Brackenridge Park, Part 1

This morning was a challenge. There was a chance of rain, although my gut feeling with forty years of living in San Antonio was that rain would be a long shot. Not that there wasn't high humidity. One could ring the water out of the air with a towel.


Anyone who has lived in South Texas for any length of time knows (or should know) not to be in a gully (i.e. creek bed) if there is a reasonable chance of a "gully washer" upstream. Drowning in flash floods is the leading cause of weather related deaths here. With that in mind, I decided to play it safe and head to higher ground for my walk today instead of going on one of the greenway trails.


I haven't been to Brackenridge Park in something like twenty or twenty-five years, so I decided to make it today's location. While the San Antonio River flows through the park, it is close enough to Olmos Dam that flash flooding isn't a major risk even in a heavy thunderstorm. As it turned out, rain didn't become a factor at all.


I began my walk along the Wilderness Trail walking south toward Mulberry Avenue and returned to the parking lot on the Wildlife Trail. Those trail names may seem a bit of hyperbole, but about two-thirds of the park is urban forest right in the middle of the seventh largest city in the U.S. The San Antonio Parks and Recreation Department is making a concerted effort towards restoring this part of the park to as natural a South Texas ecosystem as is possible given the circumstances.


I am dividing this post into two parts with the photos along these two trails in this first part. Next week, probably on Thursday, I will post the second part. After I returned to the car, I decided to spend a half hour or so along the river. I think it will be obvious from the photos why I am dividing them into two entries.


So for today, here are the Brackenridge woodlands:

 Photos like the one above really need to be seen as large prints to do them justice.

These last two photos are reddish cattle egrets.* There is a very large colony living in the park.

"While on a Walk" will be taking weekends off, so be sure to stop back by Monday evening for the next entry.

*My bird identification source was in error and these are, in fact, cattle egrets. Cattle egrets have an orange tent on the wings and orange on the top of their heads.

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.

Salado Creek Greenway, Oakwell Trailhead, South

Walking south towards Rittiman Road
The Salado Park Greenway exits Robert Tobin Park and continues south of Austin Highway. This section of the greenway does not have the rest stops that the path has in the park. Also, after the path crosses the creek south of Eisenhauer Road, there is little tree canopy to provide shade. As the greenway is developed by the city, hopefully this section of the path north of Rittiman Road will be redirected closer to the creek bed.


One advantage of the section from Austin Highway to the creek crossing is that it is easier to get close to the actual creek bed than it was along the section I walked Monday. The lizard in the photo below ran across the path in front of me, then stopped long enough for me to take its photo. I actually took four, but this is the best one. When I was satisfied I had the photo I wanted, it scampered off into the woods. I love it when the animals pose for their portraits.

Photography, Metaphor and Meaning

In my photography, as in the rest of my life, I challenge myself to be as fully present as possible within whatever circumstances I find myself; to assume a caring attitude toward all of creation that surrounds me at any given moment; to be fully aware of my surroundings, especially visually; and to act, based on that awareness. This approach arises from a sense of wonder, of questioning, as Dorothea Lange said: “that such things could be!”

From wonder arises delight or pain depending on the circumstances. Both are valid sensations in our blessed but troubled existence.  Both sensations call us to respond. My response, quite frequently, is to make photographs.

In her book, Problems of Art; Ten Philosophical Lectures, Susanne Langer wrote that art is a metaphor of the inner human experience. In and of themselves photographs are not an adequate substitute for direct experience. However, photographs, serving as metaphor of direct experience, have come to play a central role in the mediation and sharing of direct experience with others.

Ones own direct experience is necessary but not sufficient in itself to fully arrive at a realization of that which has been experienced. The fullness of realization comes through sharing experience in communion with others. The spring of living water gushes forth through the ground of community.

Photographs are a medium through which communion may take place and God's grace enter our lives. The act of sharing one person with another, the giving and receiving, is the value, the very essence, of the photograph.

The Incarnation, the power of the Word becoming flesh, gives each of us the energy of divine love, an energy that is meant to flow through every person to affirm, heal and strengthen each other. With this in mind, my photographs are not intended to be documentary in a strict ecological sense, but are more in the tradition of Stieglitz’s Equivalents and Minor White’s visual mysticism as he expressed it in his curatorial statement for the exhibit, Octave of Prayer: an Exhibition on a Theme.

I have taken to heart Alfred Stieglitz’s statement “art is the affirmation of life” and Dorothea Lange’s admonition “to really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.”

Salado Creek Greenway, Oakwell Trailhead, North

Walking north towards Loop 410

It was a perfect morning for a walk today. Considering South Texas is seven months into an extreme drought, I was pleased to see that the greenway was very green. As a matter of fact, there was every shade of green one can imagine. Even the one spider I saw was green.

To quote from Henry David Thoreau: "The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind."

This is a true urban forest. For those who take the time to wander its trails, to enter its presence and allows it to enter one's being, it is a tonic that truly braces one's soul.

The Inspiration

The inspiration for this blog began this past week with two walks along the San Antonio River between the Pearl Brewery and the San Antonio Museum of Art. On the first walk on Tuesday, May 10th, I only had my cellphone camera so the few photos I took have serious technical limitations. There is one in particular from that series that I like:

Ripples and Ducklings

Thursday, May 12th I had my dSLR with me. There are seven photos from that walk which are excellent examples of what I have in mind for my mission for this blog:

yellow crowned night heron 1

yellow crowned night heron 2

yellow crowned night heron 3

This night heron's crown and the stripe on the side of his face really are yellow. The light from the overcast sky suppressed the true color of these feathers.

mallard on the water

the couple 1

the couple 2

the couple 3

This next week, I plan to explore the Salado Creek greenway between Austin Highway and Loop 410.