We all come from somewhere, and Chris Holmes, who oversees the Texas Outdoor Family in State parks program, comes from England. From the time he was a boy, Chris had a passion for the outdoors. It made sense that when he became an adult, he would seek a career that kept him close to nature. He has followed that career to several continents and two hemispheres. He shares a favorite memory.

I was a park ranger once in Australia. And we had some monitor lizards that were fairly aggressive—similar to the raccoons here in Texas—they would go after food. And it was always very funny to watch these monitor lizards slinking up towards tents, and smelling the food. These lizards were about five to six feet long. So, having a monitor lizard stick their head through the tent—a lot of people are not used to seeing that. So that was a lot of fun. And sometimes, maybe we had some mischievous young adults that have kept us awake at nighttime, so we may have encouraged the lizards to go see them in the morning.

Monitor lizards are like raccoons. I don’t think so. Thanks, Chris.

Do you have a fond memory of time you’ve spent in the Texas outdoors…a mischievous moment…a tale of terror…tell us. Go to passportotexas.org and click the Outdoor Stories link and tell us all about it. We may use it in the show.

That’s our show…for today. Remember: Life’s Better Outside… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Bill Harwell’s paternal grandmother and his great aunt loved to fish… and often invited Bill and his cousin to share the adventure.

59—One night I got the exciting news that my great aunt had come into possession of what we called a pontoon boat. But the even better part of it was we were going to go night fishing, which we had never done before. Her living in Atlanta, the best place to put in was a big lake, just southwest of Texarkana called Wright Patman Lake. And so my cousin and I – we were probably about eight…nine…ten years old at the time…this is around 1960 -61 something like that — get all of our gear aboard the two of us and these two ladies… They tell us they’d been told that the best thing to attract fish, above and beyond the worms and the minnows, is to hang a couple of lanterns off the side of the pontoon boat…. maybe that is the best way to do it… but my main recollection of this was just this incredible plague-like swarm of June bugs, mosquitoes…getting bugs of all sorts and shapes in our soft drinks….up our noses….we did do some good fishing, but the overwhelming remaining impression of night fishing for me is lots and lots of bugs.

Share your Texas outdoor memory… by logging onto passporttotexas.org.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Paul Dockery, from San Antonio, emailed his outdoor story to us through our website: passporttotexas.org.

He told us he’s an avid outdoorsman and a member of the Christian Outdoor Alliance. He shares his favorite times spent in the outdoors.

You know, it’s not that any one in particular thing happens. It’s just the fact that we get to get to get away and spend some quality time together. And we’ll be out on God’s front porch enjoying the beautiful weather and just enjoying each other. My favorite times in the outdoors are when I get to load up with my wife and the kids. And we’ll have an ice chest and some goodies in it, and some folding chairs and a portable grill, and we’ll drag our boat out to a riverbank somewhere in the Hill Country. And just spend the day getting by on what we didn’t forget to bring. We’ll have some fishing rods, and things like that, and probably take the dog with us, and spend the day out enjoying the Hill Country.

Visit passportotexas.org and send us your outdoor story. We may invite you to tell it to Passport to Texas listeners, like Paul did.

That’s our show for today… Remember: Life’s Better Outside…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti

Ask Eveline Evans about the value of spending time outdoors and she’s not shy about sharing her views.

:14–It’s just a great stress reliever. It’s wonderful to get out and get away from the urban areas, and enjoy the trees and the streams. I mean, it’s just wonderful to get away.

Eveline gets away with family whenever she can. She says sharing time outdoors with loved ones—even if it’s just taking a walk in nature—is critical to healthy, balanced relationships. It brings families closer…it encourages dialogues.

:32–Well, I think it’s very important. My husband and I, we go walking all the time together in different locations. We love the Texas state parks. We’ve done Big bend and the Davis Mountains, Caprock Canyon, Palo Duro Canyon…all of those are just wonderful places to go out and walk. You can talk about anything it seems like. Every little thing that comes up—you can explain to younger ones your value systems, or whatever. Why when you pass a snake you’re not supposed to kill it—you just leave it alone, that type stuff.

What do you love about spending time in the outdoors? We want to know. Go to passporttotexas.org and share your outdoor story with us.

That’s our show…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

When I say Texas Game Warden, what image pops into your head? Is it someone in uniform, patrolling field and forest looking for poachers? You’d be right…but it doesn’t stop there. Texas game wardens have varied jobs—all of which help protect our state’s natural resources.

Eric Howard is a 19 year veteran in the department. He currently coordinates the Operation Game Thief Program—a type of crime-stoppers for wildlife. But his career path in the force has been varied and satisfying.

I spent 12 years in the field, and in about the 12th year, I was able to become an instructor at the Game warden Academy. And when you have the opportunity to make an impression on young men and women, you know, you’re shaping and molding them. And that’s certainly a highlight. Then about a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to become the program coordinator for Operation Game Thief. It’s really been a blast. It’s totally a different avenue, from being at the academy and being a field game warden. This one, you get to meet a lot of people. It’s really been a blast.

