Having spent the last ten or so years working in Austin, TX, I have to admit it is a big city. Oftentimes long-time locals will refer to the city as a “town.” Granted, many years ago before the construction boom in the late 80’s, Austin was in fact a peaceful capitol and college town. Over the subsequent years the urban center and sprawl has crept to what was once the “hinterlands.”
I have never known Austin as that sleepy college town however I have been fortunate enough to have worked in the “Northwest Hills” portion of the city where there are numerous creeks, green-belts and neighborhoods built back into the woods under a variety of oaks and scrub trees. As you could imagine, this environment is very peaceful and offers a nature enthusiast plenty of unexpected photo-ops.
As an example of an unanticipated photo-op, I was finishing up for the day at work and happened to peer out the window and saw a couple deer lounging under the shade of the oaks beside a dried creek bed.
Never without a camera of some sort out of reach, I quickly scooped up my iPhone from my chair side drawer and captured a few pictures of those deer. Fortunately for me, we had just had the window washers out the past weekend so the webs and general fogginess of the windows was all but gone.
After I completed the photo-shoot, I just stood quietly and observed them lounging in the shade. Eventually the larger one stood up and moved further into the verge and I lost site of him. Eventually I snapped back to reality and finished cleaning and getting ready for the next days patients.
Anyway, it is sometimes hard to believe you are in a large city when you have deer meandering around just outside one’s office. Maybe that is another reason why people refer to Austin as a “town.”
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