Starting in the early 2010s, a good chunk of my landwork involved “spirit bridges”. These are point-to-point connections constructed using an exchange of materials, usually stone.

Originally, my spirit bridges were tiny, no more than a few hundred yards- usually much less. The rationale was to permit spiritlife to move more freely around their environment, unhampered by humanmade obstacles.

For example, connecting two sides of a road for the benefit of very small entities who previously had unfettered access to each other. The idea is analogous to “wildlife crossings“- tunnels or bridges erected to help biological wildlife move from place to place.

Then, in 2012, a friend and I set out to address a blockage in Vermont that was inhibiting the attempts of healthy spiritlife from the Lake Champlain watershed to help heal some of “The Sick” that was infecting the Connecticut River watershed.

While the physical crossing was small, and should have been easy to bridge, the entire area was under the control of a hostile, unidentified Power that drove us off. Clearly said Being did not want the traffic running through Their territory and was likely the cause of the break in the first place. While I’m now fairly certain of the Entity’s identity, there wasn’t much I could do about His decisions.

This led me to start working on longer-range spirit bridges, ones that were more complicated to erect and maintain. These were built on the same esoteric foundations, but would be consecrated to and mediated by Holy Powers for safety reasons.

Between 2013 and 2014, I erected four spirit bridge cairns:

By the end of 2015, between life stresses, vandals, and just plain entropy the strain of maintaining just the Austin cairn by myself became too much. I convinced myself that the system wasn’t actually working and stopped.

At the end of 2015, Hideo Kojima began work on Death Stranding.

Do I think certain Gods made Kojima make this game so I’d realize the system wasn’t a failure?

No.

But I am more and more convinced that Someone(s) wove meaning into it, something Holy Powers have been doing for centuries. And I don’t think I’m the sole target audience.

Remember, one of the big problems that led me to abandon the Spirit Bridges Program (ooh, now it sounds important!) was the strain of doing it myself. This is in part my own shortcomings. I’ve always been a solo operative and struggle to involve others in my work. However, part of it was also an operational security fear.

As mentioned elsewhere, landwork has been both a tool of conquest and of resistance. Being more open about the spirit bridge technology meant increasing the risk of sabotage. It also increased the potential that it could be hijacked by faiths hostile to our attempts to heal our environment and restore right relations with our spiritlife neighbors.

On the sabotage front, I was clearly overly concerned with secrecy. In vain it turns out, since the Austin cairn kept getting destroyed even without anyone knowing what it was. Had I assistance with maintaining it, perhaps it would still be there. Instead, afraid of sabotage, I tried to do it all myself and it wound up destroyed anyway.

Of course, the esoteric connection is still there, but it’s much weaker without regular maintenance.

While the plot of Death Stranding focuses on expanding the Chiral Network (technobabble spirit bridges), the actual “core loop” involves strengthening interpersonal connections. This is done explicitly- as you help people, they give you more access to resources, and the like. However, it is also implicit in the game- the more you connect, the more you see evidence of other players in the game world.

For instance, the first time you pass through an area, you might see a ladder or a rope left behind by another player that helps you climb a cliff. The second time, you might see more ladders and a postbox. Each time you cross a section of map you might see more and more features, bridges, charging stations, watchtowers… All of these are structures built by other players to make it easier for them (and you) to traverse the map.

You never see the other players, only their work.

I suspect that this was the point that certain Gods were trying to get across by nudging Kojima’s team throughout the making of Death Stranding:

We are not alone. There are others doing the work.

And we need to connect.

– In Deos Confidimus

I resolved to visit Proctor Springs, a group of natural springs in Cameron Park. I suspect these were near the settlement known as El Quisciat, which was described as being on a bluff with springs somewhere in the vicinity of the later, larger “Waco” settlement.

The springs are in the older part of the park. There is a distinct feeling of visiting ancient ruins. A large number of crumbling concrete stairs, streams, pools, and paths criss-cross the area, often disconnected from the newer trails. Anniversary Hill Park in Holyoke, Massachusetts has a similar “ruins” feel to it.

I left offerings of roasted corn, dried fruit, and nuts at the two main spring seeps and some significant trees. I picked up a bunch of trash. Typical stuff. Aside from a vague sense of “generally healthy park”, I didn’t have any particular experiences of note near the springs.

The springs flow into a creek, which I followed upstream through Lindsey Hollow. Aside from some additional Fae markers, nothing. The markers I noticed didn’t strike me as particularly unusual for a well-established woodland- trees forming arches and the like. Nor did I feel any particular menace or concern. A little harmless misdirection, like driving right past the turn I needed to take, but nothing that felt sinister.

