TheBanyanTree: 2016 Hunters Moon

[Dale Parish]

Hunters' Moon 2016

Waco was a cow town a hundred and fifty years ago, and they had problems
getting cattle to swim the Brazos river.  The solution was to build a
suspension bridge to get the cattle across, and charge a fee to the cattle
drives to pay for the bridge.  It worked pretty well.  The bridge was, at the time of
its building, the longest free-standig suspension bridge in the US, It still stands
today, and on the south bank is a herd of bronze cattle being driven by bronze
cowboys, all about 20% larger than life.  The cattle stream up University Park
Drive towards the bridge. Each cow I examined looked unique, although most
carried the same brand.  Cindy and I spent a Sunday afternoon here in Waco at
the end of July and it was plenty warm.  

The bridge is only open to pedestrian and bicycle traffic today, and we walked
most of the way  across, watching the turtles in the river congregate out near
the bumpers upstream from the tower foundations of a former bridge.  Along the 
riverbank are wide sidewalks along which joggers and strollers abounded.  It is a 
lot like the Riverfront Park in Austin along the Colorado, althought this is more
"downtown" than in Austin.  With the October weather and temperatures only in
the high 80s, it seemed a lot nicer this afternoon.

We're here for the Texas State Soil & Water Conservation District meeting.
The entry for Conservation Teacher of the Year from our county's district won
the state competion after winning regional, and she'll be given an award at
the awards luncheon Tuesday.  Unfortunatly, one day off was all that we could
get her school to give her for this prestigious award, so she'll teach
tomorrow, drive five hours after school to Waco, go on a tour Tuesday morning,
get presented with the award at noon, and then drive the five hours back home
to teach Wednesday.  Jennie teaches environmental geology at the university in
addition to teaching full time at the middle school, and works with the Jason
Project, which pumps science curriculum into the middle schools during the
year.  Each summer, the Jason trainers make a summer "field trip" to study
first hand the next year's Jason curriculum, and I've been privledged to
attend about a half dozen of these summer trips, getting to soak up a little
geology and ecology.  It has been fun.  Next year's curriculum is wetlands,
which we've done several times over the past dozen year.  In addition, we've
covered desert ecology, wetland ecology, endless potential (energy), coral
reefs, storms, hurricanes, plate tectonics, and space weather that I can
recall.  I missed the whaling trip, but so did they miss the whales because of
rough weather on the scheduled day of the charter.  I know they were
disappointed. 

My problem at this conference is making choices.  There are "break-out"
sessions for two days, and it seems that in any given time period, there are
two things that I'd really like to attend, and two in which I have little
interest.  One such conference to which I enjoy going has "tracked" all the
selections into like tracks, such as hard science, soft science, arts, travel,
humor and entertainment, etc. and spread them over three days to minimize the
number of conflicts an attendee should encounter if they're interested mostly
in one subject.  It's hard to break that out into soil, water, and
legislation, I guess, with the interrelationships between the those three
aspects, although education encompasses all of the above.  Regardless, I
expect to go home Wednesday a little more educated in more than one area.

Had a nice supper tonight, but was reminded of the way that our parents
treated us when we would travel up here away from the coast.  We weren't
allowed to order sea food at any restaurant north of Houston, because it
would be frozen-- not fresh.  I ordered Alligator Grand Chenier, which has no
real meaning-- a chenier is a sandy ridge that was once a dune line during the
Gulf's constant marching inland and offshore.  Grand Chenier is also the name
of a place in southern Louisiana.  The menu emphasized their "Cajun" cooking,
but living as I do in western Cajun country, I know what constitutes real
cajun cooking.  The alligator was good, and the etouffe sauce in which it had
been served was very good, but the rice!  They didn't cook the rice.  Well.
Any coonass knows if you can't make rice, you can't cook Cajun.  This ain't
Cajun country, and that ain't Cajun cooking, although it tried.  

Have to wait until we get back home to eat gator at Popeye's Chicken place
again.  

Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish RD
Orange TX 77632-0264