Seasonal Migration

The season of holiday travel is upon us.

Flocks of families in brightly colored clothes surge into airports where they will acquire the artificial wings they need to reach the home of their youth, or a substitute.

Sometimes Granny or Paw-Paw does the traveling. We all need the ritual reminder that, far-flung though we are, Family endures beneath and inside the solitude in which so many live.

Divorce has made the season one of complication and compromise. A divorce from the 1970s reverberates still. Family groups gather half-siblings or step-children into their embrace. Still others tread a balance beam of keeping the peace—his mother, her father, this holiday, that holiday. Some substitute a family of choice created from friends they gather together.

My traveling this time of year has become its own, generally solitary, ritual. I go to the Texas Gulf Coast. This year I went early, hoping to overlap some of the fall bird migration. Our strange weather lately has caused disruption of all seasonal dependency to some degree, but I did find birds. Live ones nobody wants to eat.

A plethora of pelicans, for example, in Galveston. And the surprise of pink when a flock of roseate spoonbills wheeled in the sky before settling onto the surface of a pond at the Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge, like a sunset on water at midday.

Somehow being on the move distracts me from the absences that begin to crowd our lives as we get older.

It provides wonder—in the silver gleam of fading light across wet sand; or in seabirds, dipping and skimming in a marsh despite the shadow of nearby refineries.

Joy is everywhere around you in nature, if you go deep enough and pay attention.

But there are other opportunities, too, for travel that escapes airports and crowd scenes.

A couple of weeks ago I went down to San Felipe, near Sealy, to see where Stephen F. Austin had built his village in 1823. Celebrating its bicentennial year, volunteers in period clothing populated the walkways and greenspace of the Villa.

I watched two men in leather aprons operate the printing press inside one of the log houses. The first book printed in Texas was printed in that location.

I spoke to a woman who had slept the previous chilly night in a log cabin fitted out as a house of the period. The thumps and rumbles of native wildlife nosing about outside had let her know she had company. She’s not sure what specific animals joined her because she didn’t open the door.

Nearby, a group of children played with hoops and wands and other toys of two hundred years ago. They didn’t even notice when the cannon went off. (I did.)

The contemporary museum building at this State historic site provides a stellar venue for exhibitions and workshops which occur in a dynamic progression throughout the year.

The afternoon reminded me of similar ones we spent years ago at the Winedale Historical Complex just outside Round Top on FM 2714. When we came to this area, Winedale had been a lively location for crafts fairs, symposia, and exhibitions of many kinds, in addition to the famous Shakespeare at Winedale program.

And you can still have a wonderful time during “Christmas at Winedale” on Saturday, December 9, beginning at noon. There will be demonstrations of handcrafting, hayrides, music and drama in the Shakespeare Barn, along with children’s activities and free tours of the historic houses that make Winedale such a unique repository of Texas German culture. Good food and drinks round out the day.

I’ll be there with Santa Claus to share my enthusiasm for this wonderful place.