august in texas

[threeplusfire]

The drive down Highway 71 is one of my favorite things in Texas. It's beautiful country, gently rolling through fields and farms and trees and tiny towns including Ellinger where you can find the best kolaches made anywhere by descendents of Czech immigrants. (I got there at 8:45am this morning and had to wait in a line twenty people long to get to the counter for my fix of poppy seed kolache.) It is a drive I have made dozens of times over my life and I can say I have never seen it like this. It pained me to look at the bleached, burned and cracked land full of dying trees and gaunt cattle. The rivers barely move, low and sluggish and there are scars from fires everywhere. Some of the roadside signs are funny: "Think snow!" past La Grange and some are somber "Thank you to the volunteer firefighters who saved our home" in Lost Pines to angry "Vote out all those self serving bastards in Washington 2012" near Columbus to haunting "Pray for our fallen Navy Seal hero Mark Mills and his family" on the sign of a storage facility in the middle of nowhere Fayette county.

This is the single worst one year drought on record. It is one of the hottest years in recorded weather history here. In just three days we'll be at a record breaking seventy days of 100+ heat for the year and there's talk that might go on like this until October. It just hurts to think about it.

Comments

[imaginarycircus.livejournal.com]

UGH. That drought and heat sound horrible. D: Poor cows.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

The cattle situation seems pretty dire. I did some cursory reading over lunch and ranchers are in bad shape. It's easy to see why - there's hardly anything for them to eat out there.

[upaya.livejournal.com]

I know this is a little stupid and spiteful, but I kind of want the heat to continue like this every day for YEARS until every conservative in Texas has to admit that there is climate change. And that prayer does nothing to help the drought.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

I can understand that feeling certainly. I would probably support it more if I hadn't just seen whole herds of cattle with protruding bones and my walls were not cracking because the foundation of my house is shifting. Given that none of the "pray for rain" events Perry has held resulted in rain, I would like to see a bunch people have some damned rain dances and hippie drum circles and maybe burn something to produce some rain in short order.

[upaya.livejournal.com]

I don't really want this weather to continue, it's causing a lot of damage and I am not enjoying working in it. I just know that when it does rain eventually, there will be calls of thanks to god for caring enough to make it rain. It makes me crave a lobotomy.

[in-thy-bounty.livejournal.com]

I'm always fascinated when you describe Texas because the vocabulary is so different to anything I would have the opportunity to use. I can half-visit some of these places on google street view, which I do sometimes, it's just so different to my world.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

Oh so green! I'm always fascinated by how the trees look so different elsewhere.

If you search for Hruska's grocery store, Ellinger Texas you can see the little place. I just looked at the google view and that must be old because there's still green. But it has one of those perfect day skies, full of puffy clouds and bright blue that goes on forever.

[in-thy-bounty.livejournal.com]

Parts of the sky have 2009 Google written on them, but apart from that are amazing. We don't have those big skies out here.

The village view must have been in winter because all the leaves are gone. That's about as un-green as it gets for us.