For instance: I love love love Barton Springs. It is one of the places on earth that are just like Heaven. So like Heaven, that being there takes every other thought out of my mind for the first few minutes. It is a natural pool filled by a cold springs, and the temperature is the same year round (really freaking cold). In July it is full of hot hot families and hippies enjoying the cool down and visitors who aren't prepared for water that cold. But you can also do laps in December and share the pool with about five other swimmers, people (usually old people) who also understand that Barton Springs is Heaven and who probably got sucked into spending their lives in Austin because they just couldn't leave Barton Springs. Luckily, they probably live everyday on a Barton high.
I say luckily because Austin also possesses a great many traits that go in the "Hate" column. Mostly, the fact that Austinites have been completely impotent in protecting Barton Springs. Currently, the pool is closed one morning a week to clean out all the algae that lives off of fertilizer run off. The pool also has days when the water isn't swimmable because of toxicity levels. We are talking about water that bubbles out of the earth clean enough to drink and flows right into the pool. The run off from parking lots and roads is that potent!
The Save our Springs Alliance works to fight development that will endanger the springs and the Barton Spring Salamander, a species that only lives in Barton Springs. It doesn't look like they have been very successful and I want to punch someone in the face when I think about how The Domain ("defining the urban Austin lifestyle for the next 100 years") is interpreting all the green development ideas about live/work/shop spaces and building far far from the city, encouraging long commutes and more pollution.
Most of the time I lived in Austin I was pretty grumpy, the traffic, the hypocrisy, the boredom. But what was probably the best summer of my life was spent riding my bike from campus to the springs in 100 degree heat, swimming from 9 to 10 pm (when it was free) and riding home to eat left over cookies and sit around and drink beer. And now I am going to show my true colors as an Austininte and just say it, Austin has changed, and it used to be a lot better. There didn't used to be so many buildings. But they still haven't built a new road so the traffic might actually be worse, which means that all those cars just sitting in traffic are causing more pollution. You can have whatever crazy ideas about governments that you want (and those crazies in Austin do) but the thing about being pro regulation and an environmentalist is that we all have to work together to protect the things on this planet that can't be replaced when they are lost. Barton Springs is one of those things.
1 comment:
I went there today and it really was just like heaven. The sun warmed me but didn't burn me, and I went off the diving board twice.
And!! I saw someone from the coop, but just pretended like I didn't. Because that always happens when I go there. I'm getting super good at pretending.
Post a Comment