river

10-14-09
The only problem I have left with this town-living, having gotten used to the rest, is having nowhere to retreat to...away from Humanity.
Barring earplugs, that is.
I just returned from White's Crossing , on the Llano river.
There is what amounts to a road, now filled with mud, that winds a mile or two upriver, through the pecan bottom.
One passes between, and through, deep oxbow gullies,quiet meadows,and beneath towering limestone cliffs.
This morning, i saw a deer, and a coral snake devouring some smaller, unfortunate snake.
It was quite nice...and peaceful.
I flyfished for a while, till I realised that the river was full of snakes....(!)
Recent rains must've stirred them up...I saw around 10 of them in the water...a.nd decided it wasn't an opportune day for standing in the river
As I was putting my dry shorts on, I heard the arrival of Humans, 3/4 mile away, at the bridge.
It was hard to miss....
Booming bass, echoing off the cliffs, shouts, gunning engine...
So I packed up my gear and headed out,(I was starting to hurt,anyway) hoping to get back to the truck ere they opened fire.
(This has happened before;idiot rednecks with machine guns, shooting up the woods...where I happen to be fishing.)
These folks had left before I had picked my way back....too muddy to run down wildlife with the truck, I guess.
(I have witnessed this behaviour, on more than one occassion, as well...)
There was a new bag of garbage near my truck....I tossed it in the bed.
(This is nothing new either...whereever the public has access to Wildness, around here, there is a debris-field from the encounter.
I regularly bring several bags of trash out of the river...even carry trashbags in my truck....At least this lot was already bagged.)
I had wanted peace and quiet and Nature.
I had the first two, for a while...and I am thankful of that...
And Nature was all around me....
But now that I don't actually live in the Wilderness, there's nowhere to go to get away from people...and their noise and trash and nosiness...