Cosmic Water
Exploring the history, mythology, and future of the sacred land called San Antonio
Cosmic Water
San Antonio's Geological Narrative w/ Luis Escalante
Luis' website: https://www.are.na/luis-escalante/back-to-the-ocean
Instagram: https://instagram.com/eatenupbythesea?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Prepare to embark on a fascinating journey with our guest, Luis Escalante—a gifted artist and planner at an architect firm—as we traverse through the geological history of Texas. Luis's vivid Instagram collages, which amalgamate geological maps, images of seashells, native art, and hydrology maps, serve as our guideposts. Simultaneously, they offer us a unique opportunity to appreciate the deep connection between the land, its history, and the people who inhabit it.
We delve into the story of San Antonio, from the pulsating shoreline over the past 500 million years to the contemporary world's heavy reliance on the Edwards aquifer. Luis inspires us to ponder upon the profound link between the four springs, the native peoples, migration, and urban planning. As we explore his artwork, it leads us to realize the delicate balance between reverence for the land and the modern world's challenges such as affordable housing and gentrification.
As we draw to a close, we touch upon the concept of geotrauma and the necessity of nature restoration in San Antonio. Reflections on the importance of maps, striation, and a course correction in development give us food for thought. Tune in to the Cosmic Water Podcast as we voyage across the intricacy of water, land, and the human relationship with them!
As the cosmos connects the universe, water connects life. At the Cosmic Water Podcast, we're exploring the history, mythology and future of the sacred land known as San Antonio.
Speaker 3:Well, welcome to another episode of Cosmic Water Podcast. I'm Angela, I'm Maureen and we have Luis Escalante with us. So glad to have you here, thank you. Thank you A planner with an architect firm, but what I thought was so interesting was looking at your artwork, your collages that you have on Instagram.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so I guess, go ahead if you want to talk about the collages, because that's the initial connection that I like.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure. The account is called Eatin' Up by the Sea on Instagram and it's I think I had mentioned to you and messages saying that the collages on there are just kind of introductory thinking ways, like a design thinking way for this book project I have, and the collages show a lot of maps, geological maps of Texas and the fault zone, the Bacconi's fault zone, overlaid with images of like native art or images, hydrology maps too, kind of focusing specifically along the like aquifers and overlaying images of like seashells that you'll find in Texas, specifically in like the Hill Country area, and all of these collages kind of have a hyper focus on one specific aspect of all these things. So I have a collage that's focusing on oil and fossils on West Texas and then I have another one that's got a map of like Highway 35 going across Texas and then having it overlaid with images of seashells.
Speaker 1:All of this is showing how the ocean just like used to go, I guess, in like it was in West Texas the coastline, and then it just like moved.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, so a long time ago, about 500 million years ago, the sea was in the northern part of Texas northern and western Texas and then sometime between there and 200 million years ago the Bacconi's had an uplift or a fault and there were multiple different breakings of the earth where you then had a reverse. So then West Texas, northern Texas, became higher than the Gulf area and the sea kind of receded into the Gulf and then from there you have this oscillating shoreline that kind of went back and forth across. Yeah, the Bacconi's escarpment is basically like this. You can think of that as like the shoreline oscillation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so the Bacconi's escarpment? Yeah, like what and where?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it starts like, I want to say, mccallan and it's like a wide band and it goes all the way up through Waco and this whole band it might go past.
Speaker 4:Waco is just kind of a geological like uplift or a fault line, almost like an ancient fault line that became active over those hundreds of millions of years ago. And yeah, and what you see now today is like all of the Texas's big cities are along this escarpment and I always thought that was an interesting thing, because it's like you have ocean life for millions of years here in this huge band of Texas and it dies off as the sea recedes into the Gulf. And then you have people, natives, coming in and settling in the area, finding that this area is very holy and filled with tons of water, and the Spanish come through. They find this area to be very resourceful. There's some trauma with that coming into the new world and then, yeah, like this then becomes still like a huge basis for life, for organic life, yeah, yeah. So then you just have, then you have the modern world now so to deal with.
Speaker 1:I was looking at all the or several of those pictures anyway, and your curriculum came across right and I noticed that, so I know exactly what you're talking about now. The balconies, I guess that it's called, and it has the four springs. Yeah. And that's where like so. So it seems like for a long, was it for a long time? The ocean coast or the Gulf Coast was like right there. Yeah where those springs are.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so those springs were, as I understand were made as the escarpment was uplifting and there were other many different lifts and like the earth was sharing across itself. So what you would have had was like a solid piece of earth and then, as this fault line was being reawoken or something like that, you have these pockets that ended up being developed over millions of years and with holes from the crust of the earth, the rain would fall into those areas and like start to fill up and those became the springs, and that's as far as like I can give like a very rough and filling up the aquifer.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that's how the aquifers are made too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I read once about like an aquifer. Maybe it was in Kansas actually, which is where you're from right. I think, what is there an aquifer there?
