Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i Texas Highways Magazine

If the desert is a play, then Willow House owner Lauren Werner is its set designer. Every detail of her singular Terlingua hotel, comprised of small concrete boxes located 6 miles from Big Bend National Park, has been arranged for visitors to bear witness to the wild pageant of nature. The porch of each casita is a front-row seat to the Chisos Mountains and their ever-shifting drama of color, shadows, and light. Werner designed the hotel with the goal of making sure no one misses the show. Take what I call the “star bed.” Near the ravine that edges the arid 287-acre property of rocks and creosote brush, Werner has installed a padded platform that dangles from a steel frame, suspended in midair. It’s the place to be at night,…

“SO, FOREST BATHING?” my husband inquires dubiously on a sublime fall day as we drive south on Our Highway of Perpetual Construction, Interstate 35. We’re heading from Austin to New Braunfels, where I’m going to investigate this exact practice. “Yes?” I counter. “Are you sure this isn’t going to be a repeat of that Jemez Mountains deal?” he asks. That “Jemez Mountains deal” was a cross-country ski trip we’d taken in New Mexico. Our destination was a “secret” hot spring where we’d envisioned taking a blissful, private soak. When we approached the rising mist at the end of a long, snowy trail, however, we spotted three burly German tourists, completely nude except for surprising amounts of body hair. Friendly types, they all stood to greet us. Hard pass on tubbing…

Whether you call them crawfish, crayfish, crawdads, or mudbugs, these feisty little freshwater crustaceans are beloved by growing numbers of Texans. Though crawfish are typically associated with Louisiana's Cajun cuisine, demand for them has increased exponentially around the state over the past few years as more Texans learn about the joys of convivial crawfish boils and restaurant feasts. But where does this burgeoning supply come from, and how do crawfish get from their native muddy habitats to restaurants and countless backyard festivities? You may not think of crawfish as a crop, but the majority are raised on farms, most often alongside rice in the same periodically flooded fields in Louisiana and adjacent Southeast Texas. Responding to market demands, more and more rice farmers are incorporating red swamp crawfish into their…

Filmmaker King Vidor was only 6 years old when he survived the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. The Great Galveston Storm of 1900 nearly wiped out his hometown and claimed an estimated 8,000 lives. It also left Vidor with a moment that he said “influenced me throughout my life.” As his family found shaky refuge in the house of a friend, Vidor heard powerful singing coming from another room, which was packed with about 40 African Americans. “They even had segregation under those conditions,” he recalled in a 1976 interview. “It was facing death about as close as you can face it. … The impressions of people praying and the Black people singing spirituals and hymns never left me. The theme of inner strength and personal expression in the…

Virginia Parker Condie and her teammates set two records as they paddled to a fourth-place finish in the Texas Water Safari in June 2019. Racing 260 miles in a canoe down the San Marcos and Guadalupe rivers, the foursome became the first all-female team to finish the race in under 40 hours and the first all-female team to finish in the top five overall. Her love of canoeing the San Marcos spurred Condie to move to the riverside town of Martindale in 2013 with her husband, Andrew Condie, also a competitive paddler. Founded in 1855 by a Mississippi settler named Nancy Martindale, the community farmed cotton and became a center of hybrid corn and cottonseed production in the 1960s. Farms still blanket the area, while river sports also boost the…

W.C. Jameson, based in Llano, is one of the most famous treasure hunters in recent history. He got his start as a chore boy on a successful hunt for gold ingots in the Guadalupe Mountains almost 70 years ago, and he has since been a consultant for shows on the History and Discovery channels. In addition to his career searching for treasure, Jameson has written over 100 books, more than 40 of which are about treasure hunting. These include Buried Treasures of Texas and a memoir called Treasure Hunter: Caches, Curses, and Confrontations. What was your favorite Texas treasure hunt? When I was 11 years old and I got to participate in recovering those 100 gold ingots. This was back in 1953. At the time, it was actually illegal to…

Get yourself near nature. Sit down next to a houseplant or an open window. Find a spot on a fire escape or your patio, or in your backyard or a nearby park. It does not have to be a wilderness expedition. Leave your phone at home. The idea is to slow everything down. Find a sit-spot and be still for a minimum of 30 minutes. Pay attention. Notice. Create a scent blend of dirt, leaves, and flowers. Rub it. Smell it. Dig in the dirt with a stick. Put your feet and hands in water. Feel the breeze on your face and hair. Put your forehead against a tree and hug it. Reconnect with joy, and remember that we are human beings, not human doings. To find a guide near…

