Zen on the Medina
I was out rambling a few weeks ago and took a break northwest of Bandera at a rest area along the Medina River. The sun that morning was filtering through the cypress trees so I thought I’d take a few photos.
The scenes along the river are seldom uninteresting, but I’d never seen a rock sculpture in the river before.
The river is shallow here, although it is deep enough to be a popular spot for tubers and kayakers to put in for a leisurely float or paddle. Someone had waded to mid-river and erected this little structure. The gently flowing river and the carefully stacked stones inject a little piece of Zen spirit into the Texas Hill Country scene.
It took a lot of work to find the proper stones, build the reef you can see in the water, and then carefully stack the stones. I don’t know if the green strap or belt was part of the original installation. This might have been an actual meditative exercise by our unknown artist or it may have just been “Let’s cool off in the river and stack some rocks while we’re down there. People will think they look kinda cool, and this belt could really confuse them.” Whatever it was, the stones made my morning on the river bank interesting.
Other artists have frequented the rest area and left their marks but they don’t catch my fancy like the stones stacked in the river. The visions of these other artists seem clear enough and need no elaboration.
