Illusions of Invincibility

Day 6, Midweek

I can’t recall which year I bought these rubber boots. It was one of the wet festivals, or at least the first week was wet. Javier called from camp before I left Austin and told me I’d better come prepared. My co-worker Kristi, who lives in the country near Geronimo Creek, knew what I needed. A pair of basic black rubbers like the ones her whole family keeps in their mud room. “They have shelves of them at Academy right now,” she told me. I picked up a pair on my way out of town. Best $12 I ever spent.

Rubber boots are quite the style at this year’s fest. Everybody’s wearing them. Amazin’ Walter’s are red. Laurie has a yellow pair. Some people have pink, striped or patterned. My plain black ones are fine with me. They’re way better than the duck boots I used to have, the ones I got cheap at some yard sale, which never really fit. They were a pain to walk in, always sucking socks down past my heel. The bottom part was indeed waterproof, but if it rained hard enough, the lace holes leaked.

My current boots don’t have those problems. No laces, you just pull 'em on. They’re comfortable if I wear hiking socks. When I’m ready to sleep, I just slip them off and tuck comparatively clean feet into bed. If I have to go out during the night -- I nearly always do -- I quickly slip them on again. Yeah, they’re a little extra weight to drag around, and kind of sweaty. I do get tired of wearing them when the rain goes on for days, as it has this week. But oh, the advantages! With my boots on, I can stride right through those muddy ruts in the road, not stopping to pick my path. I can tromp across a swampy Meadow without worrying about where I step, what I’m not seeing in the dark, or what flows downhill. I can even go wading in Sudden Creek, which I did two mornings ago. The boots come almost to my knees. I splashed around in the water and came out with dry socks.

With my boots on, I don’t need to worry about the fire ants that keep building new mounds on the surface of the saturated ground. Step on an ant mound wearing sandals, or stand still within two feet of one for a minute or two, and they’ll be all over you. I’m not saying fire ants couldn’t climb the slippery sides of these knee-high boots, crawl over the edge and down inside and bite me on the leg. I wouldn’t put it past them. But hopefully before they got that far, I would notice I was standing in an ant mound and take evasive measures.

So it was that last Friday, when I felt a twinge of pain in my left boot, I shrugged my shoulders and told myself it wasn’t happening.
I was tending to online business at Camp Inertia, and probably munching on a snack. My hands were clean. I didn’t want to mess with my feet just then. It kind of felt like an ant was in my boot, but I thought over my recent travels and didn’t see how one could have gotten there. So it was most likely a piece of speargrass, or a beggar’s-lice burr left in my sock from a previous washing, or nothing at all, just a case of aging neurons. I’d check it out later. At the moment, I had better things to do.

An hour or so after that, I walked up to the sink to wash a plate and knife. I was headed back to camp when I felt it on my shin. A sting too intense to ignore; it stopped me in my tracks. No more procrastinating, I had to deal with this right now. I pulled off my boot, right there in the muddy road, and looked at my leg. Not an ant. Not a wasp. It was a brown, many-legged thing about an inch across, and IT WAS STILL ON ME. I screamed.

Before the shriek was all the way out, I saw the curled tail. Not a spider, as I’d first thought, but a scorpion. Not good, but better than it might be. I’d been stung by scorpions before, and knew it wouldn’t kill me.

Peter and Debbie, whose RVs face each other across a shared social area, were coming to get me. “Come here and sit down,” Debbie said, getting an arm around and pulling me along as I protested that I’d be fine, really. Somebody got my plate and knife, and I must have flicked the scorpion off with my hand, because my index finger was hurting, too. I peeled back my sock -- yes, the critter stung me through a wool sock! Peter applied a venom extractor and gave me some painkilling ointment to put on the spot. They thouroughly examined both my boots. I felt silly.

A while back, I was talking with a person who moved here from some other part of the country. She commented on the way Texans always turn their boots upside down and shake them before we put them on. Well, of course we do, I told her. I thought it was funny that she found it funny. This state is full of things, as they say, that stick, stab and sting. You never know what might be lurking in a boot, and it’s best to find out before you put your foot in.

I know this. I was born and reared in Texas. Reviewing my day, I remember I took a nap that afternoon and left the boots standing by the bed. I know to shake out my boots, expecially when I’m camping, but I guess I thought an hour in mid-afternoon didn’t count. Or maybe I just thought those rubber boots made me invincible.

Soggy Saturday

Evening of day 3, and it’s raining.

