…the dogs are.
We’ve arrived in Louisville, unsettled, in temporary quarters with rented furnishings, but somehow still at home. Shelby and Jack make it so.
Houston:
On the road, in a rented van large enough to hold all the necessary dog paraphernalia:
Louisville. The apartment may be temporary, but it already feels like home:
Several days ago, we packed up everything we own, sold my old Subaru, rented a van to carry the dogs and all their goods, and took off from Houston for Louisville, Kentucky. After two days of driving, including a harrowing period of blinding rain and a three-hour detour off a closed interstate (around, sadly, a fatal accident), we arrived at our short-term furnished rental apartment. I hope to write about the move, selling the house, and the process of creating a new life in a new town. But for now, some brief reflections on what I will miss the most.
My current top five:
November: We moved to Houston in November, 2003. I remember walking down West Gray one evening at dusk after we
’d first arrived, the tall palms silhouetted against the blackening sky, the moon lighting the white and black art deco River Oaks shopping center, the dry coolness a winter revelation to this Northerner. I love the cold. But winter in Houston makes everyone glad to be alive.
Post-hurricane street parties: Rita veered towards east Texas at the last minute, but Ike hit head-on, shattering windows, downing trees, and shutting our power off for ten days. We headed out to the court between the town homes, grilled all the steaks in the freezer, shared beer and wine, and got to know our neighbors.
Breakfast: We loo
k for breakfast wherever we travel. Houston gave us migas at The Buffalo Grille (eggs scrambled with salsa and corn tortillas and topped with cheese) and Pondicheri’s morning oats (oatmeal with Indian flavors) or scrambled eggs with keema and paratha. It’s the most important meal of the day.
Herons: The night before we left town, we drove onto our court and were greeted by a wandering heron. After Ike destroyed the tree canopy in Galveston, the herons moved inland to nest. Come April, they inhabit the live oaks on North and South Boulevards. We visit them each Sunday morning on our long pre-dawn walks with Jack, the hound. And occasionally they venture across the Southwest Freeway to visit our lower-rent neighborhood.
Diversity: We’ve already seen much renewal here in Louisville, but I don’t believe we will find the same level of diversity that we did in Houston. Race, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, likes and dislikes — you can find it all, and much of it side by side. I will miss the Montrose/Museum District mix.
Ciao, Houston. Thank you for eight fabulous years.
Ask the Soulsbys of Hudson Ohio how they are doing, and I bet they will tell you they are doing quite well, thank you. I say they are also doing good. I stumbled upon their tremendous blog this morning: “The Soulsby Farm (A Very Small Farm).” Dan, Mindy, Zoey & Jake tend this small farm in the beautiful countryside just outside Cleveland. They left a good life in Hollywood behind, to come back home to grow a new life on a sustainable farm and to influence others for good in oh so many ways. And since baby Zoey was born in 2011, and Jake is a only very small dog, I would imagine the hard work falls mostly to Dan and Mindy.
They write this about the origin of the farm: “The Soulsby Farm started the way most small farms do…. a dream to get back to the country and grow vegetables and herbs and raise chickens the way nature intended; through a partnership with the earth and a deep respect for animals. We believe in sustainable farming. Everything on the farm is grown through organic means; the farm doesn’t believe in GMO’s (genetically modified organisms) and grows only from heirloom seeds and plants. No chemicals (fertilizers, pest control, etc…) are ever used on the farm.”
But it was not enough to do well for their family. Their vision extends beyond the farm. In 2010, they established the nonprofit Project Garden Share, to teach others about food resources and to provide fresh food for those in need. If you are willing to share your harvest with local food banks, they will provide extra seeds or seedlings. If you like, they will even plant a garden on your land, which you can then tend and donate the harvested veggies. You can help them tend their own farm, or they can direct you to other community garden projects that need your help. And most of all, you can catch their vision of sustainable, healthy agriculture that fills hungry stomachs and sustains life in the best of all possible ways. Want to join them in their work?
On my daily lunchtime walk around River Oaks, I survey all that I love about Texas. The sights and scents wrap around my heart like a hug that won’t let go.
I didn’t expect to love Texas. I am a Jersey girl, lover of Cleveland snows and rocky Maine coasts, of the color of sweet gum trees and maples in the fall, of northern cities and liberal viewpoints, of the New York Times, and bagels, and presidential motorcades.
But Texas caught me with that first whiff of mesquite smoke and the chill in the November air. And it’s not just Houston. Austin, San Antonio, and the hill country in between: it’s the holy triangle of our life here. And it is good.
My walk takes me first past the smell of mesquite barbeque at Teala’s, then back into the 
neighborhood where crepe myrtle flowers paint the sidewalks pink in summer and one day a hawk swooping in from nearby Allen Parkway drops a pigeon in my path. Here, thanks to Houston’s lack of zoning, I find stately brick townhomes next to the Texaco and the Daily Review Café … and then across from that, something modern and altogether unexpected. Except in Houston, nothing is unexpected. Sheet metal skims the side of one home – shimmery blue and silver. Elsewhere: concrete townhomes sit next to bungalows and shotgun houses. Bougainvillea climbs a stucco facade; two stories high, it blooms its coral head off. Everywhere I see blue plumbago and dwarf mondo grass. Starlings line the wires and shriek.
I pass the Whole Foods parking lot with its xeriscape of succulents and grasses, and on the breeze catch the scent of … just what is it that Whole Foods smells like? Maybe a mix: a little barbeque and some overripe fruit and fresh flowers (like the stands lining Manhattan sidewalks)? I can see the Houston high-rise skyline in the distance, but the breeze and the succulents transport me to the mother ship Whole Foods, Austin, where the scent in the air is heavenly, the people-mover packed, and the staff and patrons heavily tattooed.
