… at the creek. There is no river in Boerne, Texas, but the Cibolo Creek runs through town. The city built a trail along the creek, and they also put in picnic tables and benches and planted cypress trees. We went there on Sunday, to wait. We had two hours before our meeting.
“We can walk the trail,” my husband said. “It goes all the way down to the old Victoria’s.”
“Okay,” I said, even though we’d already walked the dogs together that morning. I love to walk.
The trail is a nice, wide sidewalk that winds from the dam to the square. The water in the Cibolo was down, since we’re in Year No. 3 of drought, but it did rain a couple of nights before we arrived. The trail is supposed to cross under Main Street to avoid traffic, but that part of the trail was blocked with orange temporary fencing. We crossed. We made it. All the way to the end. Crossed again. Back to where we parked. We still had an hour to go.
So we sat. By this time, families started to arrive. There had been plenty of time for everyone to go to church, go out to lunch, change clothes and head to the park. We saw a little girl wearing gold shoes (because it was a gold shoe kind of day). We saw little boys running. We saw childless couples walking their dogs—Great Dane, Australian shepherd, beagle, two white fluffy things. A woman in a wheelchair and her helper.
Oh, and ducks. Loads of ducks. Mama ducks and baby ducks and mallards. Some weird duck that might not have been a duck at all. A heron.
I didn’t take pictures.
I didn’t even think. We went there so we would stop thinking.
We sat on a picnic table until it got too hot, and then we sat in the grass. Our conversation went like this:
“Is that a turtle?”
“I think it’s two turtles.”
Silence.
“Isn’t this where the ROUSes were? You know, the nutria?”
“Is it?”
Silence.
“Look at that one duck. He’s sticking his neck out to make himself go.”
“Oh.”
Silence.
Several hours later, after the meeting and after we returned home, I looked up the Cibolo Creek on Wikipedia. It starts outside Boerne in Turkey Knob and runs into the San Antonio River. The San Antonio River flows into the Guadalupe River, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf flows into the Atlantic. So when we gathered at the creekside, we also gathered at the river. And at the ocean.
