Making up with hikes on Bull Creek.

One of my greatest joys in life is The Walk.  

But it wasn't always that way.

When I was eight, I went to a summer day camp in San Antonio that lacked a building.  We just hung around outside all day, or sometimes got on a bus and went somewhere else.  Also outside.  

One day our counselors made us go on a "hike," that -- looking back -- was actually more of a glorified walk.  We started out in the woods, but eventually, we made it to a street with houses and mailboxes and a cat I tried to pick up and take with me.  I got in trouble and had to go to the back of the line.

During that hike/walk, my counselors couldn't see me that well after I had been banished to the end.  But when we made it back to nature, I saw what looked like an awesomely-shaped leaf, and I reached out to touch it (I was a particularly grabby child).  That awesome leaf turned out to be poison ivy, and then I rubbed my eyes because I was tired of this stupid hike/walk, and then my eyes were on fire and I thought I was going blind and I decided that hike/walks were dangerous and that I should never hike, or really walk, EVER AGAIN.

So for years I had this hiking prejudice.

But then when Ross (husband) went away for two months to Brazil last summer, I started taking all these walks around Hyde Park.  And I can't described what happened, but it was like a spiritual transformation.  An attitudanal one as well.  

I decided that The Hike wasn't evil.  I could branch out from flat, residential Hyde Park to Hawaii and hike there, too in decidedly more adventurous environs.  

And now I love hikes!  Or walks.  They're the same thing, really.  Just a matter of incline.

So that is what Ross (husband) and I did on the 4th of July.  Swam, then hiked, around Bull Creek.

People first lived at Bull Creek 7,000 years ago.  And I know it sounds funny, but it has that ancient feeling.  We walked through this escarpment / cave-like area that looked like Middle Earth.

That's my brave baby, hiking through Middle Earth.

Bull Creek is one of Austin's lesser-known swimming holes, and the water is bright, golden green.  I took more pictures of the natural pool, but those pictures include this one hostile guy who kept yelling at his dog.  Actually he did worse than yell, he smacked the dog hard for not fetching his toy properly, which is not acceptable behavior anywhere but ESPECIALLY in Austin.

A 70-year-old woman gave him a curse word-laced (beautiful) earful and then recorded his license plate number.  I decided she was my hero for the day.

I later realized that the same woman had escorted her deaf teenage son to Bull Creek so he could have a swimming hole date with his girlfriend.  So then she was my hero times two.   

(P.S. for an excellent blog read, check out THXTHXTHX, where the above thank-you note to walks comes from.)