This part of Waco basically felt more like what I expect woodlands to feel like, i.e.- NOT affected by the Texas Problem. Even the best experiences I’ve had around Austin felt “cloaked” or “sandbagged” by comparison.

On the way to wash my hands (I forgot to bring trash gloves!), I finally noticed a structure that I’d passed twice already during the day:

Yes, immediately after crossing a creek at the old entrance of the park, the road forks. More than that, someone decided to build it out as a triple crossroads. Even more than that, someone did this:

That is a miniature colonnade, surrounding a large urn inside a circle.  Perhaps the person(s) who built it didn’t really know what they were doing. Perhaps they did. Who knows? Either way, it might have taken me awhile to notice the shrine, but I certainly wasn’t going to ignore it now.

As soon as I washed my hands, I prayed and made an offering at the urn- to the vocal amusement of a pre-teen in a passing car. Whatever. You find an appropriate shrine where you weren’t expecting one, you pray at it.

It’s clear to me that the park is, as suspected, liminal.

What is less clear is whether the park is an Awakened landscape surrounded by a terribly mundane one; or, is it an exposed bit of REAL surrounded by hundreds of miles of dampening / glamour? I strongly suspect that the park is a place where the Texas Problem is very thin. So much so that I’m even wondering if it would be better to host Hearthingstone nearby instead of in Austin.

Probably not, but it might be good to at least have a working solution to the larger issue by the time it rolls around.

By this point, I was already pretty exhausted and dehydrated, having (for safety reasons) resolved to eat and drink only things from outside of Waco. Before I left, however, I did want to locate a mysteriously recondite historical marker- the Waco Village site.

Officially, the marker is located at 701 Jefferson Avenue. A quick Google Street View reveals nothing of the kind, though. I eventually figured out that it is under an immense tree next to the Taylor Museum, which appears to be all but closed.

Obviously, the language of the marker is suspect, but it does provide at least a possible location. Adjacent to the marker and the museum is an African-American Baptist church. Across the street is the Grand Lodge of Texas- the central Masonic temple for Texas. I don’t know whether they consciously built it right there- but as with the shrine at the park, it might not be simple coincidence.

The city block in the lower center is (very roughly) about 2 acres in size. If reports from the early 1800s are accurate, the Waco village was about 40 acres in size and surrounded by an earthwork. The yellow square shows a vague approximation of what 40 acres looks like in modern Waco.

If we transpose this location to the 1886 map, we can see that the site overlooks a creek that is largely invisible in modern Waco except for the mouth, which is undergoing some kind of construction. Notice that this location also appears to be on a bit of a bluff. It’s possible that El Quisciat might have been there all along, but I doubt it. I think the “bluff” in question would’ve been taller and closer to the river.

Anyway, I don’t yet have any really good answers, but hopefully something I gained from the trip will be useful in the future. If I’ve learned something actionable, I haven’t grokked it yet.

-In Deos Confidimus

Conversely, my friend suddenly relaxed. She commented on how fresh the air felt- like a sea breeze. As we came over a rise, Lake Waco came into view. Normally, near a lake I’d have a similar reaction to my friend’s. Not this time.

After a few minutes, I was able to breathe normally again, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously OFF in the area. Even at Quabbin, I hadn’t had that level of physical response.

As we moved away from the lake, I saw fog ahead, despite it being a clear, sunny day. Saying nothing about the fog, I asked my friend to turn left off of Lake Shore Dr. onto Airport Rd.. I noticed fog in a depression ahead there, too.

This time I commented on it to my friend. She’d seen no fog or mist, and as we approached, it vanished from my sight as well. However, my friend had an inkling and we headed back towards the city.

As we drove into a series of connected parks along the Brazos River, where the Bosque pours in, we encountered a distinctly awakened landscape- very different from our usual experience of Central Texas. There are certain tricks of light and shadow, certain meldings of form and perspective that suggest the presence of the Good Neighbors.

That park was swarming with such indicators.

In New England, that’s not highly unusual- though places like Quabbin took that to extremes. In Central Texas? Very uncommon. As I mentioned in The Texas Problem, the region has almost an asphalt sea of mundanity overlaying it.

As we left the park and travelled around town, my friend began to confirm her inkling that the entire city seemed to be under an enormous glamour. Where I saw decay and decadence, she saw the veneer of it.

This was Massachusetts level weird.

