Pride of Place: A Contemporary Anthology of Texas Nature Writing

6. Joe Nick Patoski, “Springs”

91 Chapter 6 Joe Nick Patoski Springs Joe Nick Patoski lives, works, plays, and swims near the Hill Country village of Wimberley. He’s been writing about Texas and Texans for more than 35 years. Of all the features that define the natural state of Texas,nothing speaks to me like springs do. As the source of water in its purest, most pristine form, springs are the basic building block of life. They present themselves in a manner as miraculous as birth itself, gestating in the womblike darkness of an aquifer deep underground until pressure percolates,pushes, and forces it up through cracks, fissures, and faults in the limestone cap until it bubbles, seeps, sometimes even gushes to the surface, magically turning everything around it lush and green. Springs feed creeks, streams, and rivers,and nourish and sustain plant and animal life. Springs are why Texas has been inhabited for tens of thousands of years. Compared to escarpments, aquifers, uplifts, domes, valley, mesas, sky islands, estuaries, and the other natural attributes that make Texas Texas, springs are fairly easy to appreciate and understand. Almost everyone knows springs create swimming holes, and in the middle of a blazing midsummer’s heatwave, there is no better place to be outdoors than in a flowing pool of cool, clear, spring-fed water. It’s God’s own air-conditioning. Texas is blessed with several thousand springs, considerably less than before this region was settled two hundred years ago, perhaps, but more than just about anywhere else. Springs are found from the Piney 92 Woods of East Texas all the way to tucked away places in the desolate desert borderlands of far West Texas. The greatest concentration are clustered in that surreal landscape known as the Texas Hill Country, the proverbial Country of Eleven Hundred Springs at the crossroads of America, where coast meets mountains, prairie dissolves into tropics, woodlands transition into desert, and where wet and dry do an eternal tango. Springs are people friendly. Humans have lived continuously around San Marcos Springs, the second largest springs in Texas, for the past 14,000 years or so. Springs were the landmarks that established seasonal routes for nomadic peoples who roamed this range for hundreds of years and for trade routes crossing the region. Springs determined the historic trails taken by explorers and adventurers, pioneers and fortune-seekers, and railroads and highways over the last couple centuries. For the past few generations, springs have provided aesthetic satisfaction for lollygaggers seeking a direct connection to Mother Nature. I fall into that last category.Springs are my personal connection to the natural world, Texas or otherwise. You can have your Colorado mountains , your slices of watermelon and your gallons of iced tea. You may prefer passing as many of your waking hours in climates far away from here or sealed in climate-controlled comfort 24/7, courtesy of 50,000 BTUs of refrigerated air. I face the heat gladly as long as I’m close to a spring-fed swimming hole.That endless string of broiling days and sweltering nights that wear down the spirit and sap the want-to and can-do in even the hardiest of souls—that’s my favorite time of the year. Springs are the reason why. Oh, I’ll tolerate a swimming pool in a pinch. But whenever I do, I’m reminded why Jed Clampett and television family on The Beverly Hillbillies derisively referred to pools as “cement ponds.” It ain’t natural. The chemical scent and sting of chlorine neutralize any sensations of being cradled in the bosom of Mother Nature, much less the natural Joe Nick Patoski 93 world. Doing laps in a pool is about as satisfying as getting stuck in rush hour traffic on the Stemmons Expressway; the best I can do is stay in my lane and hope I don’t lose count of the number of laps I have to do before I’m done. Charting my own course across a swimming hole is more like a Sunday drive on a meandering Farm to Market Road. In other words, it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got a spring. Great spring-fed swimming holes run the gamut from wild and unsullied to tamed and civilized.All of them promise a setting in which one can cool off, cool down, and cultivate the lazy streak that resides...