Day 10: Lake Ratcliff, TX, to Austin, TX

 Day Ten: May 8: Radcliff Lake, TX, to Austin, TX

Weather: High around 88, overcast, humid with a heat index of 97 degrees

Distance Traveled:  217 miles

        Traveling the night before through mile after mile of the forest land of east Texas --  thick with tall pines -- I cut off two-lane Texas Route 7 into Ratcliff Lake Park.  Located in the Davy Crockett National Forest in east Texas, the “lake” is a man-made, 45 acre pond built by the Central Coal an Coke Company at the turn of the last century. They operated a sawmill here from 1902 to 1920.

Built as a Civilian Conservation Corps project in 1936, this park has served people mostly from Texas to Mississippi.  Just outside of Kennard, Texas -- population, 372 -- and admittedly a minor National Forest Service park, it nonetheless occasionally attracts an occasional visitor.  But it was empty on a weekday night in early May when I arrived. 

I awoke after 9 hours of sleep, at 6:50 AM.  By 11:00, I had: eaten my breakfast of avocado toast, one slice with egg -- once over lightly -- the other with smoked trout I had purchased at the farmers’ market in Asheville, a bowl of blueberries, bananas and raspberries with coconut, almond and oat milk, grapefruit juice (because OJ might contribute to my kidney stones) and one cup of Bialetti-Moka-pot coffee with scalded milk, all cooked on a camp stove; washed my dishes in a camp bathroom, taken a shower and shaved; returned to my tent site and broke camp.  It was a full morning. 

Deciding to exercise before the hottest portion of the day, I decided to walk a short trail of 1.7 miles.  Walking down the tar road before meeting the trail head, a older man drove up in a small. Jeep-like vehicle.  It was a US Forest Service volunteer.  “Bob Tucker,” he said in a thick, east Texas drawl as he shook my hand.

“I’m from 35 miles away from here.  I was in the military and contracting for 30 years, then I came back to the area.  For the last 8 months, I drive around and try to help out.  My father hunted coon and deer in the region.  I grew up in these woods, and I’m most at home in them.”

“What’s that type of pine?,” I asked.

“Loblolly.  These are all 90-100 years old.  They clear cut the area before they left, in 1920.”  Predominating the forest, he listed the secondary species that populate the grounds: sugar maples, silver maples, sweet gum (one of which dropped a few dozen of its spikey seedballs on my tent platform), a few elms, hickory, iron wood, and dog wood.  The bark of the loblolly pine has large, roughly rectangular plates, like armor.  As they grow, they drop their lower branches, leaving a straight trunk without limbs to a height of sixty to eighty feet.  A timberman’s delight.

“There is water here,” I continued with my questions.  “Why are there no bugs?”  Last night, I undressed in the dark outside my tent, which is far more comfortable a position in which to take off one’s shirt than in the cramped quarters of a tent for two.  The lack of insects was obvious.  Back home, I told him, a person would have been bitten by black flies, no-see-ems, deer flies or mosquitos.

“You just missed the termites.  When they come in the spring, there are swarms of them. They come up out of the ground.  They congregate at the stumps [from where the park service has cut several trees].  It looks like a cloud.  When they come, we’re brushing ‘em off our arms.”

I thanked him and went off from hike at a quick pace.  The woods had groves of loblolly pines. 

The soil was sandy, the color of light sable.  Occasionally, there was an outcropping of red clay.  No one else was on the trail.  It had rained in the last two days.  There wasn’t a fresh boot mark the entire way.

My hike completed, I got back on Texas Route 7 and headed west. On that rural road with only two lanes and minimal shoulder, it occurred to me that Texas is one of the few states where folks often drive slower than the posted speed limit. When the speed limit is 75 mph on a two lane road however, prudent people will drive 70.

Outside the park, one quickly enters Kennard, Texas, population 277 (as of 2022). Here, the forests gave way to open pasture land mixed with forest, then increasing just pasture land, all the way to Austin. Clumps of Queen Anne’s Lace and fields of Black-Eyed Susans lined the road here and there all the way to Madisonville, the next Tesla charging station.

        Political Note: Between Roanoke, Virginia and Austin, Texas -- indeed, between Roanoke and L.A., California -- I saw only two Trump flags and one Trump sign. These emblems of political alignment were all in East Texas, on the Louisiana border. The two flags were in front of houses. The sign was too, but more prominently placed by the road so that passersby could read it, and it was interesting. It was downright polite: "Please Vote for Donald J. Trump." Done in the colors and design of a Texas state flag, it almost begged folks.

        If there were an election between Trump and the State of Texas in East Texas, and one were judging by the number of flags out, the State of Texas would be the favorite, hands down. There were Texas flags in front of homes, ranches, auto dealerships, a rug store, a tire repair shop, an auto repair shop and farm stands. The State of Texas is popular in this part of the world.

        Also from Roanoke to central Texas, the predominant church sitting aside a US route, state road, county road or back road is Baptist.  The signs out front provide clues as to the Black or White variants of the Baptist faith.  “Gospels sung here!” read the sign in front of a Baptist church in rural Tennessee, obviously appealing to a culturally Black clientele.  Types of Baptists aside, if one encounters a church for the first time, the probability that it will be Baptist nears 100 per cent in this part of the world.  The names are legion: The First Baptist Church of Such-and-Such; The Calvary Baptist Church (of which there are several); The Mount Zion Baptist Church; The Grace Baptist Church; The Good Hope Baptist Church; The Bethlehem Baptist Church; The New Life Baptist Church; and so forth.  I began to have fun.  Entering a town, I would approach a church -- usually one-story, but occasionally two -- and before I could see the sign up front declaring its particular faith I would say, “Baptist!,” and I would be right.  It is one of the few occasions when a person can almost always be right.

        That night, I met Steven Murff at Matt's El Rancho Restaurant for dinner, where I highly recommend the Blackened Redfish. The restaurant is a bit of a local landmark, and even on a Wednesday night it was hopping. Family and friends gathered to dine, en masse. It's a bit of a mill, but they seated us quickly, without a reservation.

        Steven is the husband of Clare Taylor's niece. A very pleasant man in his early fifties, he quit his job at the end of last year, and now is a stay-at-home Dad to three young children. Clare's niece, his wife, is a veterinarian. She makes a good income, and they can afford for Steve to step out of the workplace. He was delighted not to come with the kids as, "That would have been quite hectic," he said.

        "I was in procurement. I wanted out, so I negotiated with my boss. Because I developed niche expertise with a large client, and because they wanted to transfer the account, it turned out that I was the only one to do the work. So I asked for an additional $15,000 per month. They paid it, from March until the end of the year." The work dragged on for 8 months, and by the time it was done, he was glad to say goodbye.

        Dinner with him was a delightful affair. Even though we did not know each other, it was terrific to have even the most tenuous of connections.

    

        Back at my AirBnB by the airport in southeast Austin, I went to bed and slept soundly.