Friday, February 14, 2014 - Valentine’s Day – From the Heights of Big Bend National Park to the Abyss of Del Rio, Texas

We arise, settle our bill at the hotel and head back into the park, stopping at a small store for ice and eggs.  A complete stranger hands me a rose for Valentine’s Day.

Pearl climbs the Chisos Mountains once more.  I drop the boys off for the Lost Mine Trail hike and drive over to the visitor center.  Pearl and I argue.  Pearl claims that she isn’t the size of a small piano truck.  She considers herself dainty, cute and feminine, especially in her hat.  Tiring of the argument, I park.  Sven and I exit via Pearl’s ramp.

Sven and I again motor out to the terminus of the Window Ledge trail.  I sit on the park bench and write, this time with a glass of tea in hand.  Once again, I luxuriate in beauty, listening to birdsong, feeling so calm and content.  Could life be better?

At the appointed time, I return to Pearl. Sven and I enter the car; I transfer to the driver’s seat, pushing the button to retract the ramp.  The passenger door won’t close. Finding some invisible mote of dust, the door springs open repeatedly.  A passerby, another complete stranger, shuts Pearl’s door for me.   My best friend forever Lahoma, seriously ill long ago said, “You expect rudeness from strangers as your illness marks you as obviously physically other.  It’s the kindnesses that make you cry.” As always, she was correct. 

I retrieve the boys from their hike.  They bound into the car telling tales of wonder and enchantment.  They’ve seen piñon pines, oaks, junipers, grasses and old stone CCC works.  Climbing up the trail, they gaze over the rock turrets of Casa Grande and eroded remains of long extinct volcanoes.  They once again see the scary, spiny dormant stick Ocotillos but now knowing their secrets, can approach them fearlessly.  Topping a hill, the boys look into the Chihuahuan Desert.  The boys finally ascend lost mine peak at 7600 feet.  “We climbed all over the rocks, Beaver – seeing the vista below from multiple angles.  We ventured out as far as we dared, not wanting to fall to our deaths below.”

An old local legend tells of Spanish explorers finding silver veins in the peak, enslaving the local Indians to work a mine like a mini-Potosi, I suppose.  The workers revolted, slew the Spaniards and sealed the mine entrance to eliminate the potential of further exploitation.  No trace of any mine remains, aside from the cool story.

Leaving Chisos, we stop and cook our lunch of pork chops and kale, grateful for the roofed picnic tables erected by the park.  Even in February, the desert teaches appreciation of shade.

Following lunch, we reluctantly drive north across the desert floor, exiting the park.  We pass through a seemingly endless dry bowl surrounded by hills rising on the periphery.  At long last, Pearl finds a crack in the bowl leading into the south Texas desert. Heading north on 385, widely spaced scrub and prickly pear await us as we enter yet another bowl.

Turning east onto route 90 we travel through a land of vast dry mesas.  At first we see gigantic cattle ranches.  Gradually the fences disappear as the land becomes too dry for cattle.  Is driving across Texas a rite of passage?  The land begins to roll as the mesas recede into the south.

The miles tick by ever so slowly.  We crawl across the landscape, tired, smelly, hungry and sorely in need of a washing machine.  We can’t count the miles via mile markers, because Texas, the cheapest state in the union, refuses to erect them.

At long last, we arrive at the Ramada Inn in Del Rio, Texas.  I hit the traveler’s wall.  Why is travelling through the center of our country so endless and difficult?  For years, I’ve been greatly offended by the snooty New York term “fly over country,” since of course I’ve always lived in the “fly over country,” but now I get it.  I get it.

Somehow, Del Rio, Texas aside, we expect a decent place for dinner, but find nothing exceeding Yuckdonald’s.  Being pretty spaced out, we decide to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant, despite visions of John Waters’ Holiday Inn hell with a really bad band loudly playing Tony Orlando and Dawn songs.

