An Outing to Coupland, Texas

A couple weeks ago we had some frigid weather. One morning it was 11 degrees, and for a few days it didn't get above freezing. Not only were the temperatures in the basement, but the wind was also blowing, making it pretty miserable to be outdoors. When it gets that cold here, everything just shuts down. All of our community activities are canceled. Dan and I even tried to make a bank deposit and found Bank of America closed due to weather, even though the roads were clear.

On Wednesday, seeing the sunshine, blue skies and the mercury rising to the mid-sixties, I felt an urge to go on a little photo-shoot to enjoy the great outdoors.

Coupland, Texas, is a tiny town of about 300 people, an hour south of us. I've been wanting to take my camera down there ever since Andy and Kay drove us, one evening, by the outdoor sculpture garden, where artist, Jim Huntington, works his magic on carved stone monoliths.

On the way to Coupland, I stopped several places to take some shots of the winter landscape of our area. I said something to Dan the other day about everything turning brown here, in the winter. He disagreed, and said it was actually yellow. Not to give in too easily, I said, "Okay . . . kind of a yellowish-brown," to which he replied, "No. It's brownish-yellow." It's kind of funny that we have nothing more serious to debate, in our comfortable retirement years, than what color the grass is. We finally settled on "golden."

I also stopped at another tiny town, Bartlett, on my way down, to snap a few images of its old west architecture, which harmonizes well with its worn brick streets.

This building was abandoned, but I noticed that, upstairs, "Dentist" was painted on the window. Made me wonder if Doc Holliday had ever practiced in this Texas town.

I was fascinated by the stonework incorporated into the brick architecture of this building.

I arrived in Coupland around 1:30 and found 77-year-old Jim Huntington hard at work on two different sculptures. He was embedding copper strips in some of the veins of the stone. I asked if he minded if I took pictures of his sculptures, and he said that was fine. So I roamed around on the acreage, fascinated by his works of art. Below are a few of the photos I took.

This one reminded me of the "pleats" on the throat of a humpback whale.

This is a shot, looking skyward, from inside the tube of the sculpture shown in the picture above.

This one resembled river rapids.

And I couldn't help think about the wing of an eagle when I saw this one.

Inside his studio, there were hundreds of pieces in progress, including this one. The dark gray section looked like a huge Bird of Paradise leaf.