It was a long weekend. It was Sunday, so we parked at Spec’s and walked to the Violet Crown Trail trailhead where we began our hike.
As we walked thru the Oak and Juniper and Elm forest, the path descended into a canyon. We stepped on white limestone ledges. Years and countless years of encroaching and receding Cretaceous seas. Endless years of shallow tidal marshes and lagoons. Of reef detritus and oolite shoals. Of carbonate muds and sands. Of waters lapping against reef trends. The hard, vuggy, cracked limestone remnants on which and over which we stepped.
We hiked back into time.
There were dry creek beds where sometimes the water flows and we thought on this day of this wet summer it might but it wasn’t. The trail flattened and the dogs began to pull. We heard the Mopac expressway to the west — the rush of traffic even on a Sunday afternoon. And we heard louder traffic on 360 ahead of us.
Wait… why is the 360 traffic louder? It shouldn’t be.
Is wasn’t.
That rush of traffic was in fact the rush of Barton Creek tumbling across a broken limestone shelf. The water was clear where it ran swiftly, and greenish-blue where it slowed in a lazy pool below the rapids. Sunlight fell in dappled puddles on the ground, filtered thru Sycamore trees growing along the water’s edge, growing in the creek.
This is the place we chose to stop. To rest. To drink the water we brought with us. To eat an apple snack. Under the Sycamores. Beside the rushing rapids. In the water. We sat in awe of that amazing thing.