And So This Is Winter at Bandit's Cave

Rollingwood, TX - Marc - Monday, April 25th, 2005 : goo

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I grew up, like not many other people, on the west side of Austin, TX in a small town called Rollingwood. The population, since the 80s, has hovered around 1200 persons while Austin has sprawlbounded from 300k to 1 million over twenty years of Dell Computer/Texas Instruments/Intel, South by Southwest, 50k students at the third most populous undergraduate college in North America, and the secret underground freak railroad that links it to San Francisco. Rollingwood has stayed the same, or rather only the property values have changed, over 2 decades of not having a sewer system- discouraging further development (nobody likes septic tanks).

Deep in the heart of Texas- to the west, more hills- then the eerie desert of the mexican northeast/american southwest. To the east, swamplands on the gulfcoast and the colonies of energy vampires, summoned out of the oil and hurricanes by some forgotten new orleans devilcult. 60 years ago, George B. Hatley bought a section of the Dellana ranch in west Travis County, laid down some cheap pipes, and started selling subdivisions to 50s families- Native Texans? Outsiders stationed at the Air Force Base? 40 years before that, Rollingwood was known for its limetone caves surrounding Eanes Creek- the trail of a famous bank robbery vanishing there. Since before I was a kid, up until the summer I moved out of Austin, Bandit's Cave was the neighborhood Halloween Haunted House- a real cave to explore down into and get the shit scared out of you. Turned into a sinkhole after I left (the way limestone does) and they shut down the haunted house- way too dangerous.

This is the house I grew up in. I can write about this picture with my eyes closed. When I was born, there was nothing but forest/hills/creek past this house. My brother would take advantage of my parents' absence to climb up on the roof to check out the city skyline. My dad planted those hedge bushes the summer we moved out, to make the lawn look prettier. No idea where that greenhouse thing and the tacky central-texan lawn rocks+fountain came from. Around the side of the house I planted the last seeds from my favorite fruit tree, uprooted by the new neighbors that moved into my old best friend's house. Sometimes I would remember the seeds and get nervous that the new tree forming would uproot the house. Trees are strong and, even as a seed, can possess the wills of any child in their twin quests for eternal regeneration and the destruction of all buildings.

This is every front yard in Rollingwood, and twenty years has carved out the tree hearts of more front yard forests than I can even think about without feeling like I let a lot of mindcontrolling seeds down. The houses are getting bought, torn down, and replaced with mansions. A couple ex-drug dealer houses, but mostly old people who've lived here since the 50s and the constantly circling air-conditioned buzzardrealtors' cars who are waiting for the valuable property to become available. Sometimes they park their cars on trees.

If you pretend this picture represents a 3-dimensional "scene", then maybe you can also pretend that you see me in the very, very "back" of this photo.. I am 8 years old and I am waiting at the intersection of Riley Road and Rollingwood Drive- waiting for the bus to take me to school. It is 6am and still dark out- the bus will not come until 7am. I am standing in the middle of that intersection playing Hide From Cars, looking in all four directions, up and down hills, for the gleam of headlights from a car, or multiple cars- I am running behind a tree for safety. Even cars from three approaches at once cannot reveal me behind this evergreen live oak, next to the giant cedar that I am allergic to. I wanted to be hidden, or the trees wanted to hide me- the causality of intent is symbiotic to my perception, even now.

Rollingwood bamboo grove. Inside someone's backyard. I haven't been here in a decade but I still have right-of-passage through every neighbor's backyard.

From the forest hills and creeks that still border Rollingwood, you can see the vista of Austin proper spread before you. That shitty parking garage-looking skeleton of a building was erected in its skeletal form the last time i was in Austin- four years before? Intel razed plots of artist warehouses to put that shit up- after the canvasses were buried and the rebar went up 8 stories, Intel laid off 5000? people and they left that shits there, gracing the downtown scenery as a visual punchline to the dot bomb joke.