Speaker 4:I'm not really versed on Kansas geology.
Speaker 1:There was a. There was an aquifer somewhere in that like I don't know either central or mid east part of the country, but I was reading about how all of the water in there and I guess this is true for all aquifers, but it was this one specific I was reading about was that all of the water in there is from rainwater from potentially millions of years ago. Yeah, I just thought that was fascinating, and so the Edwards aquifer would be the same, which is the aquifer under us.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So when we're drinking our water from the aquifer, because it rainwater Yeah- basically rainwater.
Speaker 4:But we've. But this is the issue with like the modern world and our whole development across this land, because it's not just Edwards, there's Carrizo, there's Barton Springs. We've used up like like we drain the Edwards aquifer pretty heavily, like just for drinking water. So when it does rain we're really like happy and that's why you see like on the news channel they're like reporting it every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah it went up an inch or whatever. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And so, yeah, so that's like the the beginnings of this Instagram account is is to kind of visually have a framework or some kind of precedent for the book which kind of will go over like specific stuff and like the formation of the earth, formation of Texas. But yeah, the collages are super fun to make. I do like research while I'm making the collage, so it's like a process of reading some kind of dense geological material and then trying to translate that into something visual.
Speaker 3:And it does translate because I understood it. You know, like I didn't, I didn't know you or we didn't, you know, but like I was like looking at this and like this guy he's, he's researching the stuff that we're talking about you know, just by looking at the art.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so we had an hour to guess to go In our second episode guests who spoke about those springs, those four springs and their placement on rock wall, rock mural art, what is it called?
Speaker 4:a white shaman.
Speaker 1:Yes, on the white shaman mural. Is that something that you were familiar with?
Speaker 4:No, no, I met Angie earlier this week and she had mentioned it to me and I'm going to probably go see it later this month or next month.
Speaker 1:What's it seeing it mean for you, like all the research that you've done and the you know coastline being on those four springs? What's it like when you heard that it was like on this art from what? How many years? 1000 years ago, was the white?
Speaker 4:shaman mural. I don't even know.
Speaker 3:I think they're saying right now, I don't remember, I think 2000, but there's an argument there's an argument about that.
Speaker 1:A lot older than that, yeah, and that it was an ancient, like you said, sacred holy water place where indigenous people from all over, yeah, yeah, and so, yeah, that's what bringing that bring together some of the stuff that you had been learning.
Speaker 4:It really did like because I was mentioning to Angie like there was in the collages you'll see kind of glimpses of native art or depictions of reverence, of like like I took some, some images from an old codex that a Spanish priest did that was studying, I think, my ends and because I didn't know of any specific hyper local art like that or like old art like that. But I would overlay images of what was depicted was like my end and a spring source and I would like overlay that with some of the collage maps to kind of indicate like there is this presence of native people in the area and that I was wanting to get more into like understanding origin stories in this area or in this land and then being told about white shaman. It like very clearly shows that like this is obviously like there is a history of an origin story.
Speaker 4:And that, like native people, knew of this entire escarpment basically, and had, as far as I understand, the the white shaman murals depict like almost like a map, and then the springs, all of Texas basically.
Speaker 1:And yeah, and for those who aren't familiar with the springs that we're talking about, it's in San Antonio, with new Bronfills, san Marcos and Austin, which you said to you mentioned, and I never even thought about that all along. I 35.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so does it keep as the escarpment. Now that I know that that's the name for it, does that keep going up? I 35 past Austin.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it goes all the way through Waco Pam, like towards Dallas. I don't know if 35 maps it, but it is an odd coincidence, you know, like such a modern invention of the highway is like overlaying this beautiful water source.
Speaker 3:I guess that I've also heard that there's like a sort of ring, that it continues in a circle west from Waco and then goes into West Texas where there's other springs, because there's spring all over yeah.
Speaker 3:A lot of them are dried out, though, and then it comes down before you get to like the arid west Texas, and then down and scoops down into Del Rio, back up again. I think maybe Gary might have shown that or something at one point, but I'm I really. I also really like the how we were talking about earlier the migratory sort of connection of humans and following these waters and. So how do you see that? I don't know, I guess, as because you studied urban planning, is that correct.
Speaker 3:How do you connect these sorts of ideas or whatever with what you're doing now, or maybe just how people move now?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think the usage of maps is certainly embedded within the field of urban planning. So that's kind of like why the maps or why the collages show a lot of maps is because of, like, my schooling we learned how to make maps. I knew where to find public data and stuff like that to make maps and stuff.