You can find information on becoming a game warden when you log onto the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

That’s our show…thank you for joining us… we record our series in Austin at the Production Block Studios… Joel Block engineers our program.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

When you love the outdoors, you may be hard pressed to come up with a single moment in nature as being the most memorable of your life. Texas Highways Editor, Charles Lohrmann, took on the challenge.

When you asked me to describe one of my most memorable Texas outdoor moments, I thought about a particular amazing sunrise over the gulf in Padre Island, and then sort of a psychedelic sunset at Big Bend. And then, one afternoon I was out birding, and saw a bobcat who seemed to watching me as I was birding.

And I feel like I can sense the earth’s heartbeat at that time, and that I’m connected to something far greater than my imagination.

Thanks, Charles…works for me. Have an outdoor story to share? Go to passporttotexas.org and tell us about it.

That’s our show for today… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

If you don’t think fishing makes memories, then you haven’t heard Scott Harris of Austin tell his real life fish story of the boy and the barracuda.

On one of my first deep sea fishing trips with my oldest son, in the gulf, out of Port Aransas, he wouldn’t concentrate. He was just playing with his bait, just up under the boat; nowhere near have the 230 or so feet where we were bottom fishing. And I was just about to admonish him to, you know, drop your bait down and see if you can catch a nice snapper. And I was looking at his bait bouncing on the water, just ten or fifteen feet below the boat, and a barracuda longer than him shot up like a lightening bolt and engulfed his bait, and zoomed up in an arc, and jumped and he reeled it in all by his tiny self. And we gaffed it and pulled it on the boat; and all the grown men jumped up on the benches as it was thrashing and gnashing the needle-sharp teeth. And, it was a beautiful fish that’s back out there now to give someone else a thrill. And it’s a story that comes up every single time we’re in a group of people who love to fish. Fishing makes great memories.

If you have an outdoor memory you’d like to share, do so at passporttotexas.org.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

Leslie McGaha wanted to try out her new bass kayak on Sam Rayburn Lake. Shortly after she got on the water, she had the company of an otter.

So it was about 9:30 in the morning and I paddled across a branch of the lake, and I was hot. And so I saw a shady spot and figured I would go ahead and park there and see what I could see. And it was amazing: I saw a giant black crawdad crawling out of the bank; I was listening to the fish noises and the birds; the gar. Then, all of a sudden there was this bright flash of silver off to my right and I thought it was a gar or a carp.

And then he stopped for a second and looks straight at me and he and he starts hissing, kind of like he’s yelling at me. So I hissed back. So we have a pretty good conversation for a few minutes, and he pops down again, pops back up, and we start the whole thing over again two or three times before he goes on his merry way a little bit farther up the creek channel. It was just the funniest thing that had ever happened to me; it was amazing.

Share your outdoor story with us like Leslie did, and if we use it, you’ll receive a coveted Passport to Texas t-shirt.

That’s our show…the Sport Fish and Wildlife Restoration Program supports our series…For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.

When Scooter Cheatham convinced his anthropology professor to let him and a friend conduct an experiment—instead of writing a research paper—he had no idea it would lead to his lifelong passion.

What we proposed was that we go down to my grandmother’s ranch on the Guadalupe river near Concrete, Texas, and take with us replicas of some of these early cultures we’d been studying. We had mostly stone tools, deerskin clothing—we did the whole thing.

And you start looking around and the great diversity, the thing that supplies us all of our organic needs is rooted in the plant kingdom. It just became very obvious to me that this was very important. And I was sure that some group of scientists had already done studies all over the world and that there was a body of information about this. So, I came back to Austin expecting to find that and to tap into it—it didn’t exist.

So, he created it—a 12 volume encyclopedia of Useful Wild Plants of Texas and beyond. Volume three is at the printers now.

That’s our show… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.
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Visit the website Useful Wild Plants, http://usefulwildplants.org/encyclopedia.htm, and see what Scooter’s been up to all these years. [Just copy and paste the URL into your browser]

Craig Hensley is park specialist at Guadalupe River SP. For years, he’s kept track of birds for research and education purposes by banding them. He shares what his work means to him.

I’ve just started banding here but where I banded back in Nebraska for years, you got to a point where you would see certain birds year after year. And there were some woodpeckers, for example, I think I saw for six or seven years. So when you catch a bird that’s been banded, you look it up and go, “Wow! Who is this?” It’s just, for me a wonderful love of birds that I have.

We were fortunate enough, a couple of months ago, that we had a lady here, the eagle lady. She visits lots of state parks with some birds of prey, and she happened to be in our park on a weekend we were bird banding. And only the second time in all the years I’ve been involved in bird banding we caught a hawk. A sharp-shinned hawk that had chased a bird into the net and that was a treat! I don’t band hawks, I’m not permitted to do that, but we were able to take the bird out of the net, get our pictures made with it and marvel at just a spectacular bird. Best part of the whole thing was it took three of its talons and dug ‘em into my fingers when I was trying to get him out. So when that bird flew off, he actually flew off with a little piece of my skin I think still attached to a talon, which I actually loved, it was like “I’m flying free!” So, it’s kind of odd, but that was a special treat.

One man’s odd is another man’s special treat. Thanks, Craig.

That’s our show…with research and writing help from Sarah Loden… For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.