Opposite the normal route I follow on 281, there is yet another place keeping itself even now in unkown identity. The country surrounding Marble Falls, Texas, remains dear to me after many summers owned by my boyhood. Up here there is a different air than places closer to home.

I am sure that my experiences in these particular hills, even as they have continually evolved, have molded uniquely the progression of my thoughts, such that they are what they have come to be through this process.

Camp Longhorn is central to my identification with this land, and the special people and times I have met there for over a decade have sprinkled my mind and thoughts with laughter, tears, heartache, and the joy of friendships made and lost. This land granite, particularly that surrounding Inks Lake, has been significantly shared with close friends, specifically friends with whom I could pick and sing with. Numerous times I have set out on a hillside run through with granite, and played and sang until the light remaining was just enough to see a path back to the car. There is something about this land that is so compatible to the sound of a guitar strummed to the most simple chord progression you could find. There was so much time spent out there, really on and in the land.

The music we played and and songs we sang fit hand in glove with the country we sat upon. I can well up with fond emotion with no effort whatsoever if I let my thoughts drift to those times. And even now, when I hear that music, or just that kind of music, I am remined of the feelings and inspiration, though vague, that were characteristic of those points in my life. There is water not far from anywhere around here, as the heavy Colorado river has laid down close to every little town in its way: Burnet, Kingsland, Granite Shoals, Horseshoe Bay, and Marble Falls to begin the list. The water carries in its current a common feeling through all of these places, and symbolizes how I have enjoyed this vicinity alone and with others in a way capable of achieving the simplest of delights.