With some trepidation, we join the line for the hotel restaurant.  We watch the restaurant fill with two hundred amorous Hispanics out for a Valentine’s Day event.  At long last, we’re shown to one of six empty tables.  The restaurant brings to mind the Sons of Norway Lodge in Eagle Grove, Iowa.  The hotel may have imported the same old rickety chairs and tables.  Tonight, the staff covers the tables with white tablecloths for the holiday.  I picture the Iowa Norwegians doing this too for important events – my family reunion not being one of them.

After a good wait, our server greets us.  “Hello,” we respond, “What kind of wine do you offer?” “I don’t know.  I’ll have to ask at the bar.”   She disappears.  Around ten minutes later, she returns with an answer.  “Chardonnay and Zinfandel,” she reports.  Keith orders a Chardonnay for me.  I glare at him.  My stolen, outdated motto is “ABC – anything but Chardonnay.” “Dear Beaver,” begins my ever patient husband, “the wine here is much too cheap to be oaky.  You’ll prefer the cheap Chardonnay to the cheap Zinfandel.”  He’s right.

Tonight, as a special for Valentine’s Day, cue Guy Lombardo or Lawrence Welk to strike up some schmaltzy music, the restaurant offers a five-course meal.  Did we want that?  “Sure,” we respond, doubting the existence of other options.  “Great!” she replies, “Get your first three courses at the salad bar over in the corner.” She leaves.  Keith dutifully trots over to what may be a salad bar, noting it lacks food.  Perhaps it was a salad bar in a previous life.  Another worker tells him to sit down, stating, “Your waitress will bring your food.”

In another ten minutes or so, our waitress again returns to our table.  We share our insights on the salad bar.  “Oh,” she says and confesses that she works in the bar but she didn’t know what kind of wine they sold.  Dutifully, she takes our order for the first three courses and wanders off to the kitchen to get our soup, the first course.  Ten minutes later she returns to tell us that they’re out of cream of broccoli, would I care for the other soup?  “NO,” I heatedly respond, now having a glass of wine in me and still no bloody food, not even a fucking cracker.

She scurries off, returning with our salads sans dressing.  She sees the dressings, then asks another worker which one is Caesar.  “Hell if I know, I work at the front desk.” Bloodroot rescues her, helping her choose a dressing. 

Famished, I pour the dressing on my Caesar salad, discovering not Caesar salad dressing but genuine Sysco Truck sweet and sour dressing.  I’m so hungry I eat the unpalatable mess in front of me anyway.

Here comes course three, some sort of burnt offering that may at one time have been a piece of shrimp.  Even the boys can’t eat this.  I order more wine.

The wine and the main courses finally arrive.  Mine consists of heavily salted beef and vegetables.  “The baked potatoes will be out soon,” we hear, but no longer believe anything this woman says.  Bloodroot eats my beef; I eat the vegetables.

We order our three desserts – two for Bloodroot and one for Keith.  I fight boredom as they eat.  During the dessert course, our baked potatoes arrive complete with some margarine on the side.  We toss the margarine, boxing up the potatoes for breakfast.

NO WONDER WE COOK!!!!!

Musing in the bar after dinner, consuming our free drink tickets, I think about our waitress.  Now working the bar, she looks our way and flees, scuttling away like some small rodent.  As a cripple, I don’t generally, well ok, never, incite fear in people.  Pity and disgust, but not terror.  I ponder, wondering.  How do people this stupid manage to walk around all day and not set themselves on fire?  Where is social Darwinism when you need it?  At long last, with enough alcohol and quasi-food, pity overcomes my anger. 

Thursday, February 13, 2014 - Big Bend National Park & the Real Texas

Today we’re up early and out the door, heading east to the park before breakfast but long after sunrise.  As it is February, perhaps I should say relatively early.  We stop to buy gas, our entire lives now revolving around satisfying Pearl’s seemingly unquenchable thirst and our lingering fear of empty gas tanks.  Checking the park map in the gas station, we note the nearest picnic table location with some chagrin.  We buy some tea and settle in for a long haul.

