I first started visiting Town Lake in high school. My friends and I would park in the unpaved lot under the MoPac bridge and walk the 3-mile trail that loops back at the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge. In those days, we walked this path less for exercise and more as an excuse to hang out—gesticulating wildly, shrieking with laughter, sneaking glances at the cute runners who zoomed by. I was shy then, and awkward in that I had a body but didn’t yet understand what it meant to inhabit it. Even so, the trail felt like it was ours. As we continued to stumble through our teenage years and into young adulthood, it served as the backdrop for moments big and small—summer school P.E., high school graduation, and Saturday mornings when we hoped the sun would slough off the Kerbey Lane queso we inhaled only hours before. Over the years, and without meaning to, it also became a place where I celebrated beginnings and endings.
Here, I should clarify: When I say Town Lake, I mean the giant human-made lake that runs through the center of Austin. In 2007, the lake’s name was officially changed to Lady Bird Lake, honoring the late Lady Bird Johnson, who was instrumental in the lake and trail’s development. The trail also has an official name: The Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail, after Austin’s former mayor and his wife. But because I am stubborn and precious about certain traditions, the lake and its trail remain Town Lake to me.
A brief history of the lake: In 1960, the city of Austin created a dammed reservoir to serve as a cooling pond for the now-defunct Holly Street Power Plant. At one point, the City Council proposed calling it Lake Tonkawa to honor the Native American tribe that once lived along its riverbanks, but the suggestion was unanimously rejected. Eventually, the 416-acre lake was dubbed “Town Lake” by Bill Woods, a reporter for the Austin American-Statesman who did not know what else to call it.
Up until 1971, the lake was mostly unkempt and filled with trash, so much so that a local television station referred to it as an “eyesore.” But there were plenty of efforts to beautify the lake and its surrounding area. Mayor Butler led the Austin City Council to establish the Town Lake Beautification Committee and appointed Lady Bird Johnson as the project’s honorary chair. Johnson was apparently inspired by the Thames Path in London and wanted to recreate something similar in Austin. It’s worth noting that the idea of walking for leisure was relatively new, especially in Texas, where car culture was booming.
Today, the Town Lake trail stands as one of the oldest urban hike-and-bike paths in Texas. Its majesty lies in its size: It wraps around the lake, spanning from MoPac Expressway through the center of the city to its easternmost point along Pleasant Valley before looping back through East and Central Austin. Each segment of the trail serves as a snapshot not only of Austin’s environmental variety, but of the socioeconomic, racial, and historical dynamics at play neighborhood by neighborhood, mile by mile.
My favorite part of the trail is actually quite ugly most of the time: the juncture at the end of the MoPac bridge toward Stratford Drive, where a cluster of leaves, sticks, and trash collects against the bank. There is a very brief period each fall, however, when all the different shades of green—from the trees to the ferns to the fanwort—are at their best and brightest, and the water looks pristine. The sight of it moves me. I only see it once a year, and maybe that’s for the best.
There’s this thing people do that feels unique to Austin, even though I know it’s not: They’ll always ask, “How long have you been in Austin?” Such a question, and the necessity of asking it underscores the new identity of Austin that longtime residents have by now accepted—that it’s a city of transplants. This explains why strangers want to have an unspoken contest about tenure. If you’ve been here two years, you’re a newbie; five years, a pandemic move; eight years, basically an OG. If you’ve been here 25 years, like me, you will almost certainly elicit a gasp, maybe even a wow. And if you were born and raised here, then you are what they call a “unicorn.”
Embedded in this question is the mutual acknowledgement that the Austin of now is not the Austin of then. This is not new information. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates, the Austin Metropolitan Statistical Area grew by about 56,350 people annually from 2010-20 and has frequently topped listicles ranking cities for their best-place-to-live-ness. East Austin, historically home to Black and Brown neighborhoods, has arguably felt the ramifications most as gentrification prices out not only longtime residents, but artists, musicians, and small businesses. During the COVID pandemic, Austin experienced a boom in population that forced median housing prices to more than double over two years.
Everyone will have their own version of what Austin once was. Some people say “old Austin” is just the Austin you grew up with, and they’re probably right. But there’s one thing we can all agree on: The old Austin was a vibe. That’s not to say that it isn’t anymore; it’s just that the vibe has shifted.
When I tell people how long I’ve lived in Austin, they always respond: “So, you must have seen it change a lot over the years.” “I suppose,” is what I’ll say. When you see something day by day, you don’t really notice the changes. It’s like looking at yourself in the mirror each morning—the changes are so gradual and constant that you can never see them for yourself.
