Blue Highways: Grit, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM), with his temporary companion Porfirio Sanchez riding shotgun and us unseen in the back of Ghost Dancing, turns west into the long open stretches of Texas after making a passing mention to Grit.  We'll linger for a moment to reflect on grit and grittiness.  Click on the map thumbnail to place Grit on your mental map.

Book Quote

"At Grit, we turned west onto route 29, a road that struck a bold, narrow course straight into the heart of the Texas desert....

"The land was fenceposts and scrubby plants and not many of those. Mostly the acres were for the goats that produced the big crop here: mohair. It was the country of the San Saba River..."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 7

I couldn't find a photo of Grit, Texas. Here's another meaning of GRIT that I wasn't aware of. Photo on zazzle.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Grit, Texas

What does one write when confronted with a small, unincorporated place like Grit, Texas.  LHM clearly doesn't see need - just a passing mention when he turns onto a new road and heads straight as an arrow toward the west.  But I've made it my challenge to write something based on the impressions I get from the places LHM cites in Blue Highways.  Occasionally, I'll put a few of them together in a post if they are very small, and are near each other geographically.  LHM ran a few of them together in Blue Highways - i.e. Rosepine, Anacoco, Hornbeck and Zwolle in Louisiana - and I included them all together in one post.  But Grit stands out on its own, like a lot of small communities in Texas separated by many miles from one another.

The few things written about Grit seem to indicate that the townspeople wanted to call it by another name, Funston, to honor a Spanish-American war hero.  Another town already had that name, so they decided to use a more earthy name to acknowledge the quality of the soil used to grow cotton in the area.

In my lexicon, grit can symbolize one of two things.  The first is the soil itself.  Gritty soil to me is hard, tough soil.  It is loose and rough and abrasive.  It is the kind of soil that doesn't hold water very well, and a strong wind can take and loft it in the air, and deposit it anywhere it likes.  If you're out on a windy day, and you can taste the dirt in your mouth and when you bite down there is a little crunchiness between your teeth, that's grit.  My wife's family lived in Denton, Texas for two years in the 1960s when her father was the president of what was then North Texas State University, and my wife's mother said that she could never keep the grit and dirt out of the house.  It blew in through the windows and the doors.  When we lived in San Antonio, every once in a while a wind would raise up a dust storm.  You'd look up at the street lights and see a reddish, brown halo around them, and the air would be filled with an earthy smell.  We get the same type of effect here in New Mexico when the wind kicks up, and the house can never be kept free of dirt and dust because if you live in such places, you have to share your lives with the soil you live on.

It's probably that same quality that allows us to refer to people as "gritty."  One who has grit is a lot like such soil  Certainly Texans have been portrayed as loose, rough and abrasive.  They also have been portrayed as not holding their water very well, preferring liquor.  Of course, this might seem to clash with conservative, Christian values that tend to permeate Texas society.  However, there really is no clash.  Imagine a town like Grit, carved out of the soil that provided its name.  There was nothing there.  Summers are hot, winters are cold.  There's not much shade except for the trees planted by those trying to tame the land.  It takes a special kind of toughness to create a sustainable and living environment in such an area.  It takes a fortitude, a belief that not only is one providing for self but for a greater purpose.  Family, community, and God.  That is a different type of grittiness.  But if we were to see a spectrum of what "grit" really means, we'd see it encompasses the whole of human nature and therefore the whole of a person.  It's why cowboys in movies can be portrayed as gamblers, hard drinkers and socializers, and killers on one hand, yet also be tongue-tied around women and attend church on Sundays.

I think that if someone decided, if one day there is an epitaph written somewhere on a gravestone or some other small memorial to my life, to describe me as having grit, I would take that as a huge compliment.  It would mean that I was a full person.  And should my ashes be let loose into the world, or as my flesh and bones slowly broke down underground, I would become, once again, the essence of grit.