Speaker 3:And do you, when you think of land, do you think like that? Do you in your mind?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know there is like a top-down view of, like, I think of you know, this stretch of highway that runs through San Antonio or around San Antonio, or, yeah, like state boundary lines. But then also, what I'm trying to also learn is also a non-map, like a non-territorial understanding of the land, which is like something not a lot of people do or even know that you can understand the land without a piece of paper or your Google Maps, and I think that's also really interesting about White Shaman is, I think some of the depictions show the land just drawn out as a drawing instead of you know, this spring is, you know, 10 miles to the east of the city, or, you know, is north due north, or something. But in terms of the planning and migration, I think that is something I do wanna address in the project or try to wrangle with, because, yeah, this area, san Antonio, austin is slated to be like a huge migrant, like tons of people are gonna be moving into the area.
Speaker 1:Wait, finish. You were about to say migrant.
Speaker 4:Like migration into this area?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I never saw it that way. Yeah, this huge metropolis that they have planned and it is people migrating here?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and that, and you know there's also the need for reverence for the land and for the aquifers, and if the people that are coming in and we're not able to sustain like their presence here, then you know we're gonna be causing a lot of destruction and trauma to the land itself. So then it becomes it might possibly become like a site for trauma in terms of land resources.
Speaker 1:In your studies at UTSA. Did they talk about how San Antonio because you know what's unique and interesting about the way San Antonio developed is that downtown is not in the center of the city, right, it's like real low south, because in the 1970s, late 70s and 80s they developed so much on the northern side. Did they talk about like there was a really big fight to not develop on the north side because of it being right over this sensitive part of the aquifer, which I think I saw in one of your something on one of your sites?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm not sure if I remember learning about that, but that's something I mean I could definitely see how that can be like super influential on the development of the city.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was a big deal. I forgot when it was, maybe when I was a teenager about the PGA building a really big golf course on the north side. That was over the aquifer, of course. Since then they've developed that whole like you know, outside 1604, northwest part.
Speaker 4:Oh, that far north I kept thinking of. Like San Pedro north. Oh, closer in.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, no, no, yeah, I'm talking about like, because, like, UTSA was built in 1978 and the reason UTSA was built is because there's no public schools in San Antonio and so they're like, you know, we need a public edu, um university. And then it was a big controversy because they built it so far north and when it was built in 1978, 78 or 76, I think 78, um, it was farmland. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was all farmland out there and it was real controversial because they were like, okay, well, how are all of the you know people who need an education down here on the south and west and east sides, how are they supposed to get up there? But it was really just about opening up the development pathway to the north side. So that was only what 40 something years ago, yeah. And now look at right, it was farmland and it is so developed, highly developed and even you know way farther and continuing to go further. So, yeah, they were really trying to not develop that land at all because of how sensitive it is over the aquifer.
Speaker 1:Maria Barriosabel, she was a council woman at the time of a lot of those fights and she fought really hard and was sometimes like the only person, the only council member, to vote no on a lot of those projects, and so she did a lot of work trying to protect the aquifer. She had said to me once that it was. It's one of the last fresh water, large fresh water sources in the entire world. Wow yeah.
Speaker 1:Which makes me nervous about, like why is Elon Musk so obsessed with Austin? San Antonio yeah, he wanted to build a subway underneath, from downtown to the airport and that's all like. That's where the first spring is, where the San Antonio River starts, that's where that spring is. I'm like what? What does he know? Is what, I wonder. He's just lazy and he don't want to see us.
Speaker 3:He just wants to be able to go downtown and not like I don't know, but it's funny how the gentrification continued throughout the years, cause when they were taking away mobile home neighborhoods in the South side, they were doing the same out there near UTSA, because there were still mobile home neighborhoods with families and a freaking pet cemetery that they just like bulldozed through. You mean recently. This was like yeah, within the past, like 10 years.
Speaker 1:I guess, oh yeah, it's grown so much by UTSA I said that yesterday when I spoke at the Health Equity Forum is that when I went to UTSA I could pay my rent $500 one bedroom easily by waitressing, like I could get by by myself. That's like.
Speaker 3:Kansas prices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now I looked up that unit and it's $1,200 right now. I'm like that is an over, a 100% rent increase. It is so unsustainable. How are you going to go to school how?
Speaker 3:Pull that off. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I do wonder that, and I'm concerned about that for my kids. Urban planner Louise, what do you think? How do we like? Okay, yeah, because let's talk about that too, how you did your thesis on housing in urban planning at UTSA and you know if you want to talk about what you kind of studied there. But also I am curious what is your? What, in your perspective, is a solution, or some solutions, to the affordable housing crisis?
Speaker 4:Oh man yeah.
Speaker 1:I know it is hard, it is hard to answer.
Speaker 4:Well, I'll go into the thesis stuff. So yeah, I studied. I got my master's recently, this year. Yay, congratulations.
Speaker 4:From UTSA and urban and regional planning and I did my thesis on corporate landlords in San Antonio and I basically studied from 2018 through 2022, the growth and the characteristics of corporate landlords in the city. I showed a. Between 2018 and 2020 there was like a. There was a presence of corporate landlords in the city already. That kind of followed national trends and then after 2020, there was a statistical significance of an increase of their presence here. With that said, they operate in both realms of single family and multi family and then also like inventory buildouts for, for potential build to rent communities.