I will be transported. From here on, no matter where I wander, when I smell mesquite on the air, find contemporary houses next to autobody shops, and feel the warm sun on my shoulders in crisp winter air, I will be transported here, to Houston. To the city that caught me totally off guard and made me, despite my intentions, fall in love with Texas. To the city that will always own a little piece of my heart.
Found in the archives:
From the Frank and Eleanor Freed Papers, MS28, date unknown. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Archives.
(This is a piece that I wrote last year for Creative Nonfiction with Glen Online/Lindsey Crittenden, then edited with a class from the NYTimes.)
The herons have returned to Houston. They squawk and fuss in the top branches of the southern live oaks on South Boulevard and rustle the leaves as Jack and I pass below on a May pre-dawn walk. They’ve nested here for three years now, ever since Hurricane Ike slammed into the Texas coast. I can just make out their long legs and lopsided bodies as they perch on coiled branches in the darkness. Jack, the young hound, looks up, and I wonder what he thinks of these massive birds that have arrived so suddenly to disrupt our quiet morning walks.
On September 13, 2008, Ike devastated Galveston Island, fifty miles to our south. The island lost its medical center, countless homes, businesses, and human lives, as well as the centuries old live oaks that lined streets in the historic district. The weakened storm then aimed at Houston, shattering glass in office towers, downing power lines and causing week-long outages.
Here in the hurricane belt, as storms approach, weather forecasters recite this refrain: run from the water, hide from the wind. In Ike’s instance, flood water brought ruin to the trees on Galveston Island, removing as much as 80% of the tree canopy. Rising salt water, not wind, killed the trees, driving the birds inland. Houston’s trees, stripped of their foliage by gale-force winds, pushed out new leaves and show no remaining signs of damage.
For the past three years, come the spring nesting season, blue herons – and, in past years, a few snowy white egrets — have found shelter in the oaks on the boulevard. These trees, like much in Texas, grow larger than life: curving gnarled branches span the street, weaving limbs to form a giant, tangled canopy. Their shallow, knobby root systems cut deep fissures in the pavement and create Houston’s only hills, jagged mounds of sidewalk that trip up walkers like Jack and me.
My roots grow shallow, too, with fourteen moves over five decades, crisscrossing the continent. That the Houston of big oil and Enron now feels like home comes as great surprise. I’ve run from storms before, but Texas tells me to hunker down. As a reward for tenacity, Houston offers the scent of mesquite smoke on the breeze, and bustling neighborhood “ice house” bars on Harley-lined streets. No bagels and lox, no capitol domes, no motorcades, or saguaros and mountain peaks – but mine, nevertheless. Twiggy, treetop nests remind me that home is indeed portable.
Down the center of the boulevard where the birds nest, runs a wide esplanade, with a brick path and not one but two rows of oaks on either side, four across altogether, planted in staggered formation. Stately homes line the boulevard, brick or stucco mansions with white pillars and iron gates, and at curbside in front of each house, more oaks. Each March, the bright new leaves of the oaks push off the old, a spring cleaning of sorts, just prior to the arrival of the birds. It’s as if they’ve put out the welcome mat.
Jack and I walk these streets regularly throughout the year, almost always just before dawn, carefully avoiding displaced bricks and concrete pushed askew by aggressive roots. Most mornings, the boulevard offers a quiet refuge, with other dog walking apparitions disappearing as quickly as they appear. But when the birds have returned, the once peaceful darkness becomes as jagged as the sidewalks.
I have heard the call of these mammoth birds referred to as a “croak.” But Jack and I hear dogs in the trees, the hoarse barks growing louder and more urgent as we draw near. Jack, who pays no attention to the screaming jays and grackles, wrinkles his brow and we both gaze skyward and pause to listen: “argh, argh, argh.” We stand under the canopy, under the chorus of barking birds, and I squint to see figures among the leaves. On late walks, when dawn lights the sky beyond the tree tops, I see their outlines: awkward legs seeming too thin to support the winged bodies, graceful arched necks ending in long thin beaks. When they fly, the wings span three or four feet, maybe more. I listen as they sometimes seem to argue, squawking and flapping at each other in the treetops, stretching and refolding wings so rapidly I fear they will fall. But when they fall, they fly.
The new boulevard home for these birds, though a mere fifty miles from Galveston Island, lies 350 miles from New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures, hundreds of thousands of people sought shelter in Houston. Six years later, more than 150,000 remain, having made Houston home, at least for now. Perhaps the eight-hour bus ride from Louisiana is the equivalent in human terms of the birds’ fifty-mile flight inland from the island. These Katrina evacuees fled neither war nor political persecution but rising water. Seeking refuge, they came to Houston and stayed. Maybe it doesn’t matter how long they stay, but rather that for the moment they call this place home.
Come May, 2011, the birds once more build unwieldy nests in the treetops lining Houston’s regal esplanade. Eager males call out to mating females, and Jack and I pause again in our walk to watch and listen. I count, I think, two dozen or so. By September, as suddenly as they came, they will be gone. They are migratory, unlike people; they will never settle permanently here. But for three years they have chosen our oaks as their summer home.
I hope the herons return again next spring. Jack and I will be waiting in the semi-darkness to welcome them.
© Kathryn T Jones, drawing circles, 2011-2012. Excerpts and links may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided that full and clear credit is given.
drawing circles is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
