Bastrop

I hadn’t been out to Bastrop since June of 2015, so on February 10th I drove the almost 50 miles from where I live to make an early 2016 visit. Many of you will remember that most of the trees in Bastrop State Park and adjacent areas burned down in the horrendous Labor Day forest fire near the end of the drought in 2011. Not surprisingly, the landscape is still largely one of devastation. These scenes are from the park’s Red Trail, which I don’t believe I’d ever wandered along on any of my visits during the four decades I’ve lived in Austin. Notice in the second photograph how a portion of the trunk’s bark remains incongruously standing on its own.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman