Inland, Dreaming of Waves

Driving me batty

Friday, April 20, 2007

When I contacted Matt and Rachel about visiting them on this trip, the only thing I asked for was to go see the bats in Austin, the ones that fly out of the famous bridge at dusk. I was supposed to arrive by 4 in the afternoon,, but I was late. Every day so far on this trip, getting where I want to go has taken me longer than I have anticipated. I think it’s because I’m optimistic—“Oh, sure, that drive will only take 4 hours!” So as soon as I arrived at their house in some impenetrable suburb of Austin (thank God for Mapquest), we had to pile into Rachel’s car and drive off to meet Matt for dinner. I had just enough time to bring my stuff in and dump it in their living room. Then it was off to a restaurant, where I had catfish toes, Elliott had a corn dog, and I don’t remember what anyone else had.

I think it was at the restaurant that Lorien began to warm up to me. She has a very serious demeanor, and that can be a little intimidating in an 18-month-old—the way they stare at you without any pretence. I can’t remember what I was doing—throwing up my arms or something stupid. But she seemed to like it.

Then we rearranged ourselves, with Kristina going in Matt’s car and Elliott, rather unhappily, staying with us. But he made up for it by shouting “Daddy’s car!” every time he saw it ahead of us. When we got so far behind that we couldn’t see Matt’s car, Elliott became worried. We drove up over some mountain that had really nice houses on it on the way to downtown Austin and the Colorado River (another Colorado River—what is it doing in Texas anyway?).

I think it was on this drive that Rachel and I got into a conversation about the Virginia Tech shooter and all the things I had read about him. According to one article, he was mocked in some of his grade school classes and told to go back to where he came from. I mentioned that to Rachel and she said something like, “So does that justify his shooting 30 people?” I was startled by the vehemence of her reply and said that I thought a teacher should not have allowed, let alone encouraged, his classmates to talk to him that way. But if I’d been thinking deeply about the subject, I would have said that this latest shooting is just another example of how we seem to have lost the ability to care for each other. There were people who were worried about that boy and trying to intervene, but no one went quite far enough.

I’m not trying to blame the professors and administrators at Virginia Tech—but have you noticed how many people like him slip through the cracks lately and hurt someone? Like the man in Colorado a few years back who kidnapped his children. His wife had a restraining order against him, but when she went to the police, they didn’t take her seriously, and her husband had enough time to kill his children and himself. Years later the Supreme Court ruled that the police were not liable for the deaths, despite the restraining order. At times I think, “Why can’t these people just kill themselves and leave the rest of us out of it?” But it would be so much better if we could reach them first.

All this makes me feel that there is something seriously wrong with my country. I felt the same way when I saw the bodies floating in the streets after Katrina. We all seem to know something is wrong, but we don’t seem to be trying, in any serious way, to fix these problems.

So that was my train of thought when we drove into downtown Austin and parked at the Hyatt. There was construction at the hotel, so we took a circuitous route, down a steep incline, to get to the path by the river. Rachel was pushing the stroller, and I was supposed to be holding Elliott’s hand as we went down the hill. His little legs could deal with the slope, however, and he started running down the hill. I lost my grip on his hand and before I could regain it, he had done a somersault onto the sidewalk, somehow (miraculously) not splitting open his head on the stone wall that edged it. He even popped up and said, “I’m OK!” as if he didn’t want us to worry.

So I’m not sure if it was a sweet craving on my part or guilt that made me buy everyone ice cream when we arrived at Capital Cruises. I had a chocolate inside crunch, Rachel had something else crunchy, Elliott had a red-and yellow popsicle, and Kristina had the bubblegum one. Then Matt paid everybody’s fare and we got onto the boat.

It was an open boat with about 20 to 30 black plastic chairs arranged in rows. At the back there was a metal bat canopy. It was breezy, so I was glad I had brought a jacket. We cruised up and down the river until it got dark, and then we passed under the bridge and waited, along with several other boats of various sizes.

When the bats came out, they looked like streams of pepper, except that they were spiraling up instead of drifting down. They just kept going and going. I kept trying to get a picture of them with Todd’s camera, but I didn’t really succeed. (Here are the bats coming out of their roosting spots in the bridge.)

Finally, frustrated, I stopped because I felt I was missing the show by looking at it through a tiny lens. I watched the bats as we moved slowly back to the dock. We found a much easier way to get back to the car and went back to Matt and Rachel’s house, where we had snacks before bed. Then I spent time on the Internet, looking up other places in Texas to visit. I couldn’t get to sleep right away because some people across the street were talking loudly.

When Todd and I volunteered to watch bats for Boulder County Open Space, we were told that the first thing they do when they come out at night is get a drink. Here they are heading down the Colorado River.

posted by Price of Silence @ 9:34 PM