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.