The Crumby Ovate Recalls
Does everyone review pretty much their entire history of experience continuously? Perhaps not, such may be a mental disorder. I do this though if I make no effort to restrain myself from doing so, and expend some energy suppressing the tendency to constantly cycle memories. Today though, for a while, I gave in and was taken in an unanticpated direction, for the resulting stream of conciousness churned off in a direction that was unanticipated, given the stimuli that triggered it. In other words, the memory stream that broke through the dam (of Druid mind training)was not the one I anticipated, only similar to the one I anticipated. Are you still with me, and paying attention?
So what was the subject of the memory stream; Brightleaf State Natural Area, the 217 acre and a little bit of public land that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) recently unloaded on the Austin Community Foundation, as part of TPWDs cost cutting to cover increased expenditures for the war on terror or, miltant Islamism or whatever. At any rate TPWD requires more game wardens to keep the terrorists from shooting our deer and to make up the difference the TPWD decided on a semi-secret public lands sale that was only uncovered because one of the lands up for sale was a big ecologically significant chunk of the high profile Big Bend State Ranch, fer heaven's sake. Whatever the land (Brightleaf) will be called now is located over and along or near the Balcones Escarpment north of Camp Mabry in what is the general vicinity of central greater Austin, or Austink as it might more appropriately be spelled, these days.
When Ms. Lucas lived there, a good while back, with her cats, it was a place for naturalists to go. (I got some lifers there, fer sure). We watched for hawks migrating up and down the Colorado River, we searched for the first arriving golden-cheeked warblers, we learned the names of plants. The place had a history of previous naturalists. Edgar Kincaid and Fred Webster published one of the first, maybe the first, article on the Golden-cheeked Warbler in any journal, it happened to be the Audubon Field Notes, (1956 or there abouts), based on their observations at the Lucas Tract. And for years, Fred Webster walked the trails in the early spring, listening for the first golden-cheeks. Brother Daniel Lynch, the St. Eds botanist, poked around the place too, for years. Ghosts or almost.
I have been out there recently too, but for meetings in Ms. Lucas old house. At the last one a good many of us, sat around mulling over the fate of the bracted twistflower, a central Texas endemic plant on the brink of extinction; but not,(the great republican omnipotence pervades the very air we breathe), presently recommended for listing as endangered. Outside the house on a hillside below is a little exclosure where we hope to grow some up (bracted twistflowers), the site exclosed so the deer won't eat the plants before they seed out. Ghost plants or almost.
I sure hope this Austin Community Foundation is worth a damn. I have only aneceotal evidence that it is, worth a damn.
And while I'm on this stream, here's an Edgar story, somewhat related.
You may have heard of Edgar Kincaid (now deceased) the editor of the Bird Life of Texas, who is also known as the Cassowary. Edgar was always anticipating and preparing for his own death and one of his chief concerns was the disposition of his personal and colossal bird book collection. So one of Edgar's preparations for death activities was checking out the bird book sections of university libraries to see how the books were being cared for. One day when I was visiting with him, he had just recently toured the bird book collection in the stacks of the UT tower library. Edgar related, that after poring over a good many of the tomes he had discovered several in which the name Great Bustard had been altered to read Great Bastard. Edgar was furious over this and for that reason, perhaps more than any other, his collection went to Texas A&M instead of UT, and it remains there, hopefully with bustards, not bastards, to this very day.
So what was the subject of the memory stream; Brightleaf State Natural Area, the 217 acre and a little bit of public land that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) recently unloaded on the Austin Community Foundation, as part of TPWDs cost cutting to cover increased expenditures for the war on terror or, miltant Islamism or whatever. At any rate TPWD requires more game wardens to keep the terrorists from shooting our deer and to make up the difference the TPWD decided on a semi-secret public lands sale that was only uncovered because one of the lands up for sale was a big ecologically significant chunk of the high profile Big Bend State Ranch, fer heaven's sake. Whatever the land (Brightleaf) will be called now is located over and along or near the Balcones Escarpment north of Camp Mabry in what is the general vicinity of central greater Austin, or Austink as it might more appropriately be spelled, these days.
When Ms. Lucas lived there, a good while back, with her cats, it was a place for naturalists to go. (I got some lifers there, fer sure). We watched for hawks migrating up and down the Colorado River, we searched for the first arriving golden-cheeked warblers, we learned the names of plants. The place had a history of previous naturalists. Edgar Kincaid and Fred Webster published one of the first, maybe the first, article on the Golden-cheeked Warbler in any journal, it happened to be the Audubon Field Notes, (1956 or there abouts), based on their observations at the Lucas Tract. And for years, Fred Webster walked the trails in the early spring, listening for the first golden-cheeks. Brother Daniel Lynch, the St. Eds botanist, poked around the place too, for years. Ghosts or almost.
I have been out there recently too, but for meetings in Ms. Lucas old house. At the last one a good many of us, sat around mulling over the fate of the bracted twistflower, a central Texas endemic plant on the brink of extinction; but not,(the great republican omnipotence pervades the very air we breathe), presently recommended for listing as endangered. Outside the house on a hillside below is a little exclosure where we hope to grow some up (bracted twistflowers), the site exclosed so the deer won't eat the plants before they seed out. Ghost plants or almost.
I sure hope this Austin Community Foundation is worth a damn. I have only aneceotal evidence that it is, worth a damn.
And while I'm on this stream, here's an Edgar story, somewhat related.
You may have heard of Edgar Kincaid (now deceased) the editor of the Bird Life of Texas, who is also known as the Cassowary. Edgar was always anticipating and preparing for his own death and one of his chief concerns was the disposition of his personal and colossal bird book collection. So one of Edgar's preparations for death activities was checking out the bird book sections of university libraries to see how the books were being cared for. One day when I was visiting with him, he had just recently toured the bird book collection in the stacks of the UT tower library. Edgar related, that after poring over a good many of the tomes he had discovered several in which the name Great Bustard had been altered to read Great Bastard. Edgar was furious over this and for that reason, perhaps more than any other, his collection went to Texas A&M instead of UT, and it remains there, hopefully with bustards, not bastards, to this very day.
posted by ray pistrum at Saturday, September 03, 2005
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