Posted: Sat, 22 Aug 2009 08:53 AM - 12,221 Readers
By: Denise Gamino
Usually on the floor of Lake Travis, Sometimes Island emerges when lake levels drop. The lake was 30 feet higher – and the island much smaller – when reporter Denise Gamino married there in 1999.photo by Alberto MartinezI just walked down the aisle for the second time.
But this time it was a mile-long hike.
Same husband. Same location. This time for a 10-year wedding anniversary celebration.
We got married in August 1999 on Sometimes Island in Lake Travis, thanks to dear friends who shipped us to our "destination wedding" in their houseboat.
This year, we didn't need a boat to get there.
The scorched-earth summer of 2009 has turned Sometimes Island into terra rare-a the size of a golf course. Our little open-air wedding chapel is now big enough to hold one of those mass marriages presided over by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon in places like Madison Square Garden.
It was a sizzling — though not in the romantic sense — 104 degrees when we headed back to the island, which got its name because sometimes it's there and sometimes it's not there below the Oasis restaurant.
At Mansfield Dam Park that afternoon, the parking lot was nearly empty, a signal that we'd have the peekaboo island all to ourselves.
The triangular tip of this county park kisses the lake at a little beach that was sunning itself for the first time since the 1950s. Usually this land is on the floor of Lake Travis under 30 to 40 feet of water.
Lack of rain has lowered the lake to less than 634 feet above sea level, 30 feet below the average elevation for August. Lake Travis is now at its third-lowest elevation ever. The all-time low came in August 1951 when it hit 614 feet above sea level. The second-lowest level of 615 feet occurred in November 1963, when President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas surely took Texans' minds off the drought.
At the county park by the dam, we swam across 20 yards of water to Sometimes Island. A floating air mattress held provisions: drinks, dinner, towels and my husband's mountain unicycle.
Welcome to Mount Sometimes, a peak that's 30 feet higher than when we were married at sunset by U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice a decade ago.
It was a 20-minute hike to the high ground where we got married. I began to lag behind, though, and was late to my own wedding anniversary. I bailed out of the hike and into the green-blue lake water to float and swim to keep from melting.
I almost refused to get out. The geology of the island from a fish-eye view is fascinating. My late father was a geologist, and I carry on the urge to inspect interesting rocks.
The island's newly exposed shoreline is dotted with large, flat limestone rocks and mounds of silt that look hard as pavement until you step on them and mud squeezes through your toes. Rocks vary from smooth river stones to fist-size quartz to pieces that have the red and burnt-orange colors of jasper from Big Bend country.
At the peak of Sometimes Island, someone has raised a small American flag on a pole on wheels. In the past, a couch, a velvet Elvis painting and other quirky objects have appeared on the island. We found a silt-encrusted rope my husband claims was the very one his friend lost 30 years ago when his sailboat ran aground on Sometimes Island.
At the beach below the spot where we got married, a small bay has formed. Large heart-shaped mussel shells have washed up. On the far side of this bay, I spotted a white sign with red letters and an arrow pointing toward the shore. Looks like a real estate sign, I muttered. Sure enough, it said "Newmark Homes."
Sometimes Island once was home to a family cattle ranch before Mansfield Dam turned the Colorado River into Lake Travis in 1941. Big square concrete blocks dot the island as leftovers from gravel dredging operations. The blocks became our dining chairs.
As the sun began to set, we left our footprints in the sand of the Sometimes Island beach. We are counting the days until a rain washes them away.