Musical interlude

I sort of outsmarted myself and put the video I should have used here in the last post.  No matter.  Texas is full of tough and gritty musicians that play tough and gritty music.  One person that I've been introduced to in recent years is James McMurtry.  If the name sounds familiar, it's because this singer-songwriter is the son of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry of The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove fame.  James has developed quite a name for himself as musician, and many of his songs are set in North and West Texas - a little bit away from where we are with LHM but appropriate nonetheless.

Levelland actually fits quite well with this post.  Levelland is a small town due west of Lubbock, Texas.  The portrait he provides in the song could be painted for many small towns in Texas, including Grit.  Enjoy the song and video.

If you want to know more about Grit

This is about all there is.  I told you it's a small place!

TexasEscapes.com: Grit
Texas State Historical Association: Grit

Next up: Eldorado, Texas

Blue Highways: Mason, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWe travel the unending lonely miles with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM).  His narrative self doesn't necessarily know we are riding along with him in Ghost Dancing, but as we see him tackle the vastness of Texas we reflect upon loneliness.  Click on the map thumbnail to see where Mason, Texas sits on our journey.

Book Quote

"The land was fenceposts and scrubby plants and not many of those.  It was the country of the San Saba River, a route of deserted stone cavalry forts built six generations ago to control the "Indian trouble."  In 1861, the post at Mason was under the direction of a lieutenant-colonel suddenly called to Washington by President Lincoln and offered field command of forces being readied for a civil war.  The officer declined, and Fort Mason became his last U.S. Army duty.  Robert E. Lee never forgot the isolated place."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 7

Mason, Texas. Photo on City-Data.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Mason, Texas

When you are out in the middle of nowhere, life takes on a new meaning.  I think that if you're a person like Robert E. Lee, in the years before the Civil War when Texas was a newly acquired state and you are commanding an isolated fort somewhere in the middle of nowhere to protect against Indians, your perspectives would have to change.  You would struggle with loneliness, especially in the days where "texting" meant a letter that would take weeks, if not months, to reach you by wagon train, and your reply would take just as long in return, and only if Indians or some disaster didn't intercept your correspondence and leave it forgotten and rotting by the side of the trail.  I wonder if it changed Lee?  He was a brilliant soldier and commander, but he was a reluctant warrior.  He was not eager for the nation to split, he was not eager to join the Confederate Armies but did so out of a commitment to his home state of Virginia.  He opposed Virigina's secession, saying that no greater calamity could occur than the dissolution of the Union.  I like to think that his experience in the vastness of Texas did have some impact on Robert E. Lee, especially as LHM says he never forgot Fort Mason.  I wonder if, under the unending sky, surrounded by Texas hill country giving way to the endless and vast horizon, and hearing the coyotes yip and just maybe a lone wolf howl, he felt his insignificance arrayed against forces much bigger than him, and realized that we humans and our petty concerns are really nothing more than emotional winds blowing on a speck of dust somewhere in the vastness of the cosmos. 

I've never had to put that theory to the test.  I've never lived in an isolated fort, though some might say my hometown of Fort Bragg was somewhat isolated.  I have sometimes felt like I was living in isolation.  My recent sojourn in Lubbock, Texas, where I lived for a year from 2008-2009, gave me some sense of isolation.  It wasn't that I was alone on the prairie.  In fact, I was in a city of some 200,000 people.  However, I felt isolated.  All my friends were many miles away, my wife was in a city some 5½ hours distant, and I didn't really know anybody.  As far as my mind was concerned, I might as well have been on my own in the middle of nothingness.

In thinking what Fort Mason might have been like for Robert E. Lee, I am drawn to my only experience at a place like it - a day visit to Fort Craig in New Mexico.  It was an isolated fort on the banks of the Rio Grande south of present day Socorro, and the descriptions of camp life in that arid, dusty, windswept region make it seem like the garrison was at the end of the known world. In between chasing Indian raiding parties and a battle engagement with Confederate forces in the Civil War, the soldiers at the fort would have endured long times of boredom with only the camp duties to keep them occupied.  At the time, there were few settlements in the area, so even companionship of friendly or romantic varieties would have been limited.  As I stood in the middle of the remaining foundations and the crumbling walls of the fort on a very hot summer day, I could hear the wind blowing through the desert grasses and I thought that it would be very lonely indeed for a soldier to realize, if he thought of it much, that the only thing separating him from unending silence was the human activity at the camp.

