Out here in these woods, where the placid and aging Yeti patrols the paths, declaring them his own, small birds hop and scratch the ground perilously close to the business end of the furry carnivore, as if they sense that he’s gone white-faced and is done with all that chasing business. And the birds aren’t the only ones who feel it. There’s a sense of security that lays over the oak and cypress in the back reaches of McKinney Falls State Park, a feeling of undisturbable peace and quiet that has little to do with the world of Austin about 13 miles to the northwest. This is Yeti the Dog’s favorite place, and thus has become mine as well.
This park is attached to dogs. The search for uncrowded acreage to sniff and flop in is what brought me here in the first place. The spirit of the old dog, Kona, still haunts the wide tracts of prickly pears along the paths of the park’s lower end. She’s gone now, but in her day she would streak a trail of black and white about a foot off the ground, clearing a long stretch of spiky cactus in a flash, chest and flanks hovering just above their outstretched stickers. The park was a race course, an arena to run with the blinding speed and boundless energy that humans only know in the best of dreams.
The new dog, Gus, thinks that everything moves a little too fast. He’s content a few steps behind, occasionally loping to a complete stop to look up and reset the pace and suggest, as he settles his rear in the dirt, that we slow down a bit � this place isn’t going anywhere. Barely three by the human scale, already he knows to take his time and enjoy it here, that it’s better not to rush things.
Between the old dog and the new dog there’s still Yeti. Slower now and driven by routine, he takes the same side of the trail at all the same spots, over this boulder but always around that one. Once unleashed, he’s into the water for a drink and a quick swim, then a little half-speed runaround, then another dip, and then a long flop and roll session. You’d think there was nothing better in this wide world, especially in a field rife with the pollen of bluebonnets, than a wet and dirty roll in the grass, feet up, eyes and mouth wide and crazed in delight.
A sun-soaked stretch in the middle of this particular field never fails to bring � along with the frequent spray of one of the dogs shaking off a swim in the pond � a deep sigh from the soul, a moment of sheer relaxation that drains any stress resilient enough to survive the hike out. It’s quiet out here.
Heading out from the center of the city, a 20-minute drive will land you at the entry gate to a much under-used stretch of public land, still inside the city limits, that can offer respite for an hour or for a week from the pace that plagues the day to day. The drive to the park is not a particularly scenic one � these parts of Riverside, Burleson, and 183 are sparsely populated stretches of smattered development and blank fields. Now, though, the formerly dormant Bergstrom Air Force Base is coming back to life as the city’s new international airport. Cranes loom high near the new tower as heavy vehicles fuss over the half-built shell of the new facility. Three miles from the park’s entrance, where McKinney Falls Parkway meets route 183, the most significant step in dealing with Austin’s population explosion is about to change everything in this part of town.
There is no question that a brand-new airport will be followed by commercial development geared toward servicing travelers into and out of Austin � the massive hotel at the intersection of Riverside and Hwy 71 is a solitary and imposing sign of things to come. Hotels, chain restaurants, strip joints, and gas stations will prosper, the roads will congest, and the night sky won’t be as dark anymore. The residents of the southeast Austin neighborhood around Burleson and 183 will have to adjust to the ensuing noise and traffic, and property values on the northern end of the Eastside will rise with the loss of the old airport. All of these things, as the citizenry has accepted, are inevitable.
But what of McKinney Falls? A large percentage of Austin residents most likely have no idea there is a genuine state park within city limits. Many wouldn’t care even if they did. And that’s what makes this place so necessary � with a short drive, or a longer but manageable bike ride, you can find a big piece of tree-shaded ground free of your fellow man and all the noise he makes. You can ride deep into the Barton Creek greenbelt or wander off on any number of hike and bike trails right in town, but nowhere on them can you so consistently find quiet and solitude.
Though the park registers about 400,000 visitors per year, a trip out for a midweek hike will often present empty parking lots and miles of silent trails. Camping on one of these off nights, especially in the primitive creekside sites, can give a sense of being away from it all that compares with larger parks that are much farther removed from metropolitan areas. As much as the wildlife or the flora or the creeks and falls, it’s the lack of ambient disturbance and constant aural stimuli that have made coming to this park a necessary part of my routine.
Perhaps the person most tightly attached to the park and the peace to be found here is Ned Ochs, park manager for the last eight years. Ochs has had no contact with city or airport officials regarding the new facility, so he can only speculate as to the effects the new neighbor will have on McKinney Falls.
“Right off the bat, I’m concerned about the noise level, if we are in a flight path,” he says. “One thing that concerns me is the increased traffic out in this area. Increased traffic makes it more difficult for the visitors to get out here. Quite truthfully, the roads out in this area are not adequate for the new airport.”
Though he is concerned, Ochs shows no real distress over the development. When you’re inside a city that is growing like this one is, encroaching development and the loss of open space is as inevitable as thickening traffic on main streets and longer lines at your neighborhood grocery store. But even if flight paths do invade the park’s airspace, Ochs could abide the noise for the opportunity of taking in larger numbers of visitors. Considering the horrendous state of funding for state parks, increased traffic and visibility could only be positive things: More visitors means more revenue, which translates into a more secure future for the park.
