Located in hill country at about the geographical center of Texas and roughly a 25-minute drive from the town of Fredericksburg, a stunning series of huge granite upwellings dot the landscape, their origins perhaps a billion years ancient. Subsequent volcanic activity, erosion, and the changing elevations of the underlying strata led to the formations' exposure and peculiar shapes a few million years ago. The initial humans, a succession of American Indian tribes, are thought to have begun frequently visiting or residing in the area about 10,000 to 12,000 years back. They venerated it for its strangeness and apparent spiritual qualities and first began calling this place The Enchanted Rock. Now designated as an official landmark and a state park, the natural attraction inspires hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Comprising over 1600 acres, with several granite domes and many ponds, creeks, roads, and miles of paths, Enchanted Rock has plenty of room for the hiker or camper to find solitude for contemplation amid its magical settings. Even on a comparatively still day, the wind is a major player at the park, rushing or whistling about the tops of the domes, its eddies and currents created in part by the shapes, as air rushes faster over the curved wings of airplane and bird alike, and in part by the diverse temperatures here, as the region's varied topography warms or cools at irregular rates. One may find at Enchanted Rock a unique array of plant species, from the many great old live oak trees surrounding the domes to tiny mosses or algae species in or around small bodies of water atop the hard upper surfaces, the succulents and grasses that invade cracks in the granite masses, or multicolored lichens that paint the surfaces of the area's numerous boulders. The place presents an intriguing and unique laboratory for the amateur or professional botanist. Many animals call this home as well, the more noticeable including rabbits, vultures, rattlesnakes, armadillos, roadrunners, abundant butterflies, white-tailed deer, quail, and several lizard varieties. Ecologies at Enchanted Rock may be as self-contained and small as a fairy shrimp pool, sometimes barely inches across, or as vast as the vistas of a vulture's gliding flight and panoramic views. I began going to Enchanted Rock decades ago, and my wife, Frances, and I have made quite a number of trips there. The park is about an hour and a half's drive roughly to the west of our home in Austin. The to and from traveling plus hikes in the park and a picnic lunch make for a long but entertaining and quite satisfactory outing day. We usually return well after dark and have no trouble sleeping that night. Each of our dogs has loved the area too, and often they have far more energy than we with which to bound up or down the steep sides of the large domes, about 300-400 feet from base to summit. I began taking pictures there about 14-15 years ago and have seen and documented its changing faces in dry and wet times, and in both color and black-and-white. Some of the landscapes there seem of another world, others so fanciful as to be the product of a droll sculptor's imagination.

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