YOUR PERSONAL CHANGE


By Karen Heidrich

Photo by Billie Mercer

There are days when it's difficult to appreciate the beauty of a city equally known for its industrial parks as it is for its opera. Sometimes we need a fresh perspective, a view beyond the brake lights ahead, above the lowest limb of the oak tree in the backyard, below the waterline. And there is nothing like a view from the water, not just from Galveston Bay, but from one of the many bayous crisscrossing the city. Over the past few years, the Texas Mariners Cruising Association has made annual tours of the ship channel, docking at Allen's Landing in downtown Houston.

Shortly after sunrise on a late summer morning, a fiberglass flotilla departed the marina in Baytown, sending wakes across the estuary that spreads beyond the ship channel in wide swaths of shallow water. At the prearranged location and time, each captain established radio contact with the Coast Guard before being granted permission to enter the Port of Houston.

After rummaging through libraries for information on the history of the area, I approached the day with the mindset of an archeologist and searched the banks of Buffalo Bayou for past dig sites, for a bronze plaque or a big red X marking the memories of past peoples. Below the waste of contemporary civilization, there are remnants of the recent past, sherds of Shenango china and salt-glazed stoneware. White and green commercial hotelware manufactured by the Iroquois China Company and used by the San Jacinto Inn between 1927 and 1967. Digging deeper into the muck and mire produced bone projectile points with beveled tips, with distal ends ground blunt.

With the San Jacinto Monument looming behind, our boats lined up like kindergarten children going to recess and passed efficiently through the port under strict instructions to stay clear of all traffic. Fantasies of exploration were quickly replaced with a barrage of unnatural sounds and smells, of clanging metals and the tang of chemicals. It is difficult to imagine the feelings of the early settlers as they sailed along Buffalo Bayou, passing Indian camps with little more than a few feet of water and briar-choked banks to separate them.

It took all day to get to Houston in the 1860s, steaming in from Galveston on cargo-heavy paddle wheelers forced to skirt shallow reefs even during high tide. They often stopped in other port towns, like Harrisburg. Kids swam in the water just to get away from the mosquitoes at dusk, sliding down the same muddy shoots made by the alligators. There was a time when little remained but the smoldering ruins left by Santa Anna and the Mexican army.

The bayou snakes through the modern landscape, flowing between commercial warehouses and under streets, a physical rather than a visual focal point with sterile cement banks. It flows, forgotten until it swells with heavy rains. From that perspective the city looked like a jagged mountain range, pushed up out of its natural mire before it was tamed by men with a vision. My anticipation grew as we neared the dock at Allen's Landing, downtown growing larger as we rounded each tight bend in the bayou. I closed my eyes as we passed under rusty bridges, knowing the view would be different on the other side. It's a perspective I did not expect. I felt small.

The oppressiveness lifted as I climbed the steps into the sunlight and looked around. Suddenly, it felt good to be small. Sometimes taking a different path leads to something bigger, a new perspective. Sometimes it leads back to the right perspective, something known all along.

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