Speaker 1:And I'm glad you explained that, because you had to explain it to me.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, build to rent community is a developer, a home builder company will build out, you know, a subdivision and then just rent it out. They don't sell the units, they don't sell the houses to individuals or anyone. So they're the developer and property manager basically and that's been happening over the past couple of years where you'll have a corporate landlord partnering up with a home builder and then you get these build to rent communities that are part of a bigger portfolio of a corporate landlord.
Speaker 3:And what kind of houses are these? Are they?
Speaker 4:these are your basic single family home in San Antonio specifically. So all of the new subdivisions are just blankets of land that are being bought up on all directions. It's mostly I'm trying to remember the maps, the, I think, far East side, like way out which would become part of the metropolis, the San Antonio-Austin metropolis.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean this is all part of that migration point we were making, like, yeah, with the development of UTSA a long time ago and then with all these homes being built, there is like a tying of Austin, san Antonio metropolis in the works, basically. But going back to the corporate landlords, they do buy up land around the west side to not inter-west side but far out west side.
Speaker 3:And I'm sorry. So are these like brand new, like? Nice homes like KB homes or nice or whatever, but like yeah, so that surprises me because, like I'm like, all these people are homeowners but they're all renting, or at least a lot of them. That's crazy.
Speaker 4:Yeah. To rent a big home.
Speaker 3:Well it.
Speaker 1:Also, it makes a little bit of sense, considering this is a military city too. I don't know that just like for me. That's at least one point to it that a lot of these. That's true. People are in and out of San Antonio.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so there's, there's that activity. But then within San Antonio itself, you have landlord corporate landlords buying up homes across established neighborhoods and in the analysis I show that after 2020, they specifically bought homes that were in black and Hispanic neighborhoods across the city or across the county rather, and within each census tract. They bought homes that were under the median home price. So they were targeting, like poor black, hispanic neighborhoods in the city. I'm doing, I'm working on getting that work published with my advisor and another PhD student just to update this analysis and get it more prepared for a journal article, and I think our goal is to get this information verified and, if it does, you know, get it into the hands of like affordability policy makers in.
Speaker 4:Texas or in the city In the.
Speaker 4:In the thesis I write a couple of recommendations.
Speaker 4:One recommendation is specifically for targeting affordability within the context of a corporate landlord being a renter from a corporate landlord as to have like public rental registries in the city, which is like if I'm a landlord, I have to submit some kind of document to the city that I'm publicly renting out my unit or my house and people can look look up the property online and see, like is who I'm going to be potentially renting from, someone local or someone that's just outside of the country or as part of a bigger firm.
Speaker 4:Because and I go into the paper like other trends that have happened across the US, like in Atlanta, there's been findings that corporate landlords evict at higher rates than your typical mom and pop landlords and evict more so black and Hispanic people that they, you know, will increase your rent over 100% or something like that, something too unsustainable for the renter. That's one recommendation. Another recommendation which is and these are these, both recommendations like really go hard against, like the Texan kind of political stance with being a rental registry you don't, like there's an incentive, or I guess, for a landlord to not know, for their information to not be public.
Speaker 4:Yeah and then the other one is to restrict the purchasing of single family homes by corporate entities. That's like a huge one that I don't know will come to fruition, just because that's like an encroachment on your, on someone's rights to purchase something.
Speaker 1:Because corporations are people according to right.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah so the solution to the affordable housing crisis. I think there's. It's so complex, like I'm still so young and understanding and and seeing what has what has helped in other communities and for San Antonio specifically, yeah, it's. I don't really know like you can build more housing, but then you know you also have to confound with, like, the bottom line of the developer who has to make the money from building it and yeah, it's such a really hard, difficult thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really inspired to by listening to you and having come up with solutions, though, because we and I were at the health equity symposium yesterday, and me and our last guest, rebecca, and one of my other friends spoke at the housing breakout session for it, and that was ultimately and would you say kind of what it came down to, for our session was just like coming up with solutions and speaking up like, let me, tell you that, like you coming up with that solution and bringing it up places, bringing it up to council members bringing up because, look, honestly, I've worked with and against the city council and mayor and the departments for six years now they're not smart Like they're really, like they don't know about this, they don't know about this stuff.
Speaker 1:And so, when you go up with your expertise and say it, like they really do take it in into consideration for policy and so, so that's really powerful. And then like yeah, so that was my point is that, like the end of it was like just speaking up with whatever expertise that you have and for you, it's, you know, this academic background, with the data to prove it, which you know, data, just like means everything for them, because then they have like the information to be able to advocate for it further. And we'll say, though, that, like for me, like that's an important role, that's an important place. For me, it's also about getting the people who are most impacted to speak up.
