Along Olmos Creek, March 2009

I learned of the woods located between the University of the Incarnate Word and Olmos Dam when I enrolled for the Spring 1972 semester at what was then Incarnate Word College. One of the classes I took that semester was Dr. Don McLain's, "Ecology, Environment and Man." The backwoods, as we called it then, was the ideal natural laboratory for this course.


The only things located on the west side of the San Antonio River north of Hildebrand at that time were a tennis court, a garden plot maintained by the Biology Department and a trash dump used by the College where the South stands of the Benson Stadium are now. Over the past thirty-nine years I have spent time photographing these woods which are now under the stewardship of the recently founded Headwaters Coalition, a ministry of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word.


South Texas weather is characterized by perpetual drought periodically broken by torrential rain. The Spring of 2009 was a particularly dry period in San Antonio. Area creeks, for the most part, were dry most of the time that Spring. During one of these dry spells, I had wanted to walk the Olmos Creek east of Olmos Dam where it is the boundary between the Incarnate Word Headwaters Coalition land and the Episcopal Church's Cathedral Park at the Bishop Jones Center (not to be confused with the Cathedral Rock Nature Park).


In March '09, when I set out to explore the creek bed, I thought that at most there would be a trickle of water in the creek. To my surprise there was more water than I had anticipated, but I was still able to successfully walk along, if not always in, this section of the creek bed:

The creek is to the right (North) just out of the frame of this photo.