While I may not be a native Texan, I was born next door in Louisiana, the state will always be a part of me. I met my wife in Texas, our son was born in Texas, and we’ve carved out a beautiful life for ourselves in the Lone Star State.
I’m writing this article on the other side of the world, from a Shinkansen train streaking across the Japanese countryside, but I couldn’t feel more connected to the land that has been devastated by flooding over the past week.
I watched from the Executive Lounge on the 37th floor of the Tokyo Hilton as the area of the country that I call home was ravished by floodwaters. Days later, the news was filled with images of rescuers searching for the missing children from the camps that line the Guadalupe River. The same camps that my family and I have visited for decades.
My Introduction to the Texas Hill Country
While many say that Texas Highway 39 is the gateway to the Hill Country I was never there until the car took a right onto Farm to Market 1340; just north of the now devastated Hunt Store. The final few miles of a long day’s journey that usually began in the parking lot of the First Presbyterian Church in Shreveport, Louisiana are some of the most scenic in the world.
As middle schoolers and high schoolers our journey occurred in 15 passenger vans, driven by my father and other members of the congregation that were crazy enough to take a bunch of kids on a weeklong trip, as we got older those trips were replaced by caffeine and sunflower seed fueled rides of our own. Regardless of the mode of transportation, the destination was the same.
Cresting one of the many hills along Farm to Market 1340, dropping down off of a limestone cliff across the Guadalupe River, the front entrance of the Presbyterian Mo-Ranch Assembly Conference Center and Summer Camp came into view. This is the same place which, if you Google it today, appears on the front page of news sites like Politico, Fox, and the New York Post. But, in my mind, it is a peaceful, otherworldly, place where you can go to get away from the world.
As a lanky, pimple faced teenager, Mo Ranch was my introduction to the Hill Country. Later in life, after meeting my wife, I learned that she was also a camper at Mo Ranch though, thankfully, our paths never crossed during those weird middle school years. Campers would gather from across Texas and the surrounding states each summer for events like Junior High Jubilee, Youth Conference, and the Young Adult Retreat.
We both made lifelong memories in this place, the first picture of my wife and her best friend was taken in front of a cabin at Mo Ranch. I mourned the loss of family members and spent one week, during a summer off from college, trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life here. We swam in the cool waters of the Guadalupe River, in the shade of limestone cliffs, and let all of our worries slip away. Mo Ranch, the Guadalupe River, and the Texas Hill Country felt idyllic, nothing bad could happen here.
Unfortunately, years later, the same cliffs that provided us shade, and the river that we would spend careless afternoons floating in, would combine to force an unimaginable amount of water downstream towards places like Hunt, Comfort, and beyond. Thankfully, due to the quick actions of councilors and staff, Mo-Ranch didn’t face the same fate as others.
Downstream from Mo Ranch, at Camp Mystic, counselors and campers are still missing among the debris of the receding floodwaters. Flash Flood Alley has reared its ugly head once again.
A Reintroduction to the Hill Country
A few months after we wed in 2022, my wife and moved down I-35 from Dallas to a new home in Austin, Texas. She is a proud graduate of the University of Texas and was happy to return to a familiar place. While the city has changed a lot, they are still doing their best to keep things weird.
At this point in our lives, instead of running around at summer camp, we spent our weekends boating on the Highland Lakes, a series of flood control reservoirs built as an attempt to control the unpredictable nature of the Colorado River.
As members of our friend group had kids, lazy afternoons in Party Cove on Lake Austin gave way to renting lake houses with room for everyone on Lake LBJ. Over the years, we’ve taught countless friends how to wakeboard, waterski, and wakesurf. One day, god willing, I’ll teach my son how to do the same, hoping he falls in love with this place as much as I have.
As we get older, the hot summer afternoons and late nights at the lake have given way to early mornings on the dock as we try to get a few minutes of peace and quiet before the house transitions to the familiar melody of chaos that occurs when there are multiple kids under the age of three and their parents in the same house.
After the events of this past week, sitting outside on a cool summer morning, with a cup of coffee in hand, listening to the hum of the first bass boat crossing the lake is a small pleasure that I won’t take for granted. While I hope that we will never have to endure what so many families in the Texas Hill Country have over the past week, these lakes and rivers are a part of life in this portion of the state and are something that we can’t, or won’t, stay away from for long.
Looking Towards the Future
While we don’t talk much anymore, I’ve been able to keep up with many of my fellow Mo Ranch campers via social media over the years. Many of us have children of our own now and I know that one day, sooner than I’m willing to admit, I will make the drive down Texas Highway 39, turning right onto Farm to Market 1340, to drive my son and his friends to the same summer camps that my wife and I attended as children.
He and his friends will make their own memories along the Guadalupe River, splashing in the cool water of the rapids, hiking through the woods, and drinking bug juice in the cafeteria. While we’ll be happy for him to enjoy these carefree experiences, we’ll always have the devastation of the 4th of July weekend floods of 2025 in the back of our minds.
My wife has asked how a parent could possibly feel comfortable sending their kids off to a camp along the Guadalupe River after the events of the past week. While the lessons learned will remain, and hopefully drive change, campers will return to Mo-Ranch, Camp Mystic, and others along the river. Families will return to camps and cabins situated at the waters edge. The Hill Country becomes a part of you and one day soon we’ll all be relaxing along the banks of the Guadalupe, Llano, Pedernales, and Colorado Rivers again.
The flooding in the Texas Hill Country over July 4th weekend killed more than 129 people, the majority of which occurred in Kerr County. These include a 20 month old boy, lost in his mother’s arms as the floodwaters ripped their home away, and more than 30 campers and counselors from Camp Mystic. More than 150 people remain missing across the region with entire communities wiped out and inaccessible, cut off from civilization by the water that Central Texas so desperately needed. Unfortunately, here, our droughts are eradicated by floods.
How to Help
To support the recovery from this tragedy, all proceeds from this site for the month of July will be donated to charities in Central Texas. Reading this article is support enough but, if you feel so inclined, please consider donating to one of the following causes.
For those of you in the Austin Area, KUT News is maintaining a list of local businesses donating proceeds to flood relief efforts. For those interested in additional coverage of the 4th of July weekend floods, Texas Monthly has done a great job telling the stories from this tragic event.
The best description of the Texas Hill Country is the opening chapter in The Path to Power, the first volume of Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. Great writing.
Nicely written.