The Heart of Texas
Enchanted Rock State Park
The heart of Texas is a real place. Her heart is every bit as pink and powerful as any giant’s heart would be. Enchanted Rock is a proud mountain of rosey granite that juts 425 feet above rolling acres of prickly pear cacti, restless bedrock and scraggly cedar.
Pink pluton granite is a type of rock known as intrusion—liquid magma that cooled beneath the Earth’s surface as opposed to above it. Enchanted Rock is actually the inside of a decaying volcano that never erupted. As such, it makes a natural mecca for any awe-seeker who has also been turned inside-out.
Battle-worn from months of depression after a merciless break up, something about the exposed flesh of this enormous rock made me revere my vulnerability. I craved a fierce, silent space to explore the subtleties of nature, including those hard-to-reach places beneath my tireless ego.
To ensure some solitude, I opted to visit on a slow Tuesday. It was a two-mile trek on the Loop Trail to primitive camping grounds. The afternoon heat tore through half of my 3-liter water supply by the time I reached my tent site. I was terrified at how isolated I’d managed to become in an hour: it seemed I was the only camper in the backcountry.
I set up my tent and shed the heavier gear, then headed toward the summit from Echo Canyon Trail. The path was a disheveled valley of boulders and loose rocks. Rattlesnake heaven, I double-checked every step. The trail’s arrow markings were weak suggestions: this way, if you can figure out how.
Summit Trail was a short-lived (but grueling) scramble up 30 stories of pink, steep slopes. The generous breeze politely took my layers of sweat the way a dinner host might take my coat.
Rambling-hilled horizons in every direction, the “highest point” of Enchanted Rock was evasive. It always seemed to be a stone’s throw from wherever I stood. Gangs of vultures patrolled the vernal pools: shallow dips in rock that retain rainwater. Home to colonies of fairy shrimp, mesquite grass and the occasional bouquet of Indian Blankets.
A choir of gnats performed a number in high C just as a thunderhead sprawled over the northern horizon. Lighting struck in the distance and I began my careful decent. I considered returning to park headquarters for reliable shelter; I was halfway there. But Texas, her heart, she dared me to stay with her. Legend has it those who spend a night on the rock become invisible. I hiked back to my lonesome nest as the hot day eased into purples and frog riots.
Night fell. With my paranoid eye on the heat lightning just beyond the pink mountain’s silhouette, I realized the danger of my situation. Hill Country thunderstorms are dramatic: golf-ball sized hail, flash floods, falling branches, wild fires, and occasional tornados. I was completely isolated, two-miles deep in unfamiliar terrain, no cell service and no decent shelter. The storm flickered to itself beyond the mountain, like T.V. light from a neighbor’s window. Outside my tent I laid under the Milky Way listening for thunder and reviewing my options.
The clean, well-marked Loop Trail was too much distance to cover in darkness. Echo Canyon Trail’s boulder ball-pit was risky enough in daylight and good weather.
Were the storm to roll my way, I could dart to a thicket of low shrubs. Alternately, I could seek out the closest ravine and hope I didn’t have to share it with any cacti. But the risk of flash floods in low ground was overwhelming. Both options left me susceptible to injury, disorientation and hypothermia. I had better odds staying dry in my flimsy tent. Fingers crossed I wouldn’t be the freak-statistic to get struck by lightning.
By 3 a.m., the storm still hadn’t hit. I finally decided I could only deal with a problem once it became real. I resigned to fitful sleep, interrupted by worry and coyotes calling for their the moon, their lost lover. You and me both, I told them.
Dawn slipped me a get-out-of-jail-free card as it buttered up the pink rock and woke the lizards. I packed my gear and hiked out, taking note of the safe places that had alluded me in the darkness. Exhausted from a night of fear, I wondered how an exposed heart could survive this kind of wilderness. If Texas is brave enough to keep her own heart here, I reckon I should follow suite.
