Up early at the hostel in Austin for a run on the hike and bike trail. I love feeling my body move fluidly over the ground, love feeling every inch of my muscles and bones, how I breathe in oxygen and it feeds every cell of me.
My first use of Craig’s list turned out to be a success – I found a woman who was selling the exact camera charger I needed, after losing her camera. I am hooked – what an incredible thing, this medium that connects strangers in a giant used-goods trade, instead of going to the store and buying new. Sometimes I feel as if we have enough stuff in this country that if we just shuffled it around properly, hardly anyone would really need to buy new things. Of course, stores would go out of business and our economy would lie in shambles of its shambles…but I like to let the non-commercial idealist in me run free sometimes before coming back to realism...
Before I left the Austin, I sat out on a dock on the river with a view of the city skyline with cars racing to and fro over a bridge in the distance, and soaked in the sun and the atmosphere. Chatting with Paula in Chicago, I really got a sense of place – of how far away Austin seems from the Midwest, and how different. I took a moment to appreciate the vastness of this country.
A lone Michigander with bike in tow treks across Texas...
The drive north to the Texas panhandle showed me the true Texan countryside – subtle rolling hills covered in brown grasses and often pastures of cattle, sheep – and in one instance, cattle mixed with sheep – goats, and alpacas. Fields so vast and endless that the trees that dotted them with splotches of green looked like bushes. At a gas station in a small town, I saw a man wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, and boots – with actual spurs on the heels. “Now, I am in Texas,” I thought, as I tried not to stare.
As the sun set and I crunched on the Fritos and spinach dip that I had chosen over the gas station “deli” full of mystery meat, I passed the second wind power field I have encountered in this state. Hundreds of giant windmills were silhouetted against the glowing orange sky, each with a blinking red light. Al together, they welcomed me like friends in the night, and twinkled like so many Christmas lights. Here in Texas, oil refineries – with their city-like incandescent glow at night and years-old sludge by day – share the land with wind power, and although it is indeed a large space to share, I imagine the struggle between old and new, the cries of tradition and big money and the known, marching forward even as these wings whooshing in the winds of the night ease their way into the cracks of America’s energy stronghold. As I drive closer, windmills tower over me as giants in the night sky; I wonder if this struggle is as real or as dramatic as I imagine it – if these two powers do indeed live in peaceful coexistence, or if the mere distance has kept them biding their time, each waiting for better times to come, striving always for power…pun intended.
Arrived at Katy’s house in Amarillo after my drive through the Texas panhandle. She makes me laugh just like the ol’ Vanuatu days – are they really that old already? -- as does her cat who is fond of curling up to sleep in the bathroom sink.
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