Perhaps 15 years ago I came across a strange and beautiful sight as I walked along a thickly wooded trail near my northwest Austin: someone had painted a dead, gnarled old mountain cedar next to the trail a deep, lovely shade of blue. It wasn’t an elaborate paint job, but it had the look of work by an artisan or at least an art student.
I should mention that this tree is not located on one of Austin’s well-trafficked marquee trails such as the Barton Creek trail or the one that follows Ladybird Lake downtown. No, this artifact was found on what is basically an old game trail that winds back and forth through what is probably private property, on a hillside too steep to develop, between a bedroom community above and a highway below. It seemed to me that someone had painted the tree, not to get themselves noticed, but for the pure joy of expression.
Over the next few years, time and weather wreaked their damage on the little dead tree, and the blue became faded and patchy. Then one day on my trek I saw that the tree had been repainted, this time in a beautiful palette of various blues and violets.
But this only delayed the work of the greatest vandal of all, mother nature, probably helped along by passersby snapping off a souvenir here and there. The last time I saw the blue tree, it was just a gnarled gray splintery stump with a few colored blotches here and there.
I imagined that whoever had painted that tree was likely long gone. So I was delighted to see another dead old mountain cedar today, further along the trail, beautifully painted in all colors of the rainbow. Of course I have no way of knowing whether the same hands responsible for the blue are behind the rainbow tree. It could be a case of copycat artistry.
I’m not going to reveal the location of the tree. (Although if you like to hike along all the trails that wind in, around and across Bull Creek, you’ll eventually come across it.) And I’m not going to Google it, to find out if someone has claimed responsibility or identified the artist. I’d rather let the mystery be.
But to whoever did this…thank you. It’s lovely.
The Garden of Eaton 