Speaker 1:Yesterday, I heard oh, I don't think you were there at the end I heard from somebody that so Mission Trials was a mobile home park on the south side that when they started redeveloping the river, then this mobile home park on the river got bought out.
Speaker 1:Everyone got displaced and they built apartments on top of, but there was a really big fight against it, and so there was community members helping organize all of those mobile home park tenants to bring awareness to it. And had that not happened, what I heard yesterday was that there's this mobile home park more south that that was potentially going to happen to, but instead the city was taking bond money to help the tenants buy out the land so that they will permanently own that mobile home park. That wouldn't have happened without the Mission Trials tenants speaking up, and so that's just like how powerful it is when you do use your voice, and so, yeah, I'd like to offer that, that bringing that you know you could just like call your council member and be like, can I have a meeting with your supervisor, the head of office or whatever any any of your staff and sit down with them and I just I can't express enough.
Speaker 1:They really don't know. They're so busy, they have so much coming at them all the time about exhaling in different issues, that when you bring information and put it into their minds is how I always see it you put it in their mind and then they repeat it back out on the mic and it goes on to the record, it gets into media, it gets into more people's heads, like, and so it just it's really that simple to make difference in policy. And so, yeah, that is my, me feeling inspired by you, coming up with solutions.
Speaker 3:You're district one right.
Speaker 4:I am.
Speaker 3:Okay, we have a long history of gentrification here in San Antonio. Yeah. As do most major cities.
Speaker 1:So yeah, I wanted to um, because when we came up with this podcast idea, it was with the water, um, kind of as the focal point of it all and the sacredness of it, um, but also as like concing consideration of all of our guests.
Speaker 1:There was a lot of like housing people, people with experience in housing, and in my mind I kind of kept being like how to make the? To me there's a connection, right, there's a direct connection between the water, the land and housing today. But I wasn't sure how to like sort of bring that connection together because, like, as we bring more guests on, I was like, hmm, how do we like you know it's this like mystical sacred water podcast, but how do these like housing activists come in? So that it makes sense in my mind, but I didn't know how to like articulate it or verbalize it and I still don't think I do. And I feel like you are just exemplifying all of that in that your background, like your fascination with the water and history of this land and how that relates to urban planning, is is it possible for you to re articulate what I'm trying to say, like from your perspective? Because, like, I still don't really know, although you are the epitome of it right now.
Speaker 4:Oh, thank you very much. You know, starting the project and the collage work, it was so separated from my research and interest, like in in school, that I had not tried to make that connection. The connection that I can, that I am circling around in my head right now is the, the notion of like migration, people wanting to live here, and I think I'll go back to this concept of like reverence for the land.
Speaker 4:So to live here is to be reverent to and I guess this can be applied everywhere across the world but to be reverent to the land that you're living on, but specifically in San Antonio, to have reverence for the sacred waters, the, the, the land itself here and when thinking about, like gentrification and the people who have been displaced, they've been removed from their homes or their homelands, in which there should be an advocacy to bring them back or a way to get them stay put, I don't take the stance that that, like I think, gentrification happens. There's there's no way to completely stop it, but there are ways to stop the, the fastness of it happening. And I think that's like.
Speaker 4:That's like for me. That's the issue that I would want to tackle with housing is like, if you are going to build new developments and have these apartments be at market rates, have some of those units be for, like, established residents, keep them at the same rate that they're at, or and like have a way to keep residents there for as long as possible. Yeah, it's a hard thing to like, say, and make the connection between housing specifically, because also with housing here or in the modern world, it's like single-family homes or apartments and not like homes that have generations in them. I know a lot of San Antonians that are from here or even just have like a Mexican, hispanic background, where you do have generations living in one household. And for, like, the newcomers, it's usually across across the country that come in and want new single-family homes. They want just a one home for one family and that can contribute to sprawl. And then that gets into like environmental issues, of like not being sustainable for the land itself, things like that.
Speaker 1:So I think there is like now I feel like I'm swirling around the connection there has to be because we've been, I've been so interested in it and now that you have the exact same interests in the land and the water and housing, I'm like there's something about, you know, forming connections to the land and recognizing the importance of home, of like having a place that's like, meaningful to you and honoring, like you said, the sanctity of it.
Speaker 3:I love that and you know we've you mentioned the word before trauma, but it was a different kind of word.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Was it terra, trauma or something like that?
Speaker 4:It was geo trauma, geo trauma yeah.
Speaker 3:And I really remembered when, when you used that word and when you were talking about that, because I see the connection too is like an appreciation for the land's journey. You know the ever-changing journey of the land and for so many years, right, millions of years, it's gone through these different traumas to to get to that place. Sort of like people who get here, they go through all kinds of trauma. The journey to get here, you know, and then so it. There's got to be a reverence and respect and acknowledgement of that. When you, when you go to ceremony and take, take medicine, eat peyote, which which I've done I didn't, I didn't, I don't know if I didn't eat enough or something, but I I didn't have too much of an experience in that sort of a way, but what I've heard is that the experience really connects you to the land like you really feel that connection to the land in a way where we disrespect it.
