The name, Pedernales, means flint in Spanish. Thus, this river that transects the Hill Country is named Pedernales due to there being so much flinty material within the area that the natives used for making arrowheads and points. The Spanish and Mexicans near here certainly got to know those points well over the centuries. The Commanches and Kiowa aimed true during their frequent raids on the small towns and ranches here. Captives were usually taken, mostly women and children, who could prove to be useful to the natives. Children would tend to grow up “Indian” and the women could be either ransomed, sold, or adopted into the tribe. The white immigrants took their slaves and reeked havoc on anyone who stood in their way as well. No one was innocent in this land. Violence was near commonplace and mortality followed everyone as a shadow, always attached to their feet and following close behind during those dangerous days.
Often the white immigrant captives would become members of the tribe, willingly contributing to everyday camp life. What else are you going to do out here in the wilderness? I recently read a book about a boy who was captured by the Apaches very near where we are staying in Pedernales Falls. He lived nine years among the Apaches and later the Comanches. He much preferred life with the Comanches who truly accepted him into their tribe as a participating member, The Apaches never quite allowed him that status even though he participated on raids into Mexico with them. These tribes, the Comanches, the Apaches, and the Kiowa were among the very last to give in to the white man’s desire for land in the West. They fought extremely hard to hold on to their way of life and their land. They were, in a word, Badass.
Here in the State Park there are still remnants of those very early immigrants who tried to settle this wondrous, yet unforgiving land of contrasts. Hiking on the various trails within the Park itself you can find very old rock walls, sans mortar, that the settlers threw together to serve as pens for animals, or, as barricades to keep the ranch animals out of the crops they planted. How anyone grew anything here amazes me. The land is mostly rocks, limestone specifically. However, once in a while you come across really good, black soil...fertile as can be. I don’t yet understand the nature of it, but you can find that good earth here and there...but the rocks persist.
I found an old stone chimney out in the bush, the house now lost to the earthly process of life and decay. Up on a ridge I found an old corral that I was told was from the 1880’s, still standing sentinel and waiting for horses or mules to hold captive. It was built from what the locals here call Cedar, but is actually Ashe-Juniper. Their small blue berries are everywhere on the ground. Also among the Cedars is an old, old cemetery whose latest citizen was from 1881. Several young children are buried among the saints there, victims of the very harsh and flinty life of 150 years ago on this plateau.
The land itself has changed a lot since those times of early European and German immigration. This area was once a savanna land dotted with Live Oak and the occasional Ashe-Juniper. But, as immigration increased, livestock that the immigrants brought with them overgrazed the land and the vast grasslands were replaced with intractable tangles of “Cedar”. It’s now everywhere, literally. It’s beautiful in its own way, but it crowds out almost any and all other plant life. Live Oaks, their branches festooned with Ball Moss, and Post Oaks are holding their own and are beautiful to behold as they send their roots deep into the limestone infused soil.
Limestone, it’s the stuff of caves and springs. It was once life itself, but eventually died and drifted down to the ocean floor where it lay, layer upon annual layer, finally turning to stone under the tremendous weight of the shifting earth. When I travel around this area, the Edwards Plateau, I am so reminded of my Missouri’s Ozark Plateau. What you encounter here is a limestone plateau, lifted up over millions of years and eroded by creeks and rivers and rain to form valleys and hills. Caves seem to be everywhere, just like Missouri. The porous limestone-littered surface rock appears as white and gray sponges lying about. Of course, the fauna is vastly different, as is the climate. This brings a savanna-like climate, albeit overrun with Ashe-Juniper, to this Texas Hill Country. In Missouri the canopy is hickory and oak. Here the rivers are lined with cypress, their Gothic cathedral style roots creating little dams that change the course of the shallows along the riverbed. In Missouri, sycamores tower in splendid arches over the river banks, their broad and spreading branches carrying gigantic leaves lending cool shade on a hot, muggy Ozark summer afternoon. Fishing is usually good under both in the deeper pools, the sycamore and the cypress. Vern, a fellow camp host here who is all of 86 years young, showed me pictures of 28 and 39 pound flathead catfish he caught here on the Pedernales beneath just such cypress. Under the sycamores in Missouri we hunt for small mouth bass, as fighting a fish as ever there was pound for pound.