Then one day you wake up, 25 years have gone by, and you realize a group of small shops along South Congress has been replaced by a Hermès, Flipnotics is a wine shop, and the Magnolia Cafe on Lake Austin is a Tumble 22. The sites of some of your most formative and cherished
memories—the Alamo Ritz, Veggie Heaven, Shady Grove, Hut’s, Frank & Angie’s, La Zona Rosa, the old Emo’s—are gone. The Austin you knew is now a playground for techies, influencers, and bachelorette parties. You can’t remember the last time you heard or saw the phrase “Keep Austin Weird.”
It does no good—and I know it bores everyone—to lament the Austin of yore. The same identity realignment can happen to anyone’s hometown. In Austin, it has simply happened at a much larger scale. But perhaps what makes that change so hard to accept is that it’s a reminder that I’ve changed, too.
What I have witnessed on the Town Lake trail over the years: a thick black snake trying to cross in the aftermath of a storm; a massive turtle attempting the same thing a week later; the dogs of my life—Alaska, Seya, Maebe—lolling-tongued and eagerly sniffing, now all gone; elephant ears; a man named Woode Wood, who used to sit by the gazebo and sing with a guitar; cardinals; blue jays; the Texas persimmon trees along César Chávez; goats.
What the trail has witnessed of me: angsty teenager, lonely college student, reckless 20-something, current 30-something.
One thing it hasn’t: Throughout my 20s, I battled disordered eating via a cycle of depriving my body of food, then gorging on it, then depriving myself again as punishment. Some days, I would make it to bedtime without eating. Other days, I’d eat until I felt I had filled my stomach all the way up to the back of my throat. In my personal life, I was nursing heartbreak and shame and a great sense of loss, and this was my way of coping. I was a hole as deep as the earth, a tunnel that could never be resolved. Bingeing became meditative, comforting even. If I was in public and suddenly overcome with anxiety or bad feelings, I would think of myself in just a few hours, where I could be alone in front of the fridge, numbing myself and my pain with food. It was a prison. It was also relief.
During those years, exercise was a way for me to punish myself for my binges. This is what they call “purging.” I ran up and down South Congress Avenue, I lifted, I did hot yoga with weights, sliding around on a sweat-slick mat. I attended 6:45 a.m. kickboxing classes even after drinking all night. Four times a week, I took high-intensity interval training classes with nothing in my belly but half of a sweet potato.
But I never dared step foot on the trail.
It wasn’t a conscious choice. At the time, I lived off South Congress, and running to the Capitol was a matter of convenience. But to this day, I wonder why, for all my obsessions back then with calories burnt and accountability and grinding hard, I did not ever think to take my running to Town Lake.
Perhaps what they say is true: It is hardest to reveal yourself to those who know you best. I could not face the same trees that have known me since I was 15—what a disappointment I turned out to be. I could not bear to hear the trail say, “I’m worried about you, kid. You’re not OK.”
Since its establishment, the Town Lake trail has stayed the same, barring a few additions. In 1980, a renovation to the pedestrian arch bridge on Congress Avenue brought a famed megacolony of 1.5 million bats. In 2014, construction was finished on the boardwalk, the portion spanning 1.3 miles along the south shore. This year, a three-pronged pedestrian bridge will connect and complete the 10-mile pathway.
The city is currently restoring a portion of the trail to stabilize a slope failure that occurred during a flooding event in 2018. The work spans the stretch right after the little wooden bridge, rendering the second leg of the 3-mile loop unusable. In its stead, giant construction-orange netting drapes down the bank and floats on the water. The path offers a detour around the construction, taking you up a paved route, then shooting you out onto Toomey Road, against new condos and apartment complexes.
The first time I took this detour, I was shocked. On the trail, I never think about where in Austin I am. Shrouded by big oaks, thick brush, the wet air of nearby water, everything exists in anonymity. But that day, spit out next to the modern development, I marveled at how I had spent so much time on the trail but never knew how close I was to these buildings—or that they existed at all. I straddled two realities: nature versus city, trail versus paved road, an Austin that has not changed versus an Austin that continues to evolve.
But Town Lake remains a capsule of an Austin I do know, the Austin I love most. There will always be an older person running faster than me; there will always be a dog snuffling in the grass; there will always be a group of teens gabbing; there will always be a parent powering a stroller; there will always be people jumping off the little bridge; and there will always be me. I come day after day, week after week, year after year, my shoes and the length of my hair the only things marking time’s passage.