Speaker 3:So, like you know, when I think of fracking how we're, we're disrespecting the land and what it's gone through, and here we're just poking holes and extracting what took millions of years to create and to get there.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know where I'm going with that, but no, it's all like complex stuff, like we were saying in the beginning, this concept of a spiral right and it's like it. It it makes sense, but it's it is, it's systemic, and so you can't bring a gizillion different things that are interconnected into a single thought except, like through this process right of just discussing it and making sense of it while processing it yeah, I'll go into a little bit about the project itself.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, the project itself is, is this whole concept of a a reverence for the land and water, but also because, like I'm not from Texas, I'm not from this land, and so I've always been wanting to understand it, and for me it's it's asking questions like what's here and why and what has happened here.
Speaker 4:And then I start to investigate, like I think of it like a detective crime scene or something, and I start the, the pinboard with, with geology, looking at the development of the earth, the, a cosmological trauma that formed the earth, and then going into, like native knowledge on the cosmic and origin stories of these waters and this land, of, of this part of Texas. And then another element of the of the project is like a romantic thought, like old the romantics who would like look at the sublime and nature to try to recover like a lost self. That was happening during the industrial revolution. And that's where this concept of geotrauma comes in, which is, instead of a sublime experience, where an exterior visual account of the earth, or looking at the earth and being like so overwhelmed that your senses can't comprehend what you're seeing, that it's not an exterior and interior conflict, but that the exterior struggle or the traumas of the earth are within you as an organic being on the inorganic earth, and that you know the crust of the earth is like the only layer that has life. Everything underneath it is like this inorganic material, that is, that, like over millions of years, you get to see the blossoms of what it's produced, those beautiful minerals and rocks the granite and granite and that, yeah, that brings me to like enchanted rock, like that's going to be a
Speaker 4:chapter in the book, which is it's a place where you can touch the flesh of the sun's flesh, like when you think of the sun like the formation of the earth is, like this protoplanetary disk glob of sun ejection that then solidifies and then you have this event of enchanted rock, where part of the magma is trying to come through but then it cools off too quickly and the surrounding dirt and stuff over millions of years starts to erode off and then now you can see granite as this, like big punch through the crust. Wow, yeah that's amazing so.
Speaker 4:So there is.
Speaker 4:There is that like the, the point of passage into deep earth and time, and for me, something that'll bring up in the book or this project is like the passage of time too.
Speaker 4:Um, I think, when it comes to reverence, um, I think things like clocks or calendars and things like that really put a constraint on like how you live life, like I mean, throughout the week. My work week it's just like filled with meetings and deadlines and tasks and stuff, but in the few weeks that I take like a vacation to the Four Corners or something, and like time slips, like I don't, I try not to look at the clock and time slips away, just to be like present and enjoy life in the moment. And with the confrontation of like aquifers or deep geology, you only understand it through like our understanding of clock time, and so we understand like minerals and rocks form over millions of years, but for the earth it's just like it's just happening, and so that's like a point of the project that I want to kind of flesh out. And so there is like a conflict there with with the modern world of like not all time can happen at once.
Speaker 4:You can't have this like long period of of like deep time that's happening and then also have like your miniature time of, or I would say, like administrative time where, like you have your second clock, do you have your minute day scheduled and still try to be reverent to the earth, and I think there's a removal of the clock that might be necessary, and just saying that itself, like removing the clock from the modern world, is like catastrophe for us.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, total chaos. Yeah. Yeah Well, I was going to ask like what kind of your big vision and goal for when people pick up your book or when they look at your Instagram, like what they get out of it, and when you just said those words, the passage of deep earth and time that just sort of like flew me took me into that zone of what I feel like is like where you would desire people to be able to go to like see that reverence.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you know I've not. I wasn't grown up or brought up in this style of fashion, like of having a connection with the earth. You know I can. I can view. I used to view and enjoy the beauty of nature and the planet and stuff, but it wasn't until just a few years ago, like having an actual reverence for it or how did you grow up?
Speaker 3:I know you are from Lawrence Kansas, but like so, what was your experience? Because you're surrounded by nature in. Lawrence and. Kansas Like, first of all, the weather.
Speaker 4:All four seasons and not just all four, but like the rain, y'all have an abundance of water.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean y'all go through droughts, don't get me wrong, but like abundance of water, we spoke about the soil and how it's not like our Kaleichi, you know, putting that shovel in it goes all the way. In the first time you put that in the dirt. So what was your experience with with nature? Like out there, did you go fishing?