It is not misting, drizzling, spitting or sprinkling. It’s raining. Pouring. Pounding so hard you can’t carry on a conversation, here under Camp Inertia’s canopy. That roof is not exactly keeping me dry; rain keeps blowing in sideways. It’s dripping off the prayer flags that hang from the eaves. Most of the camp chairs are at least sort of wet. Droplets glitter on my laptop screen and I”m thinking I should find a drier place to sit and write. But I'm not sure where that would be.

It rained so much today, they called off tonight’s concert. This was the night Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell were supposed to play, but Turtle Creek is over the road and Highway 16 is closed, so people can’t get to the ranch. Just like it was in 1987. I hear Emmylou and Rodney are going to do an impromptu acoustic show at the YO Hotel in town. But Javier and I are parked here at the ranch.

Just as I did when this happened in’87, I’m worried that I don’t have enough food to survive a siege. I’d planned to go to town today to get peanut butter, cheese and more tortillas. I didn’t go because it was raining. I kept thinking I’d wait until it stopped.

It stopped for a while after the first gullywasher, the one that hit shortly after breakfast. Javier was napping when the second one came along, but before he crashed he took the precaution of dropping the sheets of plastic that curtain off the bed. I’m not sure it ever quit raining from that point on, but it did let up for maybe half an hour. By that time the floor of our tipi was a puddle pretty much all the way across, and I was glad (again) that we keep our bed up on blocks. We crawled out to check on neighbors, check the fire in the BBQ pit. Someone came by and said Sudden Creek was rising, so I went behind Inertia to check. It’s running faster and muddier than it was yesterday. I found the little girls swimming by the bridge, supervised by parents, and the girls wouldn’t let me pass until I stated my name and purpose.

Another wall of water arrived shortly after that stroll, accompanied by thunder and lightning. So here we are. I shouldn’t worry about food. I live next door to Camp Inertia, and they won’t let anybody starve. Besides, I just heard that the food booths at Main Stage are open, even though there isn't a show. They already had food fixed to sell, and I guess the people who work the booths can't eat it all by themselves.

Settling In

Another Kerrville Season has begun! Readers can find me here over the next two weeks, sharing thoughts and inspirations.

Day 2 - May 22

I can honestly say I got here for Day 1. It was 11:05 p.m. when I came through the gate. Only five acts were on the program, and I figured I’d missed the official concert. But when I’d unloaded my stuff and parked my car in the parking lot, I heard Milkdrive was still on stage, so I went into the theater and listened for awhile.

It’s Friday morning now. A drfiting mist moved in last night, sometime after I arrived, and stayed through the night except for a brief spell of actual rain in the pre-dawn hours. The grass is wet. Condensation is dripping from awnings and canopies. Hawk Mountain is gently wrapped in gray moisture, and the mountains on the other side of the highway are almost invisible. The Eastside Flash stopped by the BBQ pit a moment ago, wearing rainboots, and said the dampness was getting a little old. People who stayed through Land Rush tell me there was a big storm on Wednesday night; Ken Gaines heard 4 or 5 inches of rain. If that’s true, I’m surprised the Muddow isn’t muddier than it is.

Sudden Creek is running like a real creek, burbling merrily through the woods, coursing under bridges, with tents pitched right up on the bank as if people didn’t expect it to go out of control. It’s running clear, which makes me suspect it’s been running for a while and not just carrying runoff from the most recent storm. Out of the woods and into the Meadow, it slides through a channel of bending grasses. The road going down to the Lower Meadow is okay; I guess the ranch built it up at some point and put it culverts to let it go under.

Looking upstream from that crossing, someone has parked two stone-sculpture turtles in the waterway; half submerged in the running stream. I found a family putting up a geodesic space frame on the far bank, and a bunch of little kids in swimsuits, jumping off the plank footbridge and splashing in the water. “Wow,” I said, “you have your own beach.”

“Yep,” quipped the dad, “we won’t have to go to the river this year.”

Chances are nobody’s going to the river today, anyway. The canoe trip got called off; it seems the Guadalupe is running too high. And I wouldn’t even be tempted by our swimming hole on the Medina when the air is this cool. We put an extra blanket on our bed last night. It’s late May. What an unusual spring we’re having.

***

Somewhere around mid-afternoon, I went down for a nap. Woke up around 5:30 p.m. and the sun is shining. Rather than a uniform grey like it was this morning, the sky is blue and white like the side of our tipi, with a lot of fluffy clouds. Birds are singing. The grass looks greener, and I can see the hills across the road just fine. Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda! Time to get ready for tonight’s show.