Texas Monthly January 2022

AT A CONFERENCE IN THE HILL COUNTRY, CAMELEERS SWAP TIPS (AND WATCH OUT FOR SLIME) On a brisk morning in October, the guttural calls of camels pierce the air as campers unzip their tents and step out of their RVs to overlook acres of sprawling Hill Country ranch-land. Brittany Britto Garley reports from the thirteenth annual Southwest Camel Conference, which transforms a ranch in Comfort into a vast outdoor classroom for cameleers and their humpbacked charges. OUR MADE IN TEXAS HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE Considering the trials of the past two years, everyone deserves what’s on their wish list this holiday season. Texas Monthly’s gift guide, curated by executive editor Kathy Blackwell, includes Lone Star State experiences, items made by Texans, and a few things that might be described as, well, Texas-adjacent. IT’S TIME TO…

My father, who supervised several hundred machinists at a big shipyard in Mississippi, used to say to his craftsmen (and to me): “Don’t do what I tell you. Do what needs to be done.” Dad died two decades ago, but I smile to think how much he would have admired Emily Kimbro, who leads our five-member art department at Texas Monthly. Emily and her team conjure up visual magic not only in our print magazine but also wherever else photography, illustrations, and design are needed: on TexasMonthly.com and in our apps, books, live events, newsletters, podcasts, social-media posts, special issues, and videos. In grateful acknowledgment of those efforts, I’m pleased to announce Emily’s promotion to the new position of creative director, across all our storytelling platforms. A native Texan, Emily grew…

“DID YOUR STAFF HAVE SOME SORT OF COLLECTIVE AMNESIA FROM EATING TOO MUCH DOWNSTATE BARBECUE? I’M GUESSING THE WIDE-OPEN SPACES AND BIG SKY THIS FAR NORTH MIGHT FRIGHTEN YOUR WRITERS AND TASTERS, WHO AREN’T USED TO BEING ABLE TO SEE THE HORIZON IN ALL DIRECTIONS.” A Few Bones to Pick While I was excited to read the latest issue of Texas Monthly (yes, we do read up here in the Panhandle), I was shocked to see that our favorite, Tyler’s Barbeque, in Amarillo, wasn’t anywhere on your list of the top fifty barbecue joints, not even in the honorable mentions [“The 50 Best BBQ Joints 2021,” November]. I recall Tyler’s has been on your list before. Did your staff have some sort of collective amnesia from eating too much downstate barbecue? I’m…

Bob Hansler survives for a living. A former high school biology teacher turned professional YouTuber, he’s been known to skin and cook creatures such as gophers and snakes, both to feed himself in the Texas wild and to entertain his online fans, who are legion. He munches on insect larvae and whip scorpions and can fashion a fish trap out of pretty much anything: stacked rocks, an old plastic jug, nets woven from the fibers of a yucca plant. Hansler, who has light brown hair and a chin beard, favors aviator sunglasses and Wrangler work shirts. The 37-year-old reckons he’s handled about a thousand rattlesnakes with nary a problem. Except for that one time, in 2018, when a perturbed western diamondback followed him and some friends down a narrow trail through…

1. JAPANESE TEA GARDEN, SAN ANTONIO At the heart of the eleven-acre Japanese Tea Garden (pictured), in Brackenridge Park, koi ponds fill the bottom of the former rock quarry that was developed into the garden in 1917. Take in the tranquil view from the open-air pavilion at the top and then follow the nearby winding path down a set of stone stairs, up and along arched bridges, and around the base of a sixty-foot waterfall. Sun streams in overhead, warming this sunken oasis in the cooler months. This park comes with a Texas twist: in lieu of classic Japanese maple or cherry trees, native and adaptive species abound, including leafy green Mexican sycamore trees and flower-studded desert willows. 2. JAPANESE GARDEN, FORT WORTH Completed in 1973, the Fort Worth Botanic Garden’s Japanese Garden…

I had been dillydallying around for weeks, with every intention of getting up to the Dallas area to visit chef Tiffany Derry’s promising new restaurant, Roots Southern Table, which had opened in June. Then, on the morning of October 12, as I was idly checking the New York Times website, I saw, to my utter horror, that the paper had included Roots on its list of fifty American restaurants it was excited about. Dammit! I fumed. Now I’ll never get a reservation! I toggled over to Roots’ website to assess the damage and found, miraculously, that the news hadn’t gone viral yet and reservations were still available not too far in the future. True, they were at five o’clock, but beggars … you know the rest. And that’s how, on successive…