LHM, in a way, is traveling through a representation of his own inner desert, made barren by the difficult experience of the dissolution of his romantic relationship and other life troubles.  As he begins to drive through vast, lonely Texas expanses, he has to confront himself and understand what it is to be his own companion.  He occasionally is relieved of this loneliness - in this chapter he spends a good part of the drive with a hitcher name Porfirio Sanchez.  But eventually Sanchez will get out of the van and take his own road and LHM will be forced to drive hours with only himself as his companion, confronting the harsh and rugged landscape of his own loneliness and loss.

We really don't need to go find the end of the world to see how close we are to loneliness and emptiness.  We don't need to buy a van and drive around the country unless we really want to live a lonely experience that way.  We simply need to move forward in our lives and realize that sometimes, our lives' roads will take us through amazing vistas, and sometimes, we will be led through dark lonely valleys.  We might experience our loneliness in within the teeming masses, or feel connected with everyone and everything around us in the middle of an uninhabited jungle or a barren desert.  In the end, we will experience whatever we are led into, and we will be better for it.

Musical Interlude

A song by Asleep at the Wheel, a Texas band that has made two sets of very highly regarded homage recordings to Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, really captures the loneliness of the west, from the perspective of a cowboy driving cattle.  Enjoy Dusty Skies.

If you want to know more about Mason

Hill Country Visitor Visitor Guide to Mason
Mason County News (newspaper)
TexasEscapes.com: Mason
Texas State Historical Association: Mason
Wikipedia: Mason

Next up: Grit, Texas

Blue Highways: Fredericksburg, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapSprechen Sie Deutsch?  Möchten Sie in Fredericksburg zu stoppen und ein Bier trinken, erfahren Sie Chester Nimitz, und machen einen Abstecher zum Enchanted Rock?  Klicken Sie auf die Miniaturansicht der Karte zu sehen, wo diese den meisten deutschen Städten von Texas befindet, und Prosit!

Book Quote

"People who think the past lives on in Sturbridge Village or Mystic Seaport haven't seen Fredericksburg.  Things live on here in the only way the past ever lives -- by not dying.  It wasn't a town brought back from the edge of history; rather, it was just slow getting there.  And most of the old ways were still comparatively unselfconscious."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 6

Downtown Fredericksburg, Texas. Photo by Frank Thompson at virtualtourist.com. Click on photo to go to site. 

Fredericksburg, Texas

Fredericksburg is a strange place.  I don't mean that in a negative way.  It is strange as in the good strange.  I never knew much about the town, other than its German roots, before I visited there.  Nestled in the Texas Hill Country, it is seems to defy what you'd think a Texas town would be.

First of all, as LHM chronicles in the chapter from which I took the quote, this town in about as landlocked a place that you could ever think was the home town one of the bigger than life leaders that won World War II, Chester Nimitz.  That might not seem too off kilter, because we expect Texas to give us bigger than life military heroes.  But an admiral?  And not just an admiral, but the admiral in charge of the entire Pacific theater during World War II.  And not only that, but a man of German descent who helped defeat the Axis Powers - we should remember that when we question immigrants' fidelity to their new country.

LHM writes that Nimitz' grandfather built a hotel in Fredericksburg, and the shape of the hotel suggested a steamboat.  He speculates that the young Chester Nimitz might have gotten his attraction to his maritime career by seeing that hotel "sail" across the Texas landscape.  Nimitz, like a lot of bigger than life heroes, was a straight-ahead military commander.  He was the exact counterpoint to General Douglas MacArthur, the other larger than life commander in the Pacific Theater, whose military style was based on deception and counterthrust.  Nimitz's straight ahead style got him in trouble in his early career when he ran his first command, a destroyer, aground on a reef.  The resulting court martial did not derail him, however, and his efforts and the efforts of the men of all services that he put into battle turned the tide against the Japanese and won the war.  Today, his deeds are celebrated in history, on film, and in the National Museum of the Pacific War in his home town of Fredericksburg.