“West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. … The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. … The place is not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night… Weeds and briars reigned, and furtive wild things rustled in the undergrowth. Upon everything was a haze of restlessness and oppression; a touch of the unreal and the grotesque, as if some vital element of perspective or chiaroscuro were awry. I did not wonder that the foreigners would not stay, for this was no region to sleep in. It was too much like a landscape of Salvator Rosa; too much like some forbidden woodcut in a tale of terror.”

– H.P. Lovecraft “The Colour Out Of Space”

While Lovecraft’s fiction is just that- fiction, parts of his work describe something deeper underlying the New England most people think they know. The recent film The Witch captured some of this same sense. On the surface, the weird events are Satanic. Beneath the surface though, it’s not- it’s the result of humans carrying their own crap into an area that is “not good for imagination, and does not bring restful dreams at night”.

Waco has this problem. In a region seemingly drained of magic, we have a pocket of hyper-weirdness. (Sorry, Austin- you don’t actually know weird.)

Don’t believe me? Who could forget the Branch Davidians? While their standoff happened a few miles east of town, they were an offshoot of the Davidians, whose main compound is not far from where I first had the breathing attack.

The mass hysteria problem is much older, though. One of the most gruesome mob lynchings in the south, known informally as the “Waco Horror“, was perpetrated in the main courthouse square in 1916. The sheer monstrousness of Jesse Washington’s torture and public roasting to death affected attitudes across the country and around the world.

That’s another thing about Waco, though- ideas flow out of it and through it. The two “national soft drinks” of Texas- Dr. Pepper and Big Red, were both invented in Waco.

Waco is a small city outsized in its impact on Texas and the United States in general.

In 1870, the Waco Suspension Bridge became the main crossing for the Chisholm Trail, which was still a significant cattle drive route. Texas Christian University came there from Fort Worth and later returned after their main building in Waco burned down. Baylor University is still there even after its athletic department’s sexual assault scandal – a watershed in the current climate of exposing institutional sexual abuse.

In 1953, the generally tornado-free city was also at the heart of what was likely the deadliest tornado outbreak in Texas history. A massive F5 tornado flattened the downtown area, roughly around the site of the native Waco village from which the city took its name.

Which gets us to a possible root of what might be going on in Waco, and in Central Texas more generally.

More on that later.

-In Deos Confidimus

For a long time, I’ve blamed myself for this. In theory, I should know how to work around such limitations. I’m finally beginning to come to grips with the realization that this isn’t simply my problem. I’ve heard others use the term “dead” to describe how the land feels. A friend once called Texas a “blast zone”.

That’s not to say that no one builds relations with local spiritlife or that no one connects with the land at all. Rather, it seems like the process is exceedingly more difficult and the results far less successful than in areas like New England or the Pacific Northwest.

For example, a friend from Austin recently visited New England and was immediately struck by her awareness of the natural world- “every leaf”, to use her description. That doesn’t happen for me here in Texas, nor for a number of other knowledgeable people I’ve spoken with.

To be sure, some of that is simply the vastness of the region. Compared with even very large zones in New England, the area I’m dealing with in Texas (in yellow, below) is positively enormous.

Contrast that with the Champlain Valley (light blue) between Vermont and New York. The spiritlife of that region is fully “awake” in their interactions with humans and the area’s owner is firmly in control of His backyard.

To be sure, New England has a lot more going on than my simplistic map shows. I just mapped out a few of the areas with which I have personal experience.

Within the big yellow zone in Texas, there are also smaller regions to be sure- the Lost Pines and the like. However, I can’t shake the certainty that they are ruled (for lack of a better word) by a divinity who controls an area roughly like the yellow outline.

What’s interesting though, is that the orange zone from Houston out into Louisiana (also an enormous area) is much more “awake” and engaged with humanity. It’s not my kind of land, but it’s palpable enough that I can feel it pretty clearly.

Traveling west from Central Texas into the Big Bend region or New Mexico, I once again encounter more engagement. Not at New England levels, but reasonable amounts for a desert. By Roswell it’s pretty noticeable and in Santa Fe or Taos the “mojo” becomes quite obvious.

So what the heck is going on in Central Texas? Is it just a magical “dead zone” as some conjecture?

The area around Waco would beg to differ. There’s an enormous amount of glamour and veil-parting going on there, and I’m pretty sure it’s not being done by the local spiritlife. This suggests that the esoteric potential is there (and here), but that we humans are somehow cut off from it in ways that aren’t the case in many other parts of North America.

This, then, is the “Texas Problem” I’m currently trying to work out. I’m increasingly convinced there’s some deadline to solve it ticking down to something bad, but damned if I know what it is or why.

I’m starting to develop some theories about what might be going on, but those belong in another post.

-In Deos Confidimus