March 21, 2009 - Seminole Canyon State Park - Comstock Texas

This place was damn hard to find. Four miles of open range with cattle guards and then eight miles of gravel. And in spite of this the campsite is well populated for such ‘primitive’ facilities – all due no doubt to ‘spring break’. And I am not happy about this – i.e having fellow campers – oh, I’m such a grouch. And all along the border security is a major stimulant to the economy. Each little town has its Border Guard encampment – hundreds of white vehicles with green strips – there is a lot of wear and tear roaming around though the desert – I wonder why the US auto industry is still hurting. And at night small aircraft with spot lights fly along the border. Ever so often there is a vehicle check – men in green come out with dogs and check you out. Random spot checks would be more effective, but this is what you get when you have a large infrastructure. I think Homeland Security is all designed for peace of mind.- but it sure is a godsend for the local economies. Ask not what Homeland Security can do for you but what you can do for Homeland Security. I smiled and asked how far to Seminole Canyon? And he was polite and replied nine miles ahead.

And it occurs to me if now we have Homeland Security do we need a Department of Defense? You know it used to be called the Department of War but since we no longer have wars maybe is should be called the Department of Offense (don't they say the best defense is an offence?)

For the kind of people who take everything that happens seriously would be nauseated if they should assume that not every event had a good cause – Robert Musil




The ones leafing are elms, those are the pecans (they have deep tap roots and are tolerant of water. Now the hackberries, lets see if I can spot one, oh yes overthere, have roots that radiate out and root when it floods. This one is budding out but that doesn’t mean anything. We’ll probably lose it too.

But do we really need anything more to be sorry about / wouldn’t it be extra, as all pains is extra – Frank O’Hara

Some progress at last
Camp can be set up
Without getting pooped
Feet can be seen
Where belly used
To protrude
The news has not been
Heard in weeks
Have you heard, the news
Oh boy!

For some reason news papers are not the laboratories and experimental stations of the mind that they could be, to the public’s benefit, but usually only its warehouses and stock exchanges – Robert Musil

Crawford Texas

There were eight new trucks
If they had been of local ranchers
They all would have been white
If they had been those of the Secret Service
They all would have been black

We care too little about what is happening and too much about to whom, when, and where it’s happening, so tat it is not the essence of what happens that matters to us but only the plot – Robert Musil

For over five millennia, aboriginal artists recorded elaborate scenes upon the limestone canvas of canyons and rock shelters in an area defined by the lower courses of the Pecos and Devil's rivers and their confluences with the Rio Grande. The Rock Art Foundation exists to promote the conservation and study of the Native American rock art in the Lower Pecos region of Southwest Texas. A three mile hike (six round trip) hike takes you to an overlook above the Rio Grande. Across the way in the Seminole Canyon flooded by the Armistd Reservior is Panther Cave. You can barely make out a fifteen foot long panther done in red pigment. Below the visitor’s center in the Fate Bell Shelter with many pictographs and a few petrographs – accessible only on guided tours.

There is a strange phenomena that happens in art including the Pecos Cave art – over time it then to become abstract, then the culture disappears and eventually hundreds or even a thousand years later a whole ned more realistic style is seen. Now I am not say that abstraction causes the deterioration of culture, but maybe it is indicative of the final stages of a culture. Tomorrow its off to The Big Bend. (yes everything is big in Texas).