Texas Water in Winter

Words & Photography
by Melissa Barrett



If you look hard at the water images of my home in Texas, you can possibly see anything you want. I struggled with how to write about them. A photographer has this authority to cut out scenes from an image and recreate the narrative, purely in visual form. Threading a verbal story through that scene only increases the power.

I can describe the unfiltered beauty of a Texas winter: the blue skies, the cyclical warmth, the unexpected cold streaks that leave everyone giddy. But the day I shot these, that is not where my head was. Authenticity. I don't want to create something that is not real, a thin layer from the fullness of life beneath.



Personas on social media can be something of a tricky business. Recently I met a man face to face whom I thought was a scam account on Instagram. His feed showed images in quick succession hopping across the globe without any clear theme. When I saw a mention of Texas, I was curious. We discovered that we actually had mutual friends; we met, climbed a roof in Denton, shot some photographs and enjoyed community company the rest of the evening. In person he is kind, extremely considerate, and a ball of energy.

This past summer I was talking to another friend and mentioned an assumption I built of his own life based on a few photos -

"But I thought…"
"That's only part of the story Melissa; it's not real."

I never want to be seen or taken for more than I actually am. I want to be transparent so no one can form an unclear picture of me...

How much of a private life do we feel comfortable sharing on these public platforms? I know I struggle with authenticity. I never want to be seen or taken for more than I actually am. I want to be transparent so no one can form an unclear picture of me, but part of my story is wrapped up in others' private lives. Becoming fully transparent in public means exposing others' dirt and struggles as well as my own. I am comfortable with exposing all of these things in myself because it is how I've grown and evolved and come to fully understand myself. However kindness and love toward other people, even those who harbor negativity toward you or who you have wronged, sometimes means protecting them by blocking off public scrutiny.



During this season, I've been visually flooded with images of snow, thick firs, alpine lakes, adventures on mountains, the fog. I often find myself thinking that I need to be there in order to create something beautiful. But in truth, this is just an excuse. If we are not willing to fully be in the life we are living now, not some idea of a future life, not some regret of a past life, we can never authentically create or live.

I am the first person to say that the city in which I live is unattractive. The coffee is bad. The politics are…well…from another era. But I am here.

If we are not willing to fully be in the life we are living now, not some idea of a future life, not some regret of a past life, we can never authentically create or live.

After work one day, I stopped at the grocery story across town to pick up dinner, milk, and frozen waffles. On the way home, I noticed how beautiful the sky was in the fading sun, and I wanted to see the sun on the water. In my corner of North Texas we are in stage 5 drought, which means we do not have much water anymore. It has been on national news. This man-made lake is drying up, and others are all but gone in the area. But this day, a storm had passed through two days earlier.



I pulled up to the parking lot beside a dam and looked twice over my shoulder at the shady young man pacing back and forth on the phone. I ran up the side of the hill, toward the blue horizon, knowing my frozen waffles gave me a strict time limit to explore. Somewhere at the top, I was stunned. The water really was beautiful. Blue and clear. Shimmering with the sun. No one was out. The hill dropped down toward the waterline, buffered by large white, jagged rocks. I scrambled across the rocks to make my way down to the water with a view of the pier. Tumbleweeds had blown against the side of the rocks, stuck in the drying mud.

These mini explorations have become a fabric of my life in the past year. Working, motherhood, life, unattractive city, no outdoors to speak of. I found that I can give in to all of this and stop, or find a way to explore what we have. And in this, more creativity is born. Because I have to keep my eyes open.

So I don't share everything personal, even though finding creativity and pursuing it has been an intensely personal struggle in the past year. I worry sometimes that a stranger would view me and say, "Yeah but you get to explore and have a beautiful life." To which I would reply -

"That's only part of the story, stranger; it takes work."