Texas

I hadn't been to Texas in the summertime in ages. I've smartly taken the opportunity to spend my summers in drier or cooler climates for the last 5 years...so when I received permission  to hop a flight or two to my soggy state, I jumped at the opportunity.
The first thing I noticed upon stepping from the airport was the warm hug that the air in Texas gives you when you arrive. Driving back from the airport in my Dad's car, surveying the flooding beneath the orange mammatus clouds, I felt a lot of things. Many emotions were swirling through my body the way the tornadoes had swirled through the skies just hours before: Stress melting away from months of hard work, sadness unfolding from unreciprocated intentions, loss from leaving friends and changing relationships, and hope for reconnecting and renewal.

I stood in the backyard amongst a graying orange sky and felt the air against my skin. The crickets were chirping heavily in the dark green grass, and birds still twitted from within the deep green leaves. It felt so familiar and so far removed. Here I am.
I remembered right away how nice it is to have a fan blowing the warm air around. Later on I noticed how much condensation forms on the sides of glasses here, and how quickly ice cubes melt. I quickly remembered the sticky sensation after a shower, and felt the perpetual sweat I had longed for on chilly nights in the desert.

I had forgotten how alive it is here in this Texan tropic. Having lived amongst the fence lizards and road runners for years, with the sky offering the greatest variety in species (in cloud variations), I had forgotten the abundance of life here in Texas. On this short trip, I have explored these environments from the eyes of my cat, counting endless bird calls and being stalked by squirrels. I smelled the rich vanilla scent of a budding magnolia tree, and marveled at the helicopter-like form of a mosquito-like species. I've walked to old favorite hiding spots and surveyed new creeks where there had previously only been rocks.
I went to a bar downtown and achieved my dream of existing in a tank top after the sun set. It felt wrong to not bring a jacket, but it felt so right to drive home with the ac just gently blowing.

I've sat in traffic, identified new condominiums and heard about rent prices skyrocketing. And despite all the emotions I'm pontificating on my travels, I've considered the sustainability of living here.
People have asked me how I can justify living in a desert as an environmentalist. The answer is far from simple, and I think I'll be discovering pieces to it for a long time. What I've remembered from watching the growth of this beautiful city since I've been here is that there are ways to live sustainably in almost every environment. Often they require compromises on certain luxuries, or even what people think are basic rights- like daily showers and access to hot food. But so much can be shifted with a change in mind, I've learned.
As much as I've enjoyed remembering my favorite pieces of this climate, the pleasure I have of my life in Albuquerque has been strengthened. No traffic, bike routes, work that I love. I am so thankul, so so grateful for my present situation.
In feeling the warm embrace of this state, I am filled with so many memories. It is warm here and comforting. And yet, it is stifling. It is strange to sit back in a place that I have spent years moving away from. I have had many thoughts and much reflection time on my visit back home, but most of them reminded me of being a 17 year old angsty and artful teenager. I'm ready to return to my world as a 27 year old and make some new memories.
Everytime I leave Texas I feel a longing to come back. And everytime I return my desires here are less fulfilled. I think it's time to spread my wings from this great state and ride the wind to the next adventure.

Thanks, Texas. <3

Capturing Cultural Clues Cross Country Part 2

Houston – When I stepped off the plane in my home state, my first time in Texas in over 8 months, I was greeted by a stifling warm hug.The Texas humidity I had bragged about, longed for, and written about, was sticking to my skin in a warm welcome. I had to quickly change planes for one more flight into the air and through the sky, holding my breath that I don’t crash before I return home, where my heart can breathe and sigh and jump in the same state it did for the first 20 years of my life.

Georgetown

It was wonderful to be back ‘home’. Home in this case is my parents’ house which they purchased when I was going into my Senior year in college. Although I never lived here for more than a few months at a time (that’s another story…) it has the personal touches that my parents have chosen to express themselves, and a little room full of all the junk I grew up with. As soon as I dropped my bags I wandered from room to room noticing a new framed picture in Dad’s study, new and newly arranged furniture in mom’s art room. Then I jumped into some things I had been waiting to be home to do- digging out some forgotten clothes and items from my room, using mom’s extensive beading collection to make some earrings with hummingbird feathers that I collected this summer, saving my computer onto my backup hard drive, etc. I couldn’t stay up too late because I had to leave early in the morning to drive to Marble Falls, home of a past Outdoor School  I had worked at, to volunteer for a week.  
I woke up an hour early to go for a morning run. Although we had moved from the neighborhood I had grown up in, I missed running through neighborhoods, smelling laundry detergent and grills going as I passed each different house. This morning’s run would prove much different, however. First of all, I had heard so often that when you’re used to running at elevation (I’ve been living at 7500 feet for about a year), then running at sea level is a breeze. This is a flat lie. While I did have some success with this later in my journey, I would like to state that even as an asthmatic, it is much easier to run up and down low hills in the mountains than to run through thick humidity. 
The air was especially thick because we had just received a much needed rain. Although the grass usually cracks under your feet and the trees look like they could topple over at this time in Austin, everything was green. Sunlight danced through the trees, held in mid-air by the humidity. As I jogged along thinking about how jungle-like everything seemed, I was startled by a few deer frolicking across the street and up a ways from where I was running. I slowed down a bit, as one ran in front of me, leaping over a fence into the bushes, but the other stayed, staring at me with a look of, “what are you running from?” He kept his glance and as I ran by, he started to follow me! (Un)Fortunately he didn’t go far, and I continued trudging through my jog, impressed by the massive amounts of mourning doves acquiring on the power lines, and hopping from street to street as I passed. Although I grew up in central Texas, I had been away just long enough to think the measely Prickly Pear and yucca of the desert uplands were normal. I had forgotten what truth there is to the old saying, “everything’s bigger in Texas.”