Outdoor Afro The California-based nonprofit has outposts in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, with local leaders organizing outdoor activities like hikes, kayaking excursions, and fishing trips. outdoorafro.com/locations/state/TX Black Outside Inc. Based in San Antonio, this organization offers two outdoors programs geared toward youth. Camp Founder Girls is a Texas summer camp, and CR Bloom Project is a healing program for kids of incarcerated parents. blackoutside.org Texas Outdoor Family The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department program offers guidance for first-time campers and burgeoning outdoors enthusiasts. Scheduled throughout the year, the workshops are led by rangers and cover basics like how to set up a tent and general safety. tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/programs/texas-outdoor-family…

The Champ (1931) The story follows a washed-up alcoholic boxer who comes out of retirement for one last shot at redemption in the eyes of his son. Stella Dallas (1937) Barbara Stanwyck was nominated for a best actress Oscar for her role as a working-class mother who neglects her own needs for the happiness of her social-climbing daughter, played by Anne Shirley, an Oscar nominee for best supporting actress. The Fountainhead (1949) With Ayn Rand adapting the script from her novel about an uncompromising architect, this film is noted for Vidor’s stylized urban imagery and the sexual tension between stars Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. Ruby Gentry (1952) Jennifer Jones stars as a woman scorned by townspeople as a “gold digger” after her rich husband dies in a boating accident.…

My mom always said an anthill in Houston may as well be a mountain. She longed for majestic landscapes found on postcards of the California coast or the French countryside. Instead, she spent all 68 years of her life surrounded by the comparatively flat terrain of Fort Worth and Houston. She complained, but she never left. She was surrounded by anthills instead of Alps, but Texas was her home. Unlike my mom, I did eventually leave Texas in search of grander vistas. I followed the well-worn path to California, the one so many before and since have traveled. Once there, I was sure I would never leave. Humidity was generally low, city streets smelled like jasmine, and bursts of magenta bougainvillea seemed to bloom year-round. I figured I’d be one…

Castle Gap Treasure: The riches of soon-to-be-executed Mexican emperor Maximilian were on their way to Galveston in the 1860s, but guards protecting the treasure stole it. The guards hid the gold and jewels near Castle Mountain south of Midland. The Lost San Saba Mine: After hearing rumors of an abandoned silver mine, Stephen F. Austin sent soldiers to search the San Saba River for caches of silver, but they came back empty-handed. Jim Bowie also struck out in his search, and the mine remains undiscovered. Hendricks Lake: Pirate Jean Lafitte stole six wagonloads of silver from a Spanish ship. Spanish forces closed in on the wagons, which were pushed into the East Texas lake to avoid capture. The Lost Chisos Mine: What Dearen calls the chief legend of Big Bend…

FROM HER EARLIEST YEARS TAKING PICTURES as a kid in Houston, Theresa DiMenno was fascinated by the everyday sights around her. She trained her Kodak Instamatic on subjects that caught her attention—her fifth-grade teacher on the last day of school, cloud formations over the ocean on family trips to Galveston, and the sun setting over the Katy Prairie. After high school, DiMenno worked an office job before heading west for a three-month trip to California. The experience was transformative. She returned home with a newfound interest in photography, awakened by a fresh perspective on her home state and the way the light danced over open spaces and horizons. “Light informs color and mood,” says DiMenno, who now lives in Austin. “It’s the heart of my passion and chosen career path…

Fire brewing is one of the oldest forms of beer production in the world, and one of the few commercial breweries in the U.S. using this historic technique is in Red Rock, just east of Lockhart. There, Wild Bunch Brewing Co. creates flavorful beer cooked over an open flame like a batch of oatmeal. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, all beer was brewed over an open flame, from the earliest recorded beers in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to those brewed by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Like horseback riding, fire brewing, also known as direct firing, was once ubiquitous but is now a niche pursuit requiring the deft and dedicated hand of someone as passionate and precise as Wild Bunch co-owner and head brewer Jarle Lillemoen. A native of Norway,…

In all of Texas’ 268,597 square miles, there are only two outdoorsy national parks: Big Bend, known far and wide for its rugged border landscape; and Guadalupe Mountains, which features Texas’ tallest peak. Visitors who make the trip to far West Texas to visit the Guadalupes are rewarded with some of the most stunning sights in the state. Pine Springs Visitor Center No matter what adventure lies ahead, start here—not only to get a permit and let the rangers know where you’re headed, but also to learn about the park’s amazing diversity. Interpretive displays cover the plants, animals, and history found in the Chihuahuan Desert and the mountain range, an ancient fossil reef. Plenty of taxidermied animals on display show what you might encounter in the park. And don’t miss…