That's just one little example.  A second example is Fredericksburg's overwhelming German feel.  When I lived in San Antonio, a neighbor and colleague in my Master's program was German - I mean speaks fluent German German.  I was surprised to learn that his father, an officer in the German Air Force, was stationed in El Paso and retired to Fredericksburg.  Why would the German Air Force have an officer in El Paso, I wondered?  A liaison?  It turned out that the German Air Force had planes and men stationed in El Paso because they used the air base there for training.  When my friend's father retired from his military service, they settled in Fredericksburg.  And after visiting there, I understood why.  The town is SO German that English is almost, but not quite, a second language.  Townspeople gather at public places and play skat, a German card game.  The town has a distinct German feel and taste.  The only thing was at the time it didn't have a brewery, which surprised me, though you can get good beer in Fredericksburg.

Of course, the Fredericksburg that LHM describes, the unselfconscious town, has been somewhat replaced by tourist-grabbing stores.  Fredericksburg now knows it's a tourist destination as that German city in the middle of Texas.  But in some ways, because many of the residents are first or second generation Germans and its comparative isolation, it still retains that sense of authenticity that you don't find in other similar places nearer large population centers.

Some of our best moments near Fredericksburg came at Enchanted Rock State Park.  Enchanted Rock is sort of like Texas' mini-Ayres Rock.  It is a large buried boulder sticking out of the ground a few minutes north of Fredericksburg.  A short climb brings you to the top, where you can view out over the surrounding Texas landscape. 

I walk down a side of Enchanted Rock while my dog Hannibal watches. Photo by Megan Kamerick.The natives in the region considered it sacred, and one can almost feel the eons of history that the rock, unmoving, has experienced.  Sit on top of the unchanging rock, with the breeze whistling through your hair and past your ears, and you can be at any point in time you choose. 

Boulder sentinels stand guard atop Enchanted Rock. Photo by Michael L. HessOn the rock, the cosmos whirl about you, until with cleansed heart you travel back to Fredericksburg for a bratwurst and kraut, a good beer, and the sound of German in the middle of America.

Musical interlude

For a Texas musical interlude, we have Austin singer-songwriter Sara Hickman, another of my favorites.  Sara was named the 2010-2011 State Musician of Texas.  She is a fun songwriter, and very committed to children and moms.  I've never seen her live, unfortunately.  This is a little throwaway ditty called "Are We Ever Gonna Have Sex Again" that she did on a local television show, but you can see her humor in her lyrics and her style.  When I first heard her I got a crush on her...and this song does not help that at all.

If you want to know more about Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg Chamber of Commerce
Fredericksburg Convention and Visitors Bureau
Fredericksburg History
Fredericksburg Online
Fredericksburg Standard (newspaper)
Oktoberfest Fredericksburg
Wikipedia: Enchanted Rock
Wikipedia: Fredericksburg

Next up: Mason, Texas

Blue Highways: Stonewall, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapThis post explores perceptions of good and evil, focused around Stonewall, Texas as the birthplace and home of President Lyndon B. Johnson.  Seems like a lot more than what William Least Heat-Moon intended, right?  That's the beauty of our Littourati journey - we can take side trips!  Click on the map to see where Stonewall is located, and explore your own nature and motivations as you read!

