It’s the crayon that always sat in the back of your Crayola box, never needing to have its wrapper peeled back, never needing a sharpen. When you first pulled it out, aged four or five, you could barely read it, let alone pronounce it. Even at such a tender, open-minded age, you instantly deemed the color undesirable. It’s sort of drab. It’s not all that flattering. It doesn’t make a house look more like a home. It doesn’t make your trees look shadier, your sky bluer. It just sits there. It’s burnt sienna.
But then. Twenty-four years later you arrive in Austin, Texas on a weekend in the fall and you’ve never seen so much burnt sienna in your life. It’s still horribly unflattering. And yet. It’s the most vibrant color you’ve ever seen. It’s the heartbeat of a city. You can’t see it, but you’re sure that it courses through every person’s veins, seeps from their pores. It colors the dirt, settles over the walls of every building, swirls in the air, dusts its warm essence on everyone and everything as far as the eye can see.
Here, my weekend in Austin, Texas as the University of Texas Longhorns took on the Texas Tech Red Raiders–in all its Burnt Sienna glory.