The confidence of the Park Manager helps assuage any fears I may have had over the fate of McKinney Falls � he all but reprimands me when I ask if there’s any chance …
“This area is, to me, too precious a place to preserve, to close it because of obtrusive noise or the lack of visitation. I think this area is too important, from a natural resource standpoint and a cultural resource standpoint, to just close it and sell it off. No, I don’t ever see that being done.”
The dogs, too, seem oblivious to my concerns. During our last approach, a bulldozer was pushing up a large mound of earth directly across from the park’s gate. It coughed out balls of dense black smoke and sent waves of noise pounding against the limestone cliff on the opposite side of the road, and as it moved past I noticed a couple of dumptrucks parked nearby and a mixer churning in the distance.
By now, the dogs know the way to the park, and at this point in the drive are concerned with nothing save getting out of the car and into the woods. The roar of the tractors phased them not even a little � unlike me, who stared amazed at the quickness with which the dastardly developers had carved out so much of the ground, opening a veritable chasm in the sand and limestone. I asked Ochs what it was all about, and whether he wasn’t enraged that this was happening so close to the park gate.
“There’s no development going on,” he said, with a surprising lack of animation. “The Dean Word Company has a lease on the land over there. What they’re doing is quarrying the rock � which is called Austin chalk, or commonly called caliche rock � out of that area over there. Usually you can’t see them, but lately they’ve been working closer to the parkway. Nothing is gonna be built there. Dean Word has a 99-year lease on the land, so I expect it’ll be there for a while.”
His pragmatism is reflected in the faces of the dogs, who stare at me indignantly when I pull over to survey the scene. “What are you doing?” they say. “We’re not there yet.” Perhaps, I glean from their stares, the desire to keep certain things safe from progress, especially places as sacred as this park is to me, can make one a little paranoid.
Even as Austin’s edges
push outward and human density increases in this direction, occasionally the park offers up a reminder that things out here follow a different order. A recently killed deer, fallen either to poacher or predator, lay dragged just off the creekside trail one time, though it didn’t remain for long. More recently, and more lastingly, there was the flood. When this part of Texas endured the deluge of last fall, Onion Creek and Williamson Creek, whose confluence lies just above the lower McKinney Falls, swelled to uncontainable heights. Water levels of Onion Creek climbed to 39 feet, bending bushes and trees with the current and depositing large amounts of trash and debris in the upper branches of the taller oaks, cypresses, elms, and junipers.
It took a long time for the creek to drop (all water-contact recreational activities were banned for 30 days), but drop it did without serious incident. Four months later, though, the flood’s effects are still apparent. Walking the once-submerged path, you’re surrounded by tall grasses and short trees that still bend down-streamward, angling sideways as if gale winds constantly blow. Perhaps 15 or 20 feet overhead, branches and logs up to and over 10 feet long rest tightly bundled in the crooks of the higher limbs. Dried clusters of leaves and twigs stay plastered to the up-creek side of these trees as well, mashed into place by the force of the water’s flow. Except for the fact that the creek is running quietly and lazily below the bank’s crest, it looks like this place is still underwater.
Since the Onion and the Williamson run into the Colorado River watershed, which was also swollen over capacity at the time, there was no place for the water to go, so it remained high for days, compounding the effects on the vegetation close to the creeks’ banks.
The eerie feeling of walking in a place that was recently underwater, with all living things bent unnaturally toward the ground, was also lost on the dogs. Gus trots behind, Yeti sniffs ahead, content as ever. As I wonder at the extent of the flood’s damage, they weave forward down the trail, knowing a nice swim and a good twisting in the dirt await them at walk’s end.
The new airport is set to open in a matter of months. Whether my irrational but passionate fears are justified remains to be seen, but there is one point of possible fallout that is not lost on one segment of the park’s visitors. Birdwatchers will be on sharp lookout this spring for the painted bunting, a tropical migratory songbird that every March arrives in Texas from South and Central America.
As Ned Ochs describes it, “They look like a sparrow-type bird that an artist has taken a paintbrush to and multicolored it. It’s yellow and blue and red, it’s just a beautiful bird, fascinating. We’ve shown the bird to birders from all over the world and they’re captivated. You gotta see it to really appreciate it and believe it.”
It’s issues like this one, matters that are of no concern to the greater part of the local population but are important to a smaller part of it for whom these parks exist, that have given the park manager pause. Even so, like every facet of any system or environment, it’s all part of a greater whole.
“I wonder if it’s gonna scare a lot of the birds off,” Ochs says. “But wildlife is adaptable. Every species of wildlife is adaptable. If you look at West Lake Hills, the deer have adapted to the encroachment on their habitat by the urban sprawl that’s out there. Out here, even though I’m concerned about it, I know the wildlife will be able to adapt. It’s just nature. They learn better than humans to adapt to their environment. Even though I’m concerned, I know they’re gonna adapt to whatever adversity there is out here, and they’ll be able to do it better than we will.”
As cleanup continues and the winter wears on, creek levels stay low and the park looks more like it did before the flood. Since it lies within city limits, the selective pruning of wildlife that takes place in the form of weekday hunting in other state parks, like Enchanted Rock and Pedernales Falls, is not allowed at McKinney Falls. New airport or not, a Tuesday afternoon along the Onion Creek trail will still hold as much human-free, dog-intensive time and relative quiet � if not total silence � as it always has.
And we will adapt accordingly. *
This article appears in February 19 • 1999 and February 19 • 1999 (Cover).