Book Quote

"The road went directly into a sunset that could have been a J.M.W. Turner painting. Colors, texture, the horizontal composition were his. I'd never thought Turner a realist. The land, now cattle and peach country, wasn't so rocky and dry as the great ridges I'd just crossed. West of Stonewall, I saw the last of dusk, and under a big desert night, I drove in the small coziness of my headlamps until Sonny's beer made me stop. While I stood, an uncommon amount of noise came invisibly through the brush. Whatever it was, I felt vulnerable and tried to hurry. The moonlight wasn't much, but what I could make out looked like a tiptoeing army helmet. I was moving backwards when I realized it was an armadillo. I stopped, it waddled on, sniffed me out at the last moment, and shifted direction without hurry."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 5

President Lyndon Johnson's birth-site, LBJ Ranch. Photo by Timothy Tray at www.city-data.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Stonewall, Texas

LHM references J.M.W. Turner in the quote above, remarking that he "never thought Turner a realist."  In an article on Wikipedia that I read recently, it turns out that Turner may have been a realist after all.  A lot of volcanic action around the world during the early 1800s created especially bright and vivid sunsets that he captured in his paintings, as well as a "year without a summer" in which temperatures were so cold in Europe during the summer months that crops were ruined, leading to a food shortage crisis.

But that was just a little interesting fact that I learned.  What I really want to write about is good and evil.  LHM either misses, or just simply doesn't remark about, that just west of Stonewall lies the Lyndon B. Johnson Ranch - now a National Historical Park.  Why should that bring up good and evil?  Bear with me a moment while I coalesce a few points around this theme.

Very recently I went to a production of the musical Wicked.  The Broadway touring company came through Albuquerque and we paid outrageous prices to go see it.  We were interested in the musical because a few months earlier we had read the book to each other.

Both the book and the musical had as their subjects the nature of good and evil.  The book is much darker and more subsumed in philosophical, religious and political themes than the musical can be - the musical focuses on easy to reach themes and is in essence a love story.  The book, which author Gregory Maguire wrote partly because of questions unanswered in the original Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum, examines what made the Wicked Witch of the West so evil.  We learn that sometimes people are evil not necessarily because of what they do, but how others perceive their actions and the consequences of those actions.  It is also an exploration of how some can come to believe themselves evil, which filters into their persona so that, in essence, they become what they believe.

The Wicked Witch of the West is portrayed, in MacGuire's Wicked, as a young woman named Elphaba who is idealistic, a believer in and protector of the rights of Animals (in Oz, animals that have capability of higher thought and speech), but who also has some strikes against her - namely that she is green, and therefore a freak.  She is a zealot, willing to fight for what she believes, but her actions are considered dangerous and she is hated and wanted by the government for her evils.  On the other hand, Glinda, the Good Witch, is really a bubble-headed, vacuous and shallow person who is "good" simply by the virtue of her beauty and her connections.  Eventually, the Wicked Witch of the West, through her own actions, events not in her control, politics and her own self-loathing, becomes that which she originally despises.  She becomes wicked almost because there is no other choice for her.

How does this relate to anything about Stonewall?  I see President Lyndon Johnson in similar terms.  He was a remarkably complex man, driven by an intense desire to do something to bring the country together and who pushed through some of the most comprehensive legislation to deal with poverty that the United States has ever seen.  He was a Texan, a vice-president under Kennedy who was put on Kennedy's ticket to deliver southern Democratic votes but who was not thought highly of by the Kennedy administration.  Back then, vice presidents were basically around to perform ceremonial duties and to break the occasional tie vote in the Senate.  However, when Kennedy was assassinated, this "hick" from Texas was thrust front and center.  His War on Poverty was rooted in his own poor depression-era background and his experiences teaching in small Texas schools.  He was ruthless as a politician, and was feared and admired for the pressure that he could put on an individual to get what he wanted.  To this day, the programs enacted in the War on Poverty and in his vision of a Great Society are hated by conservatives as the epitomy of big government and government intrusion in people's lives.  For these programs, some people regard him as "evil" while others praise his attempts to deal with some of America's most pressing issues.

Johnson also did a number of less-than-honorable things.  He authorized FBI wire-taps of Martin Luther King, Jr. (continuing a policy started by the Kennedy administration) and he supported the overthrow of a number of democratically elected left-wing governments in Latin America.

