Good Life Comes to North Central Austin

(Editor's Note: The piece below, by Tim Walker, appeared originally in a recent issue of Good Life magazine. Since it makes prominent mention both of Waller Creek, and of our own Glen Coleman, we thought it might be of some interest. Our thanks to Good Life publisher Rebecca Melancon for permission to reprint the piece.)

Natural life on Waller Creek continues,including yours truly.An Austin writer penned these words not long ago:

"Beauty is not a luxury;it is a necessity,a positive agency of survival, a deterrent to the terrorism with which our world is infested. And in cities -- most of all those which,like ours,are growing too fast -- we should be giving high priority to preserving every natural pocket still available, with the practical aim of helping preserve ourselves."

    What Jones wrote is true today. We humans need beauty around us if we are to have beauty inside us. While the twenty- one-year-old reference to terrorism seems more apt now than ever, many of us would also say that Jones hadn't seen the half of "growing too fast" by 1982. Whatever this week's figures on local job creation may tell us, the city, like the whole region, has far overreached itself, and still is growing too fast.

    Before I get too righteous about the latecomers who mucked it up for the rest of us, I should indict myself. I moved to Austin in 1990 to attend the University of Texas, and I've spent all but about thirty months here since then. I've returned to the place like a moth to a flame, not even quite knowing why I kept coming back. There's a good argument that I am part of the problem.

    So, how to be part of the solution? In particular, how would a body take Jones' words to heart to preserve Austin's natural pockets of beauty? One way of doing it -- and on behalf of Waller Creek itself, no less -- is modeled by my friend Glen Coleman. Coleman attended UT a couple of years ahead of me, but settled in Austin to stay in 1995. The house he rented on Avenue H was sheltered by enormous pecan trees,the nesting site of "a gigantic pair of Yellow-crowned Night-Herons". The birds lived in the trees and hunted crawfish in Waller Creek. (I often meet Coleman for lunch at Quality Seafood. He told me this story as I was tucking into my customary meal of crawfish etoufee. Smart herons.)

    Coleman's civic interests led him to the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association (HPNA), of which he's now an officer. As he sees it, his involvement in the HPNA and his devotion to Waller Creek are automatically linked. "To me,Waller Creek defines Hyde Park as much as the famous avenues,or Mother's Cafe."