A lake separates my hometown and this plodding megalopolis- a lake dammed and reservoir'd several times over in an attempt to stop the hill country's floods. The Congress Street Bridge traverses the lake. It is the seasonal home to 1 million mexican free-tail bats- the largest above ground population in North America. Driven from the surrounding limestone caves by development and the rape of the hills, they congregate under the bridge getting their beauty rest until sunset- when they take to the sky all at once to terrorize the small rodents and developers' children of the surrounding hill and forest-themed subdivisions.

One of the tributaries feeding into Town Lake is the town swimming hole- Barton Springs. The water is 20C year-round- during the summer it is lush and verdant and filled up with the entire town. Here, people who love trees and people who want to convert trees into bank statements enjoy the natural water and each others' company- as siblings in the nursery of nature. Barton Springs' home is Zilker Park, across from Zilker Gardens- Austin has twenty-one thousand acres of parks. The spring was fed from Barton Creek- a creek that formerly wound through miles of "greenbelt"- hiking trails, caves, creekbeds, running water. Origin of the city's drinking water. Twenty years later we have Greenbelt Gardens, West Greenbelt Hills, Greenbelt Acres and Barton Creek Mall. Easy Central Texas livin', gorgeous views, the wastewater+construction chemicals flow downhill into the creek, and best of all most of the highways have two or three "decks" so you can sometimes have a little shade during your 1 hour/6 mile morning commute.

This is a protected pool next to Barton Springs dedicated to the Barton Springs Salamander- a Salamander only found in Barton Springs! For some reason it is endangered, only really being discovered and identified in 1993. As Austin's safe drinking water dries up through the destruction of trees, so too does the creek's ability to support the Salamander (discovered after I moved out).

This is a sculpture - philosopher's rock. Those three guys are Bedichek, Dobie, and Webb. They are pretty much as they were decades ago- sitting around on their rock, chilling at the swimming hole, shooting the shit. They are the patron saints of Barton Springs and of the Austin tradition of just chilling, enjoying nature, and shooting the shit with your friends. Check out this plaque:

Right? Public works of art not dedicated to spending money or the ceremonial ripping out of trees. Public works of art dedicated to the idea of building an intellectual climate. When I was a kid, one of the best known public works of art in Austin was a tree called Treaty Oak. A 500 year old live oak, once part of a Council Grove of its siblings- a sacred Commanche meeting place. While Austin grew, it's siblings died- it remained, growing to a 127 foot spread. Right before I left Austin, some tweaker poured huge amounts of Velpar, a tree-killing chemical reserved for hardwoods, on the roots of the tree. Tree lovers' public outrage resulted in nine years in jail for Paul Cullen. They replaced all the soil and the tree hobbled along for a few years. It still lives today In the shadow of Intel's public work, crippled and just now producing acorns. I do not have a picture of this tree.

Many friends have tunnelled back and forth between Austin and San Francisco- in fact the cities have much in common. Progressive politics, large homeless population, bad traffic, liberal weed policies, great music, dot bomb fallout, and a burgeoning+artistic freak community. If San Francisco is too harsh on your mellow, you need to chill out in Austin for a while- and if Austin is too tiny a pond for your roots-country-indyrock fins, you need to get out to Cali.. shit will always be better somewhere else, and they never have any problems in Solla Sellew (at least very few). What's a few problems for a locative dilettante- as long as they are new. Every city repeats the great cycle of life- rebith, innoculation+indoctrination, adolescent rebelling, moving out, rebirth.. Haven't gotten past that state yet- to certainty of death.

"Eternal Adolescence/Armageddon" - Lenzkrafters song based on Emily Schriver poem.

Is it worth it? To live somewhere "for the rest of my life"? To not be able to bitch about how drastically things have "changed", to not require yourself to concoct fantastic causality chains to explain only the changes you notice? To put down "roots"?

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186 miles: by the way, thanks for the article.

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