We are Austin based and Texas bred. Shoal Creek is our neighborhood, a slim needle of a creek that splits the heart of Austin into two equal halves. Shoal Creek is dressed Texan, a rarely wet swath of white rocks and cedar trees. To be precise, the white rocks are Georgetown limestone, and the cedar trees are ash junipers. No matter. A Texan would understand.

Like many of you, we are concerned about our place on the planet. Shoal Creek, like so many that we have worked around over the years, is scarred from a history of disinterest and misuse. Our creek flows too little at times, the result of development impinging on the aquifer and springs. At other times the creek flows too much, as rainwater from surrounding neighborhoods rushes to the Colorado River rather than settling slowly into the soil. Our creek is polluted in places, with E.coli counts that spike due to animal waste from pets. In places garbage litters the bank.

Nothing about this differs much from most of America’s urban waterways. The creek’s ills are sins of omission, not commission. Water still runs in a creek bed that has somehow escaped the alterations and improvements that reduce a native waterway to a pipe. Shoal Creek still lives within its banks, waiting for the right moment to spring.

The resurrection of Shoal Creek is our commitment, and to that end we have begun to work with a variety of interests in Austin to advocate for the creek. One important beginning has been our relationship with the Pease Park Conservancy, an Austin organization that is focusing on the restoration of one of Shoal Creek’s iconic parks.

For our part we have developed a new SmartTrail that interprets Shoal Creek from Lady Bird Lake to West 38th Street. For those not familiar with Austin, Lady Bird Lake shoulders the downtown district, and this new SmartTrail bisects much of what a tourist or visitor might be interested in: the Texas State Capitol, the University of Texas campus, Austin City Limits, and a bottomless serving of chips-and-salsa. The SmartTrail is available now for the iPhone and Android. Download the app, and then access the Shoal Creek and Pease Park SmartTrail.

To see the content of the SmartTrails, go to this webpage. There we have included a widget feed of two of our SmartTrails: the Indiana Beyond the Beach Discovery Trail, and the Austin, Texas: Shoal Creek and Pease Park SmartTrail.

We care about every place we have worked, all 50 states and a jumble of foreign countries. All matter. But Shoal Creek is home, our place. The time has come for us to help our place as well as the places of others. The time has come for Shoal Creek.

The following a gallery of Shoal Creek and Pease Park photos by Ted. Click here for a slide show of the complete gallery.