Another peculiar thing about this area, that in a way resembles a part of Missouri, is the monstrous pink and gray granite deposits. Deep in the St Francois Mountains of Missouri there is a place called, “Elephant Rocks”...So named because of the rounded, ball-like shape of the huge pink granite boulders piled upon each other in elephant-like forms. You can climb on them and squeeze between them and generally have a blast climbing around like a kid. It’s designated a state park. Here in Texas just down the road about 30 some odd miles is another state park. This one is called, “Enchanted Rock Natural Area”. It’s the same geology as in Missouri’s Elephant Rocks, but...These rocks are Texas-sized in every sense of the word. One single rock here is actually a hill several hundred feet high. It’s a single giant rock that towers over the landscape and can be seen from miles away. You can climb to its zenith and gain a perspective that is singular in its strange beauty. If you can imagine that this massive rock has an outer mantle of stone uniformly 10 or 12 feet thick that has cracked and is peeling away in house-sized chunks, sliding down the sides of its granite core, inch by inch over the millenia, settling in broken clusters at the base of the “rock”, then you can develop a picture of its uniqueness and its magnitude. Diane and I and the dogs hiked around this magnificent mountain and covered a full 5 miles. That’s how immense this rock is. The Enchanted Rock Natural Area features camping, but only tent camping. As in every Texas State Park I have visited, the campground is neat, clean, well-organized, and patrolled vigilantly by Park Rangers and Camp Hosts. Security is not an afterthought, it is a prioritized goal.
These days if you want to camp or day visit one of Texas’ state parks you must reserve in advance on line. I’m certain it is a Covid-related practice, only letting a designated number of folks in the park at any one time. However, I wonder if it serves also as a test pattern for future days when Covid is tamed. There are so many folks now who want, who need to get out into the open to enjoy God’s great earth, that the parks can be stuffed to overflowing. We saw this trend in Colorado last summer. Steamboat Lake State Park where we camp hosted saw its annual visitor count set new records for a single season. I’ve heard of the National Parks considering head count limits and I wonder if the Texas State Parks aren’t testing the same under Covid’s requirements. It’s unsettling to think that there may be long wait times to reserve your spot in earthly paradise in the future, but, I believe it may be worth it. We all can collectively love our state and national parks to death otherwise.
Pedernales State Park was a very good choice for us to settle in for a few months to volunteer. It’s close enough for us to get to our daughter’s house at about an hour and 20 minutes and its features and amenities are many. There are miles and miles of trails here and, of course, the Pedernales River courses through the entire park. Right now the river is very low and the “Falls” are slowed to a trickle of their potential, sliding gently over the river-smoothed limestone. Deep and clear pools form in bolder-strewn miniature lakes above the falls waiting in turn to take their ride down the slope. The Falls are actually an uplifted giant slab of stone that is tilted at roughly 45 degrees. During higher water times the river flushes over this slab and falls into a grand pool at the bottom. Near the lower part of the Falls there is a spring that even today when it’s so dry gushes a good stream of water right out of the ground. I suspect this is actually a spot where the river, having gone underground at some point up-river, finds the surface again. Scattered amidst the surface of the limestone you can find the evidence of hundreds if not thousands of former sea life creatures. Shell imprints cast in the mud of an ancient sea bed stare back at you. Crinoids, the most abundant fossils here, lay in various forms, their tubular bodies still intact, though crystallized within the surface rock. We’ve seen pictures of the Falls during flash-floods and it could not be more in contrast with what we’ve seen so far of the place. They tell us that the river can well up and produce a wall of water in minutes, even when no rain is apparent in the area. Repetitive signs throughout the park warn everyone to flee if they see the water suddenly change color or start to rise. I’ve personally seen logs caught in the branches of cypress trees 25 feet over the current river level. What immense power did it take to put them up there that high? When you see that spectacle it hooks and holds your attention.
