground in the golf cart, welcoming folks, waving to the kids, and answering questions.

This will be our last weekend here. We’re heading back to the Texas Gulf Coast next week to spend another full month there so that Marika can enjoy the full-on spring migration! And I’ll be so happy to be at the beach again!