Last week I joined Claire and her stalwart canine companion on a stroll through the East End to a part of Buffalo Bayou known as Turkey Bend. It’s part of the Buffalo Bayou East Master Plan, though at present the unimproved state of this industrial site holds its infinite appeal.
Exploring the site transported me back to living in Pittsburgh at the turn of this century, a place where the urban and the industrial rolled into an overgrown rural feeling in a way that I hadn’t experienced before. As usual for Houston, the clouds stole the show, though I’ve tried to capture some of the structures, vegetation, and graffiti that offered playful visual interaction—and will surely not remain so gloriously forlorn for long.
One part of the evening left unrecorded was a small, lone turtle that kept swimming by us as we sat talking on the edge of the cloudy water. The other was the joy in just catching up with a friend. Once again, it’s the simple pleasures that stand out as powerful little miracles in 2020.
