This is the time of year, especially, when sentimentality can saturate your emotions. It can also be a time of depression for some whose darker memories are summoned to the surface. As spilled oil lays on lake water and discolors its surface until many days of sunshine dissipate its ruinous effect, dark memories, or even loneliness can linger uninvited during these bright holidays, triggered by the same themes that bring happiness and light to everyone else. Oh, how we miss those who no longer gather at the table for holiday feasting. Memories naturally flood our consciousness and even our dreams in late December, for it is then that we make such a diligent effort to be with those we love. Happy times and brilliant smiles captured on camera bring back those days of yore to the very present. When we cannot be with that special someone during these holidays, it hurts.
In campgrounds it is no different. There are those who travel solitary, perhaps having lost a spouse. They may choose to live on the road, sometimes seeking a change of life from the past, sometimes attempting to outrun the hurt and pain they felt in their former homes without their companion. There are also those individuals who have no one or no place except where they are at the given moment...true vagabonds. We have worked among such folks as both peers and as they are among the campers at some of the camp sites. Indeed, we have them present with us now during the holiday season at this park. We try to be very sensitive to their situations, especially during the holidays.
In this particular campground where we work and play for the next several months we are all very fortunate in that the management is very supportive of its volunteers and civilian work staff. The volunteers and civilian work staff are a great cohesive bunch as well, as good or better as any we’ve encountered while camp hosting. We all take care of each other, filling in when someone needs a day off, bringing back necessities from town when needed, or helping to fix a broken whatever on a trailer. During this Christmas season the management staff held a Christmas luncheon/dinner for us all. We made it a potluck event with a Secret Santa highlight. Potlucks are nearly always extraordinarily good among volunteers and camp hosts and this event was no exception. I think we all needed a nap to sleep off the feast by the time it ended.
Your peers and the management staff make or break your stint as a camp host. You might think it would be the campers themselves and whether or not they are generally naughty or nice, but it is those with whom you work with every day who set the tone. Here, at Cedar Breaks, we are fortunate to have a wonderfully warm and caring group to work with...a real team. I already asked Josh, the lead Ranger and our supervisor, if we can return next year.
There is something that should be noted about the general community here around the Hill
Country of Texas. They really do Christmas up right. As I’ve mentioned in past missives there are numerous town squares in the cities, dating back over 100 years in almost every case. You’ll find the town courthouse or administrative building right in the center of the square and more often than not they are architectural masterpieces, remnants from the days when townspeople took tremendous pride in their public institutions. Architects seemingly tried to out do each other in those days when designing the public buildings. Typically, here in Hill Country, these public temples are built of local limestone quarried nearby. Its ivory and rust coloration is distinct to the area. Blocks of the stuff are carved into stout rectangles and placed perfectly upon each other giving a dramatic sense of permanence and purpose to the buildings and walls they are used for. Alabaster itself fades in comparison to the unique limestone here. Even unto the present the beautiful natural stone is used in edifices and walls all around the area. A couple of the quarries are located just scant miles from us as the crow flies and it would seem that the supply of the ruddy stone is nearly endless.
Here, in Georgetown, Texas, the old town center is brilliantly glowing with holiday decorations. Lights festoon every building and are draped over the streets in arch-like bunches. Locals walk the streets in the evenings and bounce in and out of the local shops, boutiques, and restaurants. It is a superiorly festive time here. The words of the song, “It’s beginning to look a a lot like Christmas” ring true in Georgetown. We shopped for gifts here in the town square as well as we always try to support local businesses. We found some great quality gifts in opposition to the mass-produced crap you see in the huge box stores. In spite of the inflation that everyone talks about there is a heck of a lot of jack being spent this season. Seems to me no one with any money is curbing their spending here in central Texas.
Over in Johnson City and Fredricksburg, Texas, you find the same theme for their downtown squares. In Johnson City, President Lyndon Johnson’s boyhood home, the local electric coop has its headquarters and they spare no expense in lighting up the place at night. It might even out shine the daylight if that were possible. You can imagine the electric meters fairly spinning out of control when evening arrives. All of this adds up to make the Hill Country a really charming place to be during the winter holidays. The same charm holds true during the summer months as well, though when the thermometer starts to top 100-105 degrees a lot of the charm dissipates. Frankly, that’s why we come here in winter. Our supervisor, Josh, has asked if we would stay the summer here, and we hate to turn him down, but the 50 Amp Vision Quest will most probably be moving summer quarters to cooler environs in the mountains.
Christmas arrived finally and left with great spirit-lifting feelings of good will and love in its wake. Our time with our daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren, augmented wondrously through the technology of the I-Phone’s Facetime feature wherein we could visit with our son, Eli, and his family simultaneously, was everything Christmas could or should be. The bottomless, immeasurable love we felt for our family when they were babies continues to multiply, if that were possible, as we age and draw nearer our own final chapters. We are not morose, melancholic, or even hangdog about getting up in years, soon to be 71. But, we seem to be able to accumulate in our hearts and more fully appreciate the prosaic aspects of family, of friendship, of simply being alive in this world. Perhaps it is simply gratitude. Maybe our capacity for being grateful has grown. It is a sublime blessing of aging then, unexpected... yet welcomed.
On the cusp of the new year, 2023, our grandkids came to visit us for a couple of days and nights. Ella, now 9, and Jack, 6, brought few toys with them, just their stuffed animals for bedtime company. We spent nearly all our time together out of doors as the very cold weather of Christmas weekend released its throttling grip. Temps ranged through the high 50’s and 60’s, perfect for outdoor mischief and madcap adventuring. Being perched on the edge of a fairly large cedar forest we took many bushwhacking hikes among the low-canopied and gnarly trees. There is a wounded young buck deer here that has a broken foot. No one knows how it happened to him. He hobbles around the forest and the clearings trying to bend low with his dangling, broken front foot to eat this year’s plentiful mast of acorns from the Live Oaks here mixed in with the cedars. It tugs at your heartstrings to see him struggle. Together with the kids we mounted search parties to find him in the wood and throw him an apple to munch on.
We rode our bikes around the campground on little excursions we called, Adventure Bike Rides. Jack has just recently learned how to ride a bike and it was great practice for him to gain his balance and confidence. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over campfires, ate cowboy beans, played innumerable games in the hammock I hung in the woods, chopped wood with the new log-splitter Suni gave me, played in the dirt, went fishing, and generally filled every waking minute with outdoor activities.
At night after dinner it was scary stories and a movie, namely, The Invisible Man (circa 1932) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (circa 2010 or so). Before movie night with The Sleepy Hollow movie, I took a small lantern out into the woods and walked back and forth swinging the light in my creepiest imitation of a ghostly foe. The kids loved it and it set the mood for the video later that evening. Diane began calling our time with the grandkids, Camp Jump. We figured that perhaps our job in life now was to build a love of the natural world in the grandkids...teach them some outdoors type life-skills. It seems most kids generally don’t get purely outside in nature these days, what with organized sports electronics taking up so much of their time. If that be one of our jobs as grandparents it’s a role we relish.