MEADOWS CENTER FOR WATER AND THE ENVIRONMENT
Earth Day got some blowback from Mother Nature on Saturday, with intermittent rain and a few strong gusts of wind in the morning, but the event at the Meadows Center persevered in spite of the challenging weather. A few vendors and information tables left early, but the rain never reached the extremes hinted at by the dark skies and dropping temperatures.
Rain on the day of the Earth Day festival is almost a regular occurrence, according to Miranda Wait, Deputy Director of Spring Lake Education at the Meadows Center. “I almost feel like this event’s kind of a rain dance. If it rains every single year I’m fine with it, because we need rain.”
A blessing of the Sacred Springs — an important location in local Indigenous mythology and home to the Meadows Center — by Mario Garza kicked off the event. He is Chair of the San Marcos-based Indigenous Cultures Institute and Cultural Preservation Officer of the Miakan-Garza Band. In years past, the blessing has taken place at the headwaters of the San Marcos River, directly in front of the Meadows Center.
But the weather, as well as efforts to regrow the grass on the land where Earth Day guests have gathered for the blessing in years past, made organizers decide to move the 10 a.m. blessing to the main canopy , according to Wait.
A few minutes into his blessing, one of the vendor canopies blew into the center of the exhibition area, prompting several volunteers to wrangle it back into place. Garza paused to make sure no one had been injured, then continued beating out a sacred song on his hand drum dedicated to deer, one of the guardian spirits of the Springs in Miakan-Garza myths.
At the conclusion of the song, Garza was joined at the microphone by Maria Rocha, who read her newly released book, “Napakō, Our Journey: The Coahuiltecan Creation Story and the Sacred Springs.” The book is based on the creation tale of the Coahuiltecan people, who have occupied the surrounding lands of what is now known as San Marcos for more than 14,000 years.
“According to our creation story, all humanity came out right here from these Springs,” Rocha said. “So we’re standing on very sacred land next to very sacred water.”
As seen from a child’s perspective, “Napakō, Our Journey” tells of spirits who once lived in the lower world, but when they became people, they needed to live in the upper world, according to the website of Texas A&M University Press, which published the book. The book follows this journey, as animal spirits introduce the people to the upper world.
“The story and vivid illustrations take the reader on an adventure through the hidden underworld of caverns, water currents and critters of the San Marcos Springs,” said “Napakō” illustrator Clemente Guzman, who has been a contributor to Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine for close to 30 years.
“I hope my artwork will inspire young readers to explore and fall in love with the wonders of nature while building a connection and engaging young minds in conservation of our most sensitive ecosystems,” Guzman said.
Andrew Sansom, founder of the Meadows Center and former Executive Director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, joined Rocha and Guzman on stage at the conclusion of the reading to emphasize his support of the book.
“The Texas A&M Press and the Meadows Center have produced nearly 50 books about natural resources in Texas,” Sansom said. “And of all those books, I’ve never been more excited or emotional than about this one.”
Copies of the book were available for purchase after the reading, with Rocha and illustrator Clemente Guzman on hand for a signing.
Following the blessing and the book reading, the main stage featured live music from the San Marcos Mariachi Infantil, Tracy Weinberg, Sophia Johnson Trio and singer- songwriters Vanessa Barbee and Veronica De-Witt, as well as a curated DJ set from Chief and TheDoomsdayDevice.
For a deep dive into more conservation-focused learning and reflection, the Meadows Center presented a series of Eco Sessions in the Spring Lake Hall conference room.
Textile artist and TXST professor Gwendolyn Hustvedt talked about the exhibition of her silk painting at the Meadows Center during her “Exploring Aquifers through Art” presentation. She discussed her painting technique as well as the inspiration for her works.
“Art generates an emotional response in viewers,” she said. According to Hustvedt, her goal is to create a visual representation of the area aquifers which viewers can relate to.
Her silk paintings depict the layers of limestone in area aquifers as populated by the “six guardians of the San Marcos River”: Texas Wild Rice, the Fountain Darter, the San Marcos Salamander, the Comal Springs Riffle Beetle, the Comal Springs Dryopid Beetle and the Texas Blind Salamander.
“Scientific instruments can tell us quite a lot about the geological nature of the aquifer,” she said. “But art opens the door to our imagination. Art helps us feel something about the aquifer that facts may not make us feel by giving people a sense of reverence towards a resource that we all love and share.”
A fashion merchandising professor at Texas State University, Hustvedt has used the Serti technique to make clothing before she began the series of silk paintings on display.
The process of creating her silk paintings has parallels with the aquifer, she said. In the Serti technique, the artist outlines a pattern on a silk base by using a Resist (a substance that will act as a barrier for the dye or paint) to keep the color within the outlined areas of the design. But within these outlined areas, the paint is hard to control, creating random flows and patterns. Hustvedt equates the Resist barriers to the limestone in aquifers, and the layers and mysterious flows of her silk paintings to the Karst landscapes of ridges, towers, fissures, and sinkholes which rivers have eroded into the limestone.
“I wanted to make paintings that told people what I feel about the river,” she said.”I started to think about silk painting as a metaphor for the aquifer. Art won’t save the aquifer, but it can make us feel in our bodies what is at stake” Another Eco Session featured a philosophy discussion followed by a nature walk along the shore of the San Marcos River and out onto the wetlands boardwalk The “Eco Philosophy Walk and Talk” was co-hosted by Rob Dussler, Director of Spring Lake Education at the Meadows Center, and Jeff Gessas, Assistant Professor of Philosophy Instruction at Texas State.
In introducing the discussion, Gessas talked about how people could educate themselves about how they engage with the natural world. “Animating change and facilitating connection to place requires not only change in the cognitive aspect, but also the emotional and embodied aspect,” Gessas said.
Following a slide show by Gessas demonstrating changing viewpoints in historical drawings of towns and villages dating back to Leonardo Da Vinci, Dussler guided participants in exercises to illustrate different perspectives relative to their own bodies. He encouraged them to focus on their forefinger when held at arms length above them as compared to the perspective from focusing on the forefinger at the level of the conference table where the participants were seated.
On the walk around Spring Lake, Dussler expanded this exercise to include the perspective of the animal inhabitants of the area. He crouched on his knees and cupped his hands over his ears and encouraged participants to do the same to give them a sense of how deer experience nature with their exceptional sense of hearing.
He also singled out the vision of owls, the sense of touch of racoons and a dog’s sense of smell to discuss how different animals relate to nature in different ways, and to encourage people to alternate concentrating on each of these senses during the walk.
“Let go of any expectations you have, and your body will lead you to remarkable discoveries,” Dussler said. “Let’s engage our senses to get to a deeper relationship with our co-inhabitants.”
Robert Mace, Executive Director of the Meadows Center and Professor of Practice in the Department of Geography at Texas State, reflected on the relevance of Earth Day in an interview with the Daily Record.
“2026 is an especially crucial one for the well-being of the planet," according to Mace.
“This is a really good year to be thinking about the Earth, particularly regionally, because we’ve been in this epic drought. I think it’s even appropriate that we get a little bit of weather, because we sure need some rain in this dry and dusty part of the state.
“Mother Nature is giving us a little bit of a warning, poking us a bit with this drought,” Mace said. “It’s good for us to pay attention to what’s happening in our environment and pause to take time to think about our place and how our actions affect what happens at a much larger scale, including the planet.”
