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Thursday, May 3, 2018

5 2 2018 SERVICE vs SERVITUDE

🐞This photo is an Image I captured near the Cold Springs Tavern
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A life of service,
Or a life of servitude.
Find the inner path.

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As I looked into the woods, I spied an old structure at the base of the incline, I breathed in the time and the experiences of the people who were here on the land oh so many years ago. I saw the abruptly ending stairway and the old picket fence without a gate. It seemed to say, this chapter is closed and this time is passed. Yet, I can not help but wonder, what was life like for the workers brought over from China who lived here in the middle 1800’s. Were they treated well and respected for the work they were able to accomplish – building road and structure? Were they treated poorly and missed their homeland? Did they bring the light of The Tao with them? Buddhism? Confucianism?
I am hoping they brought the light with them to sustain them through what was potentially very hard times and harsh treatment.

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This image captured my attention. It is a stairway down into the deep of the woods. The stairway abruptly stops at a point of deep drop off. I assume the land shifted and fell sometime back as even the picket fence blocking the way is old and dilapidated.
Looking deep into the woods an old structure is visible. The structure is about 50 feet off the road and perhaps another 30 feet below the road level. From the shape (probably about 15 feet by about 35 feet – guesstimation) and level of deterioration, I think it may have been one of “Road gang houses” where the Chinese workers who built the Cold Springs relay station and toll road through San Marcos Pass back in the mid 1800’s laid down to sleep after long arduous days.
The abruptly ending stairway is much newer than the structure below. With my phone camera I was not able to tweak the image enough to make the old structure visible in photo – so – I am left with the photo of the stair and fence and the memory of the structure etched into my mind’s eye. If I were to build a structure to keep me snug through winter and summer, I may have chosen just such a location. Protected from the winds that can howl through the pass in winter and the unrelenting heat of summer, it is a good location.
I can not imagine ‘the why’ of a much newer stair way. Was it still used for habitation in the late 1940s when it was purchased by Adelaide Ovington and turned into a rest stop and restaurant for modern day travelers through the pass? Or, perhaps the tourists and day visitors that have passed through this locale since the late 1940s would see the structure and the owners of what is now “Cold Springs Tavern” created a safe passage way to the structure for better viewing.

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https://www.coldspringtavern.com/
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