The Vietnam War, however, will always be associated with Johnson.  While he did not get the United States involved in Vietnam - U.S. involvement was begun by Kennedy and the situation was bequeathed to Johnson - Johnson escalated U.S. involvement.  He believed that if South Vietnam fell, a domino effect would lead to communist takeovers in other countries and threaten democracies and capitalism everywhere.  He believed in the military power and might of the U.S.  To him, South Vietnam's defense was necessary to maintain U.S. power and influence, and his own reputation.  While his motivations were complex, consisting of good but also self-serving elements, his actions committed thousands to death and untold numbers more to consequences felt throughout their lifetimes in the form of injuries, addictions, mental disorders, and broken lives.  Does his single-minded pursuit of victory in what became an unwinnable contest make him evil?  Some think so.  Eventually, Johnson was dissuaded from running for a second full term as president because of popular opinion and demonstrations against the Vietnam War which was largely blamed on him.

Regardless of where you stand on Lyndon Johnson, the Vietnam War, the War on Poverty and the Great Society, a visit to his ranch gives an inside look at a very complex individual who had a great impact on our country.  Regardless of how you view his actions, some of the popular perception of him does not fit.  His actions had consequences, but like most people, his actions also were rooted in personal beliefs that he was doing good, but rendered more complex by human psychological frailties and wants.  Good or evil?  We all confront our actions and sometimes those actions and events combine to create consequences that are labeled one way or the other.  It is easy to make the world black and white, but really Johnson's life, like the themes of Wicked and countless other works of literature, show that those black and white labels conceal a lot of gray, like hair color on a 60-something person.  In the end we really don't have much control over how others ultimately categorize our lives, our actions and ourselves.

Musical Interlude

In my new effort to highlight some musicians from Texas that I really like, I present you with Junior Brown. Though born in Indiana, he's became a sensation in Austin, Texas playing a double necked guitar of his own invention that was a combination electric guitar and steel guitar.  The song attached below is Venom Wearin' Denim and is in keeping with the subject of witches, good and evil.  We've all met and sometimes been hurt by such people - though I keep in mind that though their actions seem meaning to be damaging, sometimes they may be the result of complex psychology.  Enjoy!

If you want to know more about Stonewall

Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Site
Lyndon B. Johnson State Park
Stonewall Chamber of Commerce
Texas Escapes: Stonewall
Texas State Historical Association: Stonewall
Wikipedia: Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park
Wikipedia: Stonewall

Next up: Fredericksburg, Texas

Blue Highways: Johnson City, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapWilliam Least Heat-Moon (LHM) leads us to speculate on wanderlust today as we drive with him through Johnson City, Texas.  Satisfy your wanderlust by reading through the post and click on the map thumbnail if you want to see where the wanderlust has led us so far.

Book Quote

"Johnson City was truly a plain town. The 'Lyndon B. Johnson Boyhood Home,' pleasantly plain, is here; and commercial buildings on the square were plain and homely. The best piece, the refurbished Johnson City Bank of rough-cut fieldstone, was perhaps the only bank in the country to be restored rather than bulldozed for a French provincial Tudor hacienda time-and-temperature building."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 5

Downtown Johnson City, Texas. Photo by William Beauchamp on TexasEscapes.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Johnson City, Texas

I have been reading a set of daily meditations for men, and a recent mediation was "wanderlust."  The questions I was supposed to consider were whether I ever had wanderlust and what I did about it.

I think I developed my wanderlust early but was a little timid to do anything about it.  I grew up in Northern California, and went to college there.  After a year-long relationship in my junior year that ended and left me somewhat heartbroken, and then a short and intense relationship in my senior year that abruptly ended, I decided I needed to get out of California and see something of the rest of the country.  I joined a volunteer program and went east of California for the first time in my life, to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  I lived there for 10 years, and it was there that my wanderlust truly kicked in.

