30 Hikes in 30 Days: Day Five: Bastrop State Park

Friday, June 19, 2020

For more than 70 years, folks have visited Bastrop State Park to enjoy its history and marvel at the Lost Pines. Forest fires and floods have ravaged the park in recent years. Now comes rebirth: new trees, new plants and new life. Come see the park’s recovery from nature’s fury. We’re just 32 miles east of Austin. -- Texas Parks & Wildlife website

Map of the park, at the Scenic Overlook

We'd been living in Texas for just over three years when the brushfires raged across Bastrop in 2011.  I can remember the constant bonfire smell in the air, a slight burn in the base of my throat, and a dark cloud on the horizon that was vaguely reminiscent of one that hung over our home in New York City ten years prior, after the attacks that toppled the World Trade Center Towers.

This was our first trip to Bastrop since that devastation; we'd taken our boys to the Capital of Texas Zoo in Cedar Creek not long after making our move southwest.  I don't want to dwell too much on the damage that was done by the 2011 fires, because, as the website's blurb above suggests, one does see amazing, inspiring evidence of rebirth and regeneration when one hikes the trails of this majestic park.  However, the old-growth trees that now stand like blackened gravestones command your attention in a way that cannot be denied.

One of the many "tree gravestones" at Bastrop State Park

The deep black of the countless burnt out trunks has an interesting, ultimately beautiful effect:  somehow all the colors that surround it are enhanced -- the blue of the sky, the green of the pines and brush, the copper brown of the soil, and the white of the sand, which the pines apparently love.  

A blackened tree trunk, bringing out the colors around it

As far as the hike itself, my lovely bride and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  It was the longest we've done so far, my iPhone health app logging nearly 8 miles and 23,000 steps, and, as such, a good reminder about the importance of perseverance and going on when you think that you can't.  (This may have been due to our choice to "go with it" when we realized we'd gotten off the red trail, known as the scenic overlook loop, and onto the purple trail, which is significantly longer and takes you through the lovely Lost Pines section of the park.  

The author, asking a Lost Pine if it needs directions

This may be a bit of a stretch, but I think there was something about the resilience of this amazing piece of parkland that may have inspired me to finish my 7+ miles.  Mother Earth has a way of coming back from even the most devastating blows, natural or man-made.  As I sat in a bit of found shade, I took a few sips of water, caught my breath, and looked out at the burnt out timber, surrounded by flourishing, new growth, stood up, and said, "Okay.  Let's do this."

And we did.

My lovely bride, enjoying the splendor, and ready for an ice-cold Topo Chico