Speaker 4:No, I mean I. So I grew up, I was in, I grew up in Kansas, I was three years old and then we moved. But I still visit. I would still visit every summer and winter for family?
Speaker 3:Where did you move to?
Speaker 4:My dad was military so we moved to Seattle and then to San Antonio and then to Germany and England and then we came back to San Antonio. But like nature growing up, yeah, we would like. I remember being in Seattle as a young boy. Bob Scout would do all the forests and stuff and walking, and with my parents.
Speaker 3:Those are forests, yeah, those are beautiful Washington State, yeah.
Speaker 4:And then don't really have too much memory of land here when. I was here as a young boy too. I remember going to the caverns, that's.
Speaker 4:that might be like an initiation to the book you know, seeing the caverns and then in Germany and England that was kind of a form starting the formation of, like my interest of finding the earth beautiful Because there are there is so many trails and public spaces to go through. In England you have the right to roam, so you can just you can walk through a farmer's ranch or a farmer's farm, really, yeah, what you know like signs, like plastered everywhere, Like here.
Speaker 1:I'm kidding.
Speaker 3:That's kind of surprising. Yeah, In Germany. What was your experience there?
Speaker 4:Where did you live? We lived at the Ramstein base, not on the base, but we lived near it and that's kind of Southwest Germany, close to the French border and Belgian border. But yeah, there there was so many beautiful trails. I mean we lived in a little village and the end of our street cut through, or like there was a small bumpy road through some farmland and then you hit a trail like a paved trail through the forest that was behind the village. Nice, yeah, and I mean that was like a huge introduction to like or like a retouch with my young boy in Seattle and being in love with the trees there, because there's really big trees in Germany too.
Speaker 4:And then coming here to this, to Texas, like I had like a negative view of like the desert, I was like nothing's out here, but yeah, and then just finding that this land is actually really, really beautiful. West Texas is super beautiful. This year I've like extended my, my understanding of the Southwest, from El Paso and onwards, really liking Taos, new Mexico, that place is beautiful, the Caldera out there is amazing. And then hitting up like Mesa Verde, hove and Weep National Monument, and then like Petrified Forest area, grand Canyon, and just finding like all of this place. This place is like so beautiful and yeah, so like along that.
Speaker 4:And then coming back into Texas after these travels, I've started to pick up the project again, finding that this area is like super green in terms of life and trees and stuff. Like I don't know, when I first moved, when I first lived here, I don't know, probably 10 plus years ago, I always thought this was like a deserty, kind of dry place. And then I come back and it's like actually very, very green when it when it is like a good rainy season and yeah, there's just so much life in this area. That's amazing, it's so funny.
Speaker 1:I had the exact same experience when I lived in San Antonio for college and then left for like 10 years and came like I had that same exact vision. I was like, oh, there's nothing there. It's like not even green at all. It's South Texas, super deserty. And then I came back and I was like why? Was I like. Why did I have?
Speaker 4:that in my head.
Speaker 1:And especially like to go to the rivers. I'm just when I am on those rivers, just floating man like I am, just like this is heaven.
Speaker 1:This is pure, it's so green all around me. These trees are beautiful, this water is green even, but like the pretty, you know river green and it's just like I'm like this is literal heaven here and it's like not like there's not other parts of Texas that are like this and like you can't in Dallas you can't just go to 50 different water spots within an hour and a half of you. We have so many different places that you can just chill in a river and it's so magical. I was like I totally missed out on this somehow Last time I was here and I guess because I was coming back for good, like I knew that I was like coming to settle and with my family and kids and stuff, and so I was like, okay, like this is home now Right Maybe that was it.
Speaker 1:It was transitory before, and this time I was like no, this is home, and so I wanted to like develop that reverence. And I certainly did and, you know, had the same experience too, where I was like there's something special for this land.
Speaker 3:Imagine the days when all the waterways here in San Antonio were swimmable and clean, you know how heavenly they will be, they will be again right. But yeah, we're surrounded by water but we can't like jump in it. But imagine if there were swimming holes everywhere, like in Austin or San Marcos and we're just like going to Blue Star and jumping in the river there or wherever you know like yeah, we're surrounded by water, it's amazing and I wonder do they teach you at all in urban planning how to clean the water?
Speaker 1:Is there any way To bring our river back?
Speaker 4:You know I think there I mean my track in the urban planning program was just housing. I didn't really focus on anything else. But I have good friends in the San Antonio River Authority that do take environmental stuff very seriously and they're really big advocates there and yeah, I mean, I think you just there's like tons of stuff that you have to contend with, like with the cleanliness of the water in regards to like all the stormwater drainage stuff picks up a lot of trash.
Speaker 3:Stronger regulation. Like the zoo pours its trash water into the river, yeah, ew.
Speaker 4:I know Sacred.
