Sheltered Lands

T E X A S The jolly pilot announces we’re currently flying over Paris, Texas and should be landing in Dallas soon.   Looking north, I spot the Red River – a dividing line between Texas and Oklahoma.   Now oriented, I search for the two main destinations of this Texas trip – Clymer Meadow and Lennox Woods.   But from high above, I can’t differentiate features within the homogenous flatness, and it makes me question why I chose to add two Nature Conservancy (TNC) properties in east Texas to my collection.   Usually, TNC sites look very dynamic from the air.   But Clymer and Lennox apparently lie hidden in the flatness.   Though I can’t identify specifics, what is apparent is a change in the landscape occurring near Paris.   Ever since leaving Washington, DC, our flight has crossed mostly a forested landscape, but at Paris, trees give way to prairies.   And it’s these adjoining landscapes I’ll be visiting, both of which reveal Texas as it was befo...

Love Creek Preserve, Medina, Texas M E D I N A,  T X When Ranch Road 2828 intersects Main Street in Medina, Texas, I’m surprised by how small this town is.   Everything’s bigger in Texas, right?   But Medina is small .   I was hoping to stop here for breakfast and a few water bottles before heading off to visit Love Creek Preserve.   There’s not even a gas station here.   But then I spot a divey BBQ joint that surprisingly is open for breakfast.   I skeptically pull into the empty parking lot, and while getting out of my rental car a woman named Karen emerges and stoutly asks “Where’d you come from?”   I say Virginia but she doesn’t like my answer.   She wants to know specifically which roads I drove in on this morning.   Some areas got four inches of rain overnight and many of the roads in the area have flooded.   Apparently, I chose a flood-free route to Medina.   I tell her I was unimpeded in my hour long drive over fr...

Enchanted Rock, Texas C R A B A P P L E,  T X Enchanted Rock Natural Area is a phenomenon of monumental proportions.   Essentially, it’s a bald, dome-shaped batholith rising 425 feet above Big Sandy Creek in the Texas Hill Country.   Imagine a large sand dune all of a sudden hardened over.   Its dome shape comes from exfoliation – millions of years of thin skin layers flaking exposing the underlying next layer to begin the process again.   Traveling toward Enchanted Rock Natural Area along Ranch Road 965 from Crabapple, Texas, you crest a hill and all of a sudden, there it is.   An unusually large bald hill in pinkish hue standing out prominently amid its tree and shrub-brush covered neighbors.   It’s easy to see how Enchanted Rock it got its name.    There are a number of legends surrounding this beautiful monadnock.   Native tribes revered it as a holy portal to other worlds.   Others believe that spending the night o...