Slightly downstream from where the San Marcos and Blanco rivers meet in Central Texas, Tom Goynes likes to show visitors to his campground the “symphony of birds,” as he calls it, in the mornings — the woodpeckers, the cardinals. He routinely sees deer, bobcats and coyotes.
“You’re surrounded by God and everything that he’s created,” said Mr. Goynes, 74, who has operated campgrounds on the San Marcos River since 1972. “It’s a whole lot better than being in any cathedral.”
In the region of Texas known as the Hill Country, the rivers that etch an otherwise semiarid terrain are a defining feature: They have long offered a cool respite from unforgiving heat, access to wildlife and a splendor that can resonate in a way that feels spiritual.
When some of those rivers quickly rose early on July 4, unleashing floodwaters that killed more than 100 people, with dozens of others still missing, the disaster served as an abrupt reminder of the danger that has always lurked in a place referred to as Flash Flood Alley.
But the substantial loss of life also reflected these waterways’ magnetic allure. The floodwaters crashed through beloved sleep-away camps, vacation properties and homes built along the banks. Some of those houses belonged to families who had staked their claims generations ago, and plenty of others to newcomers who had sought out this part of Texas with visions of a life that felt more rustic.
“People are drawn to water,” said Colie Reno, 54, who grew up fishing, hunting and camping along the Hill Country’s rivers. He was speaking from his property on a secluded patch of the San Saba River, where he planned to spend an afternoon listening to the water and watching birds. “It’s so relaxing and magical, but it can also be devastating.”
The Hill Country has long faced a dilemma presented by its desirability. The region, a stretch of roughly two dozen counties in the heart of the state, has experienced a transformative influx of new residents and development in recent decades, with some areas becoming among the fastest-growing in Texas and even nationally.
On a stretch of Interstate 35 between Austin and San Antonio, places that had once been discrete communities have been enveloped into a single sprawling metropolis. Some days during the summer, rivers fill with thousands of people riding inflatable inner tubes; they patronize shops and restaurants but also clog streets.
That growth has brought new strains and inflamed old ones, not least by draining groundwater supplies and interfering with the ability for heavy rainfall to saturate the ground or safely run off.
“We think often about the risk of loving the Hill Country to death,” said Katherine Romans, the executive director of the Hill Country Alliance, an organization focused on the challenges of growing the region sustainably and protecting its natural resources and charms. “The very things that drew us here could very easily disappear.”
The Hill Country is an eddy of cultures and histories, with food, music, architecture and even language influenced by the Mexican, German and Native lineages of its residents.
Those who gravitate to it do so, in part, because of a certain notion of Texas they believe it embodies: rural and rugged, with big skies and wide-open spaces where wildflowers bloom in the spring. Tourists come for its abundance of festivals (Oktoberfest, Wurstfest, Bluebonnet and Lavender, among others) and dance halls playing a homegrown version of country music.
They also come for the rivers running through it: the Comal, the Pedernales, the Medina, the Frio, the Nueces, to name a few. The Guadalupe caused the worst of the recent destruction and anguish, as its flooding killed at least 87 people, many of them children, in Kerr County.
Those rivers have a long and painful history of rapidly undergoing ferocious transformation during storms.
Many refer to the floods by year: 2002, 1998, 1987, 1978. In 2015, a wall of water rushed into the city of Wimberley, northwest of San Marcos, killing 13 people.
“This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States,” the Kerr County judge, Rob Kelly, told reporters hours after the flooding began.
A propensity for high levels of rainfall, combined with thin soil, exposed bedrock and steep terrain, makes the region especially vulnerable.
The addition of buildings and pavement has worsened the toll of flooding by interrupting the natural flow of rainwater, researchers have found. And the influx of people has exposed another danger: Newcomers and tourists often don’t have the knowledge from past experience or the lessons handed down by past generations.
They “don’t have the benefit of seeing that change in a dry creek bed or the low-flowing river to know the risk,” Ms. Romans said. Nor do they know how perilous driving in even a couple of feet of water can be, or have contacts up the river who can alert them to what’s coming.
In Wimberley, Jim Chiles, the mayor, said another local official had told him about an old system for keeping watch: A counterpart dozens of miles upriver would eye a particular tree; if the water reached a certain point on the tree, it was a sure sign that Wimberley would flood not long after. (Eventually, that tree washed away.)
Mr. Reno has seared in his memory the time he saw water reach high enough to swamp a 30-foot-high bridge, and another when 24 inches of rain fell in less than 18 hours. “That has been my biggest teacher,” said Mr. Reno, who owns Texas Tubing, an inner-tube rental company in New Braunfels.
The scale of last week’s destruction and the loss of life have stoked concerns about the lack of sirens along the Guadalupe and other precautions that might have limited the toll. “I think the events over the last few days have opened people’s eyes,” Mr. Chiles said.
But many have also raised the importance of giving rivers their due respect, recognizing their capricious tendencies. “We need to learn and deepen our appreciation for rivers as more than just our playground,” Ms. Romans said.
Rafael Delgado visits a park straddling the Guadalupe River just about daily. He moved to Kerr County about 25 years ago, he said, and his roots could not be more firmly planted, as a descendant of the Penateka band of the Comanche people.
“It was a life source,” Mr. Delgado said of the river, where his ancestors fished and picked pecans along the banks. He does the same.
Along the San Marcos, Mr. Goynes gets fed up with the hordes of tubers that start to materialize around noon on the hottest days, bobbing down the river at varying levels of intoxication and often blaring music.
San Marcos, the city sharing the river’s name, has tripled in population since he moved there. More and more, he can hear sirens and other rumblings of a world he doesn’t want intruding on his paradise. Light increasingly hazes the view of the night sky. The campers from Houston still marvel at what looks like a million stars. He laments that he can no longer see the Milky Way.
And he has had plenty of long, sleepless nights, watching forecasts and dreading another flood where the high ground might not be high enough.
But he cannot imagine doing anything other than running his modest campground with his wife, even as muscular dystrophy has severely curtailed his mobility. He said he mostly hosts Scouting groups and other young people from cities.
The last of the tubers normally drift by sometime after 7 p.m. The sun starts to fade not long after. Mr. Goynes takes in the crackling fire, croaking frogs, hooting owls. Sometimes the scouts camping there put on skits and howl with laughter.
Even when the night becomes pitch black, he can hear the flowing water that has molded him as much as the place he has made his home.
“When you get in it, it makes sense,” he said of the river. “It’s what you come for.”
Samuel Rocha IV contributed reporting from Kerrville, Texas.
Rick Rojas is the Atlanta bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the South.
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