Throughout this area you find small towns scattered around with Germanic names. German immigration had a great influence in Hill Country 150 years or so ago. You will find very good restored architecture from that time in these little burghs. Small boutique stores fill the town squares augmented by modern restaurants themed with everything from barbecue to elegant Italian fare tucked into the old stone buildings. Wineries are everywhere, some actually growing their own grapes, some just selling wine bottled elsewhere. All serve the heavy weekend traffic of folks from Austin looking for an escape from city living for a few hours. Most of these towns also feature elaborate Christmas light decorations during the season. I think each town tries to outdo the other with their happy displays. Johnson City, a scant 9 miles from our campground, has the most magnificent show. Masked crowds start gathering about an hour before dark trying to find a parking space. Children run around in apparent insect-like circles in anticipation of the light spectacle. It’s well worth the hunt for parking to walk among the holiday lights and feel the cheer of the season.
Johnson City IS the town where LBJ, our 36th president, grew up. Just down the road on the banks of the Pedernales lies the Western White House. This is the Lyndon Johnson ranch that served as a remote White House when Lyndon felt the need to get back to his roots during his presidency. He came here often enough. His ranch is preserved under the auspices of the National Park Service. We really enjoyed visiting here with our grandchildren, Ella and Jack. At one point I pushed the kids on a swing hung from a Live Oak on the front yard of the Ranch. I reckon that Live Oak was well over 100 years old. The Park Rangers told me that LBJ would hold meetings with members of his cabinet under that Oak. We were the only people visiting on that day right before Christmas. We had the run of the ranch. As I pushed the kids on the bench swing my mind drifted back to 1968 and the Viet Nam War. My brother, Mike, was in Viet Nam as a 1st Lieutenant and I definitely feared that once out of high school I would be as well. (I was spared). My brother, Mike, wrote me from Viet Nam and told me to try to stay out of the war however I could. If you had told me then that one day I’d be swinging my grandkids on the front lawn of the LBJ Ranch, the same ranch that Robert McNamara and General Curtis LeMay were making war plans, I’d have said you were crazy in the head. But, such is life. The unbelievable sometimes happens. If you are a fan of presidential history you can have a great visit to this Ranch. We really enjoyed our visit, including the one room school house where LBJ attended.
Just across the River is a Texas State Park dedicated to the Johnson name. It’s main feature is the preservation of old German immigrant farms, complete with a working farm that preserves the way of life here from 100 years ago. The old farmhouse and outbuildings are still here and they are still being used in the way they were those many decades ago. The farmers and their wives dress in period costume, functional to a fault. Long-horn cattle graze with buffalo and sheep. The practicality of the place removes your impulse to reach for your smart phone while you’re there. Our grandchildren had a blast here as did Diane and me. There is no camping here or at the LBJ Ranch, but there are a myriad of choices nearby including many state parks, most of which I will detail in future writings.
The main reason we came to Texas for the winter was to be near our Daughter’s family and possibly lend a hand with the kids while they work from home. Suni and Dane are trying to home school their children AND work from home during this pandemonial pandemic time. Staying relatively close to them at the State Park gives us that opportunity to help out while Diane and I receive the greatest gift imaginable, time with family and grandchildren. Christmas was wondrous this year and everyone got too many presents, just as it’s supposed to be. The real gift for everyone, though, was the love we shared. We even Zoomed a Christmas celebration with Eli and his family on Christmas day. It was almost as if we were all together around the proverbial tree. If only one day we could get our son, Eli, and his family together with Suni and her family for a holiday...or anytime. Maybe, someday, when all this contagion calms down.