It's September 23rd, 2011. I remember the date so clearly because of what happened during that weekend. It was opening weekend of dove season in the south region of Texas.
Myself, along with three of my father's friends, are in the back of an old Jeep Wrangler. The two of us in the back of the Jeep have fashioned two seats out of Igloo coolers, which are also doubling as...coolers. We're meandering our way through thickets of unforgiving country. The landscape is blanketed with mesquite trees and prickly pear cactus. The environment is too unforgiving to allow for the growth of any growth that may be generous enough to offer its shade against the south Texas sun. Our only respite against the heat is the breeze provided by the openness of the Jeep.
The aforementioned heat is unbearable. I didn't have a thermometer at the time. I didn't have a cell phone signal. Save for a few species, the majority of wildlife in the region is migratory, much like the animal we traveled south to hunt. Not only is it no country for old men, it is no country for anything. Some animals do call the region we're in home, though. The Western Diamondback Rattlesnake, the roadrunner, the coyote, whitetail deer, javelina, and the animal that made the man whose land we were currently passing through: the Santa Gertrudis cow, live and die within south Texas. We are on the King Ranch.
Deep in the annals of south Texas resides a conglomerate cloaked in a shroud of secrecy. The King Ranch has cultivated a history worthy of documenting, but has found itself unwilling to share its story with the outside world, and here I am, navigating through its acreage.
We drove an hour and a half to reach the entrance of the Ranch that morning, where my father's friend met the three of us. The thirty minutes after was spent diving deeper into a land that remains largely untouched, save for the multitude of checkpoints scattered throughout the 825,000 square acres.
It's an interesting dynamic. We often associate gates as barriers to keep us out of something: prestigious neighborhoods, government facilities, hazardous waste treatment facilities, places of business, you get the idea. These checkpoints served as barriers to keep us out of nothing, and understandably so.
It's a spectacle. We know what white is because of black. We know what bad is because of good. We know what light is because of dark. The world we live in is a world where the reception of information is made by our ability to compare, and that world is teeming with things. To put yourself in the middle of a land where, if left to your own devices, you will die, and where the fingerprint of man is largely unnoticeable, offers solace. It offers vantage.
