How I Got to Galveston
Little bits of fate in middle and high school put me on the trajectory to live and study in the island town.
Welcome to On Texas Nature! I’ve recently changed my paywall to include certain personal pieces for a smaller audience. All other nature based and informational posts will still continue to be free. This particular piece was originally published early in 2024 but I unpublished it after a few months because it felt uncomfortable putting so much information out there when I have a much larger readership than I have since I began writing on the internet in 2002. If you feel inclined, you can purchase a paid subscription which is on discount right now for the month of March. If not, and no worries if you don’t want to, a new and free newsletter will be out next week!
We were not a Galveston family. I couldn’t tell you when I became aware of Galveston Island but it must have been at some point when I could read maps or perhaps when I learned about the 1900 hurricane that decimated the “Wall Street of the South”. As I said in my post from September, Nostalgic Thoughts from Bryan Beach, my family was a Rockport and Port A family. For summers on end, until we deviated a few times to Florida, we would pack up the family car, head south on I-35 until we got to Waco and then hop onto US 77 South for miles and miles. We knew we were inching closer when we passed Giddings, La Grange, Schulenberg, Hallettsville, and finally in Victoria we could almost smell the Gulf air. (I couldn’t tell you anything about the towns between Waco and Giddings, we were either sleeping or they were such small blips of farm towns they were ignored in my childhood mind.)