Driving into the park, we stamp our passports at the Panther Junction Visitor Center.   Outside the center, the park has planted a garden of flowers that grow in the desert.  We see creosote bush, acacia, prickly pear, agave, and various cacti.  As we walk through the garden, I see numerous six foot tall completely dead spiny, spiky sticks.  Why has the Park Service left such frightful looking things amidst this pretty garden?  Have they resorted to passive-aggressive crowd control methods to keep the tourists at bay?  Ah no, we’ve found the magical Ocotillo plant that grows leaves and big red blossoms within 48 hours of rainfall.  Without rain, we see only the scary stick.

Returning to Pearl, we stop at the first picnic spot we find.  The gods of camping smile upon us, although I can’t camp anymore.  In this very arid park, we’ve found a table sitting in a lovely copse of medium sized willow trees.  The tree leaves dapple the sunlight, shading us, important here even in February.

Bloodroot carefully retrieves our stove and from Pearl’s hat.  At $160, the cost of our new Primus Firehole far exceeds the price of any camping stove we’ve ever owned or even contemplated owning.  I recall buying tents and sleeping bags for less.  Remember those old Coleman stoves we all had?  And all of the craziness we’d employ creating windscreens for them?  “OK, Keith, stand over there.  Bloodroot – you to the right of him.  Hold your tent bags. Up!  To the left now!  Block the wind!”   With recessed burners deep inside the box, our high tech stove lights and heats in full wind. 

Camping-the new high tech. But shouldn’t young people have to use the old Coleman stoves?  Just to toughen them up a bit?  Just think, early one morning, we magically replace all smart phones with Coleman stoves.  I can hear Bloodroot already, ”Hey, what’s the story with the Wi-Fi on this big green screen?” Would mass starvation ensue?  Would we create an apocalypse? Or maybe just the plot line for an installment of The Hunger Games where the old people are the good guys?

Keith and Bloodroot prepare a great breakfast of bacon and eggs.  As a mother, I proudly reflect that Bloodroot wouldn’t starve even if a Coleman camping stove replaced his i-phone, although he may subsist on nothing but bacon for the remainder of his life.  I’m not sure that bacon and eggs have ever tasted so good! 

During breakfast, we hear a creaking noise.  We wander off to explore.  Not far from our copse we discover an old windmill, one of those ancient rusty contraptions forever associated in my mind with the depression and dust bowl.  Nearly a hundred years old, the windmill still pumps a bit of water out onto the land, greening the area surrounding the picnic table.  The water spurts out rhythmically as the pump gears clack and turn.

Dugout Wells, green and shaded, sits amongst the remains of 1920s farms.  Exuberant farmers once irrigated the Rio Grande’s floodplain growing cotton until the depression took all.

After our refreshing breakfast, we pack up and head down to the river where the boys plan to hike the Boquillas Canyon trail.  We meet two park employees with a backhoe digging something or another.  Keith immediately notices the woman’s fine, powerful and costly Zeiss binoculars.  An unfailingly polite bear, I’ve never previously seen Keith stare at a woman’s chest.  I see the gears turning in his head as he considers leaving me for her.  “I’m taking a bird census,” she states, interrupting his ruminations.

We discuss birds found in Big Bend National Park.  She directs us to a path near a boat ramp where Sven and I can drive right next to the water.  We follow her directions and look out over the river flowing by, wide and lazy, enjoying the spring sunshine with us.

Down by the river, Keith and Bloodroot begin a sword fight with bamboo-like rushes.  Bloodroot towers over Keith but always loses these competitions despite his far greater reach.  Keith chases Bloodroot bonking him on the head repeatedly.  Bloodroot lacked a father growing up and never learned these games, nor does he ever tire of them.