The trail forces you to witness an Austin that is ever-changing around it. It is here where you can best see Zilker Park’s transformation before, during, and after the Austin City Limits Music Festival. It is here where you can track the evolution of Trail of Lights from homegrown holiday tradition to commercialized destination. It is here where you are confronted with encampments while having a front-row seat to high-rises.
In 2021, not quite healed but healing, I challenged myself to run 13.1 miles, or what I called my personal, private half-marathon. I’d never been much of a runner, but I had always possessed aspirations. My running career up to that point was mostly 5Ks and the occasional 10K. During the pandemic, however, all I could do was run. Gyms either were closed or felt too risky, and I hated the feeling of huffing into a mask while exercising indoors. So, I ran outside, for exercise but more so for pleasure, and discovered something revelatory: If I ran slowly, so slowly that I could have been walking, then running didn’t feel like anything at all. It was surprisingly easy.
Buoyed by this breakthrough, I found a training plan online by running expert Hal Higdon that prescribed two shorter distances during the week and one longer distance on the weekend. The distances steadily increased each week. I ran them at Town Lake, starting with 3 miles, then 4, then 5—so many 5s—then the shock of 6, 7, and 8, the victory of 9, the disbelief of 10.
During those 12 weeks of training, I was a resident of the trail, belonging to it, serving it. I carried its rocks and dirt in the creases of my sneakers. I aligned myself with the shade. I counted the turtles sunning on logs in the water. At night, I imagined myself running on the trail, watching its familiar dips and curves like a movie until I fell asleep.
On the day I was to complete my personal, private half-marathon, I started from the unpaved lot under the MoPac bridge. It was 7 a.m., a Tuesday, and all the regulars I frequently saw on the trail were there, although none of them knew the momentousness of the day for me. I couldn’t help but wonder: Where did you come from? As in, what is the beginning of your trail? What signifies its end? Is my start your three-fourths? Is my finish line your halfway?
Does this trail imprint in you the same path as it does in me?
The answer is, of course not. But on the trail, I believe we can all stop pretending for a moment, stripped to our barest, most vulnerable forms. California transplant, content creator, college student, Austin native, restaurateur, musician, new parent, dog walker—there is no hiding under the Texas sun.
That day, I ran past Zilker Park, observing the happy bounds of dogs, and through the hallway of trees, grateful for the shade because already the temperature was pushing 80 degrees. I ran past the little wooden bridge off of which someone was invariably jumping. I ran past Auditorium Shores, observing the sunlight as it broke across the giant fin-shaped building, splitting light across the water like a disco ball. Under the bat bridge, huffing the damp and pungent air, then down the boardwalk, where the ducks and swans and mysterious algae convened. Run it with me, now: past Interstate 35, down Lakeshore Drive, past the Oracle campus and the encampments to the far reaches of Pleasant Valley, skirting around the construction. Past baseball fields, past Festival Beach, past the before-work dog walkers on Rainey Street and the kayakers dropping in, past the rowing club and the pool at the Line Hotel, where beautiful people soak in early morning sun from their chairs. Down past César Chávez Street—and now it feels like a homecoming, for you’ve got the lake on your left and downtown Austin on your right. How is it that you’re so embedded in the city and hidden at the same time? Past the spiral pavilion, the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, and there, faithful as ever, are the competitive rowers, their lithe bodies pulling in concert. And now you are running past Austin High School, past a man named Daniel who pounds his chest and cheers you on, until you are finally bounding down the MoPac bridge, the wind blowing air into your lungs for you. That’s when you think: I’ve been all over this city on my own two feet.
A few years ago, a man ran up beside me on the trail and asked if I remembered him. Of course I did. His name was Kevin, and he drove our school bus in middle school. To my eyes, he had not changed, even though it had been nearly 20 years. At the same time, I could not believe he recognized me. I felt so different from the middle schooler he must have remembered, not at all the obnoxious, bratty-mouthed preteen he encountered every day for three years. But he knew me. He remembered me. We had both somehow stayed similar enough to be recognizable but transformed enough to greet each other as adults. He wished me well, was happy to see that I was all right. And then, he picked up speed again and jogged past, skimming the length of the trail until he disappeared from my line of sight.
Jenny Tinghui Zhang’s Open Road essay “The Lengths We’ll Go” appeared in the March 2023 issue.