Spring Grass and Comanche Moons

A sizeable caravan of Kalderash Gypsies who had wintered along the south banks of the Colorado River were on the move again. They were to join a Machwaya tribe of Romany Travellers at the fork of the Brazos when “the first blossoms appear on the Mountain Laurel bushes and the intoxicating fragrance of purple sage fills the prairie air.” A freak snowstorm in late February of 1850 lingered into early spring, transforming the verdant terrain of the Hill Country into a ghostly camouflage for much too long. This seemingly sudden thaw was cruelly orchestrated to coincide with the natural progression of April’s annual flooding rains. Having no containment and no direction in which to flow, the fugitive force of raging waters, laced with generous chunks of ice, churned across the land with little resistance. Like a formless buzzsaw, it created narrow rivulets, rearranging limestone boulders and gouging wide ravines until its energy was spent.