A key part of this story lies underground.

Running beneath much of East and Central Texas is a geologic layer called the Catahoula Formation, or what some call the Catahoula cut. It’s rich in silica-bearing stone like chert and chalcedony, which ancient people quarried and shaped into cutting tools, blades, and projectile points.

Many of the arrowheads I’ve found seem to come from this very stone. That means this wasn’t just a camp. It may have also been a workshop or stone procurement site, where raw materials were gathered and shaped on-site.

I still pick up every arrowhead with a sense of reverence. They’re not just objects. They’re fragments of lives lived close to the land. Evidence of people whose ingenuity and survival shaped the very ground I walk.

What started as a few stone tips in the dirt has turned into something deeper: a quiet conversation with the past, still speaking, if you know how to listen.