Keeping moving

I am considering taking the dingy down off the boat and rowing it up and down the bayou for a little exercise this weekend. The biggest problem will be getting it down from it's perch on my boat. It is heavy, and I can lift it with the help of someone on the halyard to hoist it up and off the deck and then into the water. That requires another person. I don't need to put the engine. If I really wanted that engine, there is small crane for that but my intention is to get exercise and the oars are a little more affective at that task. :P Maybe I should get a fishing license and gear too while I am at it. I keep meaning to do that anyway, but I keep also putting it off. Mostly what I want to do is wander and maybe take a few pictures. The bayou that my marina has been carved out of the side is called Jarbo bayou and it empties into Clear Lake.  It is named after the original land owner who got his league here like a hundred and eighty years ago. I've seen a map with his name on it that was written up in the 19th century probably in Stephen F. Austin's own hand for all I know. The scale is written up in varas.  That's a Spanish Yard, defined as 33 1/3 inches by the then Republic of Texas back in the 1830's.  Surveyors used back in those days the Metes and bounds system to survey land and measured everything using the same unit system that Spain and Mexico used.   This system used things like trees, rocks and the center of rivers to mark boundaries and that can lend to some creative looking maps.  I love old maps, they are a window into a long forgotten sleeping past under your feet. They add a connection to the world that wouldn't ordinarily be there as we mindlessly go about our lives ignorant of what was there before us.  Half the time I've looked at maps these days, they don't even bother to label the rivers and lakes.  I find this a disturbing trend that disconnects us from the land.  Google Earth doesn't bother, I keep looking for km [...]

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