on the banks of the Frio river

summer 2018

Perhaps one of the best things about marriage is the second family into which, for better or for worse, you’re grafted. I really lucked out with mine. With open arms and wide smiles have I been welcomed into this charming Texan family and its heartwarming traditions. To know this family is to know the Frio River—either through stories or, if you’re lucky, experience. On these banks are over forty years of family history, strong and gnarled like the roots of the cypress trees standing guard over the clear, cool river. 

The schedule of each day at the Frio is that there is no schedule. Time is irrelevant—what does a clock matter when there is sleeping and eating and swimming and beer drinking and reminiscing to be done? When the sun starts to dip low in the west, the light is filtered golden and soft through the trees. Looking at old family photos from the Frio, that light has not changed in thirty years. In the sunset of our last night, our aunt Gwen leaned back with a satisfied sigh and said this—and here she swept her arm in an arc around us—has always been her idea of heaven. There have been some unwelcome changes through the years at the Frio, but Gwen is right; when I first arrived at the river, newly engaged and full of wonder, I knew I’d arrived at a sacred place.

Lately I’ve been haunted by our parents’ and grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ shoeboxes of film photos. Even when the slippery memories are physically tangled and unsorted, they’re still so tangibly there, glossy photos that can be held and angled towards the light and waved around. In the days leading up to the Frio this year, my sister-in-law pulled out box after box of yesteryear’s river memories, and those prints inspired me to document this.