We’re at the Texas coast this week, enjoying the beach in the rain, and exploring the unlikely wildlife corridors created by petrochemical rights of way. Field Notes will be back next week. In the meantime, two interesting Sunday reads:

• Over at Grist, a recent report on the efforts to restore Texas beaches using sand from the Trinity River Paleovalley.

• And via UT Austin’s virtual Texas history museum, a fascinating overview from archaeologist and Karankawa expert Robert Ricklis of the ecological history of human subsistence along the coast, revealing how recent and ephemeral are the conditions that Cabeza de Vaca found there in 1528, and we have been trashing ever since.

Have a great week.