"the map!"

Most folks who know me know that I am a printer by livelihood. I have had the good fortune to print and publish throughout the state. Some of the titles I have had a hand in creating are Time, Life, Texas Monthly, TV Guide, and Parade to name but a few. All worthy of the ink and paper that went into them (all the news thats pit to frint...).

There was one item I printed in Austin, Tx in 1978 that rattled my cage. You see I moved to Austin in June and had been travelling there the preceding three years on SCUBA diving junkets to Lake Travis. So I had a clue that there were water features out there in the Hill Country around Austin. This little gem I printed was called "50 Swimming Holes an Hour from Austin". Now for this aquaphile this was like the 'match book of the month club' for a pyromaniac. During the printing and subsequent discovery of these '50 holes' my first summer in Austin was booked.

Why just some of the names were idyllic and descriptive and conjured cool paradise. Places like 'Blue Hole', 'Deep Eddy Pool', 'Hippie Hollow' (clothes optional!), 'Barton Springs', 'Krause Springs', and 'Jacobs Well' to name but a few. I moved that summer of 1978 with a contingent of high school buds that were down there for college (a rich man goes to college and a poor man goes to work....) and together we made it our mission to seek and enjoy as many of those '50 holes' in "the map".

Hamilton Pool

One swimmin hole left me stunned when I climbed into that grotto the first time. In the summer of 2008 I took my family on the "Mike Manes Memorial Swimming Hole Tour". The first 'hole' on the tour was Hamilton Pool. HP is truly God given because no man could of thought of this. It is a collapsed grotto (think cave with the ceiling gone)  with a waterfall at one end spilling about 70 feet into an emerald green pool that is cool and deep. Gravel beach at the other end and overhanging cliffs on one side with a 75 foot drop. Watched my brother Patrick do a half-gainer twice from up there. Hamilton Pool is easily in my top ten natural wonders of Texas not that we should ever limit Texas to a list as short as ten.

WHAT'S A TEXAS HILL COUNTRY?

Headwaters of the San Marcos

    It was the 70's and we were living in Dallas. My younger brothers and sisters had been taking a SCUBA diving course through an outfit off of Harry Hines and for whatever reason I was not part of that. What I was part of was the subsequent trip and check out dive that took place in San Marcos, TX on the San Marcos River just below Aquarena Springs.
    Now up to this point, we had been well travelled throughout the state having lived in West Texas, Houston, now Dallas, and a family place in Freestone County of East Texas. I had no idea what we were headed into going south on I-35 towards Austin. Texas Hill Country, never heard of it, didn't know it existed. It was the middle of February and we were leaving the Metroplex with its cold and dark overcast behind.
    It is hard to describe the colors of green and blue that existed in the heart of the college town known as San Marcos. Here it was mid-February and the grass and trees were green with a clear running river of steel blue fast and broad through the heart of the town. The San Marcos runs out of artesian springs in what was then known as Aquarena Springs (home of Arnold the diving pig). The air was dry and cool and the water temp is a constant 72 degrees year round. Here it is in the middle of winter and steam was rising off the river!  
    Having been raised a natural born swimmer, I had no qualms throwing on the SCUBA gear and joining in with the rest of the divers. Words defy the ethereal beauty of a clear stream when you are part of that world. Looking up or down the river was like looking down a tunnel for the clarity was exceptional. The freshwater grass waved with the same motion of a wind-swept prairie of the Plains country. Fish of all varieties and crawdads the size of my hand played hide and seek in the flora of the river. I dove repeatedly, using tank after tank of air as I could not get enough of this incredible world previously unknown to me.
    We finally came to the point where we had to go back home to points north. Something visceral had taken place in those waters. Sure I had swam in backyard pools, seashores, and lakes since I had been a child, but something had grasped my heart while I was in communion with the waters flowing from the earth in the Texas Hill Country.
    To this day, I remember with clarity looking out the back window of Mom's LTD at the receding tree line of Bald Cypress that lined that clear stream. I knew without a doubt that I would be back, I would come back to the Hill Country and I would make it my home! This is just the first of many stories of the hidden treasures that are Texas swimmin' holes.