We were coming down from our annual trip to the top of Enchanted Rock when we saw a young boy stopped sitting on the top of his astronaut helmet. I stopped and quickly took a picture. He was so adorable. I was thinking what an amazing message his family was sending him. They looked at this young boy and felt like he could reach the stars.
Not that far below him his mother was struggling up the steep incline caring camera gear and more space paraphernalia. She also had her daughter with her space helmet in tow. This was a family launch. She was clearly headed to top with aspirations of a big photo shoot and the internal rewards of “getting the right” picture to publish on social media.
I was about this same age on my first trip to Enchanted Rock. My strongest memory is that my oldest brother sat on a cactus and my father had to speed a long time plucking needles out of his backside. It was awful.
At that time it was a private park having been held by the Moss family since 1895. There was even talk of the Borglum’s (famous for carving Mt Rushmore) coming to sculpt the rock into the hero of Texas. When the Moss family offered to sell it to Texas the government balked. A stone quarry company, however, was willing to pay the price. Only through the intervention of Lady Bird Johnson was the area eventually purchased for the state and preserved. She could see what it could become, while others thought of how they could tear it down.
Those seem to be the impulses of our world, see the best or see the worst, build up or tear down. I’m glad they protected it. It always make we drink in the horizon and the beauty and dream of the best days ahead. I looked at that boy so full of life and potential and was thankful that he had a mom that believed in him. I bet one day he will look back on those pictures and they will fill him with joy.