I was lucky enough to eventually have a job that allowed me travel to other states.  In particular, I loved my trips to the East Coast.  I would take the car provided with my job and drive through Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, down through New Jersey to Phillie, back through West Virginia and so on.  I took small roads when I could, much like William Least Heat-Moon (this was before I ever read him).  I turned off on side roads to see places with interesting names.  It was during my time in Milwaukee, in my early thirties, when I made my first backpacking trip to Europe and visited nine countries over the course of 2½ months.

I am lucky enough to marry a woman who also loves to travel, and together we've lived in exciting places (Milwaukee, San Antonio, New Orleans, Albuquerque) and traveled together to Europe twice (once as international observers to Northern Ireland, once to Germany for a wedding which involved side trips to Poland and the Czech Republic).  I've been very fortunate to have some jobs that allowed me to travel as part of my work.  In San Antonio, I made thrice yearly trips to New York City, and made a fact-finding trip to Bangladesh as well as the international observer trip to Northern Ireland.

Even in Albuquerque, I have been able to travel.  Once on a day's notice, I helped a 70 year old woman deliver a van from Albuquerque down to a rural community in the state of Guanajuato in Mexico.  I traveled to El Salvador for immersion Spanish lessons.

I write all this not to chalk up my traveling experiences.  Others have traveled more widely and extensively than me.  We have a friend whose goal is to visit thirty countries by the time she's thirty, and she probably will.  But in the spirit of my meditation assignment, what stands out to me is my willingness, not necessarily my ability, to go places and to explore my world.  Take my life in San Antonio, for example.  While there, my wife and tried to explore Texas as well as we could.  In particular, we wanted to see the Texas hill country, which we heard was beautiful, especially when the wildflowers bloomed in the spring.  That exploration took us a few times to the environs of Johnson City.

Originally, when I thought of wanderlust, Johnson City would not have been the first name that would have come to my mind as a destination.  Wanderlust initially meant to me exotic climes and adventures in faraway lands.  For example, under this paradigm, my trips to Bangladesh, El Salvador, Mexico, and even Europe, would have been considered by me true examples of the product of wanderlust.

But wanderlust means so much more than trying to take a trip to some faraway place.  There's nothing to say that wanderlust can't involve a plain sounding place like Johnson City.  It was our wanderlust that brought us into the Texas hill country - we'd heard of wonders like Pedernales Falls and Enchanted Rock (more on that when we get to Fredericksburg) and the historic LBJ Ranch.  We knew that a place like Luckenbach existed in that area, where Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and other musicians were known to frequent.  It was those draws, plus a willingness to see new things and experience something different that brought us there.  And, we even stopped in Johnson City to eat at a place called Uncle Kunkel Barbecue, simply because it reminded us of a person that lived in Milwaukee with the same last name.

So to me, wanderlust is a desire to go anyplace, see anything, and to constantly have that yearning to travel.  Wanderlust is not confined to the high marquee places.  A person who has true wanderlust is one who will turn off a main highway because a name looks interesting, or because they're just curious about what's up that road.  True wanderlust leads us to places like Johnson City as much or more often than places like St. Croix, and allows us to learn if there is anything there.  Most of the time, we'll find something interesting.

I have wanderlust.  I try to travel.  When I can't, I read and scratch my wanderlust itch through others' experiences and words.  And now I write in this blog about both experiences.  As Terri Hendrix, Texas singer-songwriter from the Texas hill country, sings: "Take me places I've never been before."  I hope I never lose this affliction and gift.

I leave you in this post with a video of Terri Hendrix, a marvelous musician and one of my favorites, singing Jim Thorpe's Blues from her album The Spiritual Kind.  The guy playing mandolin is her longtime collaborator Lloyd Maines, who is the father of Natalie Maines, lead singer for the Dixie Chicks.

If you want to know more about Johnson City

Johnson City Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Center
Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park
Pedernales Falls State Park
Texas Escapes: Johnson City
Texas State Historical Association: Johnson City
Wikipedia: Johnson City

Next up: Stonewall, Texas