This Christmas we had a fine time. I routinely stuck to my tradition of not putting up the outside lights until at least the fifteenth of december, but monica stopped me short with a question: dad: do you like Christmas?
I must admit privately that I am ambivalent somewhat. it’s mostly a commercial phenomenon, and an exercise in ownership and consumerism on the part of our children. its like we’re indoctrinating them in to this world of ours, but we’re just being manipulated, having viruses planted into our brains from the advertisements on televeision and radio, constantly, incessantly. its maddening, really, and what it does to us and our kids, how can we in good conscience allow it?
but i do love Christmas, what it represents, and what it evokes. I feel it in my heart as deeply as anyone. deeper maybe.
this season, we have a few guests. its nice,. my brother BJ and his family came up on Christmas day. unfortunately, my nephew John had to be brought up by his ear. I understand, but what’s he supposed to do with his sister and two female cousins? I suppose one might imagine something for him to do?
what we did, though was interesting. at Pam’s suggestion, we went out to fredricksburg for a day.
where she had heard that it was a cool place to check out. I don’t know, but I think I know a little better than whoever told her. but as usual, we husbands just went along for the ride. I am reminded of samuel adams (*brewer, patriot) who said that if we do not oppose it we merely encourage it. hmmm words to live by.
anyway, there we were on a ride to Abilene, er, I mean Fredricksburg.. and the place we got — at Anita’s researching, we learned was called “Rocky Top”. yikes. a toothless farm lady met us as we arrived, and moved into a camper, while we moved into her house at Christmastime, mind you, for 200 bucks a night. I don’t know what to think.
I’ll never forget Pam’s expression as she turned to me and said what are we doing here?
we sat in their living room, slept in their beds, while they slept in the camper out back in the freezing cold.
of course it was nothing like we had expected.
the idea was to have a rustic homestead feeling and a neat day trip out to the cool spots on top of enchanted rock.
Pam also complained about the really poor literature from the state park people. I found a few interesting pieces on the web. how the legend is told of human sacrifices, and how native americans and their defenders say that that is just a canard. who knows? eh? some bad things were done, that is sure. but by whom and what, is less clear.
i plugged in trusty old dell, and found that enchanted rock is a power place, revered by native americans of the southwest for centuries, or more.
we went out there for the afternoon. it was an interesting trip. in fact the entire experience was so totally disconnected and so totally lowe-zone, that I can’t do it appriporiate justice in words.
but let me say this: the first thing that happened (after I missed the entrance, and found I had to pull over to make a u-turn, I looked back to make sure BJ was behind me and I discovered that not only was BJ behind me but two other cars ful of tourists were behind him. we had all missed the entrance. I suppose they were following me? anyway, as I made my u-turn, It turns out that one of BJ’s followers decided to cut him off, and turn around before him, so we were now separated by one car at the entrance.
ok, not too challenging, right? but we got in and prmptly took a wrong turn. this was ok, so far, we knew what had happened, and stopped and turned around waiting for BJ. first the car behind us, the rude u-turner, appeared, and proceeded, then BJ, barelling past us and of course he didn’t see us. uh oh, let’s go after him, I said.
and we did. we came to another fork in the road and Bej took the wrong turn again, well you could say this was a judgement call, maybe not the wrong turn, but he was looking for us, and we weren’t where he was looking, the irony of course being that we could see him, and we weren’t lost! but in the fullness of time he exhausted his possibilities, made a u-ey and eventually found us. we proceeded to the launch point.
we opened the car doors. so far so good. at this point John jumps out and high tails it up the side of the rock. hmm..
Anita says this place is pretty big, we may not see him again for a while.
BJ takes off after him.
I didn’t see BJ again until it was time to leave. I met John briefly at the top of the rock, which is an easy climb, and not extremely interesting unless you know what to look for.
now of course we had forgotten our flashlights, but we did find our way over to the famous caves. the caves are not on the map, but they’re interesting nonetheless. this weekend, there were plenty of people. way too many people, if you ask me, but it was kind of fun to take my kids over there and let them have a little experience of fun and exitement while we crept into the cave as far as we could see without flashlights and have a little feeling of adventure.
I can never get enough of that little kid stuff.
the true experience of living, I think is that innocent feeling of adventure, where there is enough danger to make your heart race a little, to let you know that you’re still alive, but not too much that you can’t handle.
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