Speaker 1:They do it, they want, they do it, they want, they land up sacred water and they're like well, let's just trash it, make it un-drinkable and then swim-able. And yeah, we I think we brought this up with Alicia, but we had come across like a postcard of somebody in like the 20s who sent it to a friend from San Antonio and it was like the rivers here are incredible. You can walk all along at any day of the year, it's the same temperature and there's kids of all colors and ages swimming around like ducks in this river.
Speaker 3:From day to night. Wow, that's what the little postcard said. Yeah, that's heaven right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that was 100 years ago. Yeah, what did we do? Where did we go wrong? I mean, I know, but nonetheless, yeah, actually, like I like to end with that, what is your vision for the city of San Antonio as far as, like all of your information expertise goes? If you could just like wake up in 20 years? And it look exactly how you want it to look, and people recognizing everything that, like you've learned, and stuff. What does that look like?
Speaker 4:Oh, man, that's. You know I have a really hard time with envisioning. I just hope that, yeah, that things like the water systems get back into a healthy situation where people can enjoy the waters as they once were used. Yeah, yeah, because this place, I mean this whole area, should be like overflowing with springs. You should be able to just go get a bucket and drink from the aquifers, or like even like I just passed the the album of the other day and was reminded of the well, that's there. All right, glad to have you with me today. Okay, like that should be still open and for the public to use. There should. I guess the Envisionment is like a severe Course correction for development, for new development, basically like I don't know what that looks like. If that looks like completely stopping development now so that in 20 years things clear up, or if that means building in sustainable ways, or Both, or both, you know, or just keep on having these conversations and figure it out as we go.
Speaker 4:Okay, so your Instagram it's eaten up by the sea.
Speaker 1:He and up by the sea and is there anywhere else people can find your work.
Speaker 4:Yeah, there's. There's a link that I've made on arena. It's like a Platform where you can put up projects and I've started like a Link to get all my resources in order. I Kind of want that to be a living document or like a living link. So I think over the next year or so I'll be in there like drafting up things, writing things up, adding new resources, things, all reference so that, like users themselves can get in there, see what I'm working with and maybe Something from what I'm working on or or write someone might take off with an idea?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's great. It's like I don't like public participation of life.
Speaker 4:Yeah we can all get involved with this, and then it expands upon your work too yeah, and I mean just thinking now like Going that route might might prove like helpful to open it up like yeah. Make it be a communal book or or a public book or something that Contributes.
Speaker 3:There should be. I want to decide it's gonna go yeah we have cool sounds on our sound board.
Speaker 1:We haven't figured out how to use yet cool, but yeah, so that's you know.
Speaker 3:That's what I appreciate about your work is like it brought in this different, new perspective of what we're looking at and reminded me of the images with the maps and the, the codex images, because back then we had an understanding of earth as we experienced it physically. We walked everywhere, you know, and so like we were talking about the white shaman mural and how it's. It's a map, but things depicted on there Don't show things in Distance and space. That that we think in our minds back back then. You know it's describing textures of the land and that sort of a thing.
Speaker 3:So it looks different, or or it might be a shorter distance, but it's got the texture, you know, and so you know, and then you have. You don't have to be out in the ocean to use the skies to navigate you know, so you know they were.
Speaker 3:They had an understanding not only of that, and then also the resources they're eating as they're migrating around, and so you have this um Digestive history in your mind to of the land you know, so you remember that spot has this certain food, and in your mind you're making the connection of why those foods are only found in the hill country or by the shore, or that sort of a thing. So like that. I really appreciate that, the perspective that you brought and not for me.
Speaker 1:That food pot especially brings up the time. Like you know, create. We create our own time right now and when you have to live where you, you, you have to learn the land and like what grows and when to grow and stuff. You're like, your time is connected to the land, you know. You know that one certain plans where it certain berries start Growing, that it's like this time of year, that's that's totally connected to the earth and not some like calendar Right, that has been just like kind of given to you. Yeah, that's quite like that. Yeah, it's very.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like the in terms of like going back to the maps and time, like these are systems of like striation.
Speaker 3:What does that mean? Striation is like.
Speaker 4:I think it means like like lines or or layers, or like a like a grid system kind of thing, that's like placed upon something that doesn't have that kind of Dividing up like like a topo map yeah. Yeah, topo maps or or just any kind of map itself. Yeah, I can go into maps to like, so bring you back for maps.
Speaker 1:The maps episode. Okay. Yeah, thank you so much Thank you. I'm so glad, thank you. That's I'm you and Angela connected, yeah, and then we got to bring your perspective especially early on, because it is such a important Part of our puzzle that we're kind of trying to put together here. Cosmic water podcast.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I love that the. I Think that's why I hadn't reached out was because of the name.
Speaker 3:Oh, Okay, it was cosmic water.
Speaker 4:Something that I was yeah, writing up about thinking through. Yeah, on point, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you so much and hopefully you'll be back for sure, thank you Appreciate it, thank you.
Speaker 1:Oh.