The boys take off on the Boquillas Canyon hike.  Their trail climbs up and over a hill then descends following the river for a wee bit.  Enterprising Mexicans ride horses across the border and set out twisted wire scorpions on rocks hoping to entice the tourists.  The Mexican merchants leave notes in English beside the mini-sculptures assuring us that sale proceeds fund schooling for their kids across the border.   Whether true or not, what a tug on the heartstrings!  The US Park service has given us detailed lectures about NOT buying anything from these entrepreneurs. 

We pile back into Pearl and discover the most amazing thing - the Boquillas Border crossing.  The crossing opened in 2013, unmentioned in our pre-2013 guidebooks.  We failed to bring our US passports with us.  Keith doesn’t believe in the post-2001 seriousness of US borders and drives up to the crossing imploring Bloodroot to ask if we can pretty please cross.  Bloodroot complies, although certain that this will be the stupidest question asked the border patrol all day.  Bloodroot returns with the expected answer, “No US passport; No crossing.”  From now on, should we plan to venture within 100 miles of any US border, we’ll put the damn things in the glove compartment.

We drive away, playing Wall of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio full blast, singing along to celebrate at least looking into Mexico.

Eschewing the far eastern side of the park, we return to the park’s center and climb into the Chisos Mountains, the highest in the park.  Up, up, up Pearl ascends, taking the switchbacks with ease.  “See, I’m strong,” she purrs.  We park at the visitor center.

The Chisos Mountains, named for an extinct Indian tribe, are tall enough to attract moisture.  Daily autumn rains bring the moisture which sustains the basin all year.  The park exhibits speak of the area gradually drying over the past ten thousand years, leaving the high mountains cooler, wetter islands.  The bigger trees gradually died out, losing the battle to the more arid climate.

But a park volunteer tells us otherwise.  In the late 1800s, miners and mining companies completely denuded the park taking every tree and scrap of wood they could find for mine supports.  No longer forested, desiccation began.  The forest has never returned.  Chisos now has scrub trees and much more green than the desert floor below, but no forest. 

The boys head out on the Basin Loop Trail while I investigate the park’s sole handicap accessible trail, the Window View Trail.  Sven and I motor out to a bench overlooking the area.  Mountains surround me as I gaze out over the Chisos Basin, the left hand side much greener than the right.  The mountains funnel water into a stream pouring out through a window dropping to the desert far below.  I peer out through the distant opening listening to birdsong while the wind blows around me.  Birds fly everywhere.  I write. 

The boys return from their short hike.  “Not much of a trail, Beaver,” Keith says.  “We saw a couple of valleys.  I think this is a prequel to tomorrow’s Lost Mine Trail hike.” “We ran into some deer and woodpeckers,” Bloodroot chimes in, far less disillusioned.

Pearl glides down the mountain toward the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive again.  Keith abruptly stops her, jumping out to chase and photograph some bird he sees.  I love him so much!  Bloodroot takes the wheel, guiding Pearl through the desert.  He parks alongside the road while we all nap for half an hour.  Waking, we watch the sun set over the mountain range behind us throwing shadows that creep up the range before us.  Darkness descends; the moon rises.  We leave the park.

Back in Terlingua, far too tired to cook, we decide to dine at the bar next to and a part of our hotel.  We assuage our guilt by noting that we did eat both breakfast and lunch in the park. 

The bar/restaurant occupies two floors, the upstairs consisting of both a restaurant and a promising outdoor deck.  Lacking a ramp or an elevator, we can’t go upstairs.  We sit downstairs with the cigarette smoke.  Locals flagrantly ignore a sign proclaiming “Smoking on Deck Only”. 

Downstairs we sit at one of about ten dark tables.  To our left we find an extensive bar.  In front of us we see a cleared area with a microphone, microphone stand, speakers and chair for a singer.   Offering cigarettes at a mere $8 per pack, a cigarette machine stands in the bar’s back corner.  Have we fallen into a time warp? We explain cigarette machines, an embarrassing blast from our past, to Bloodroot.  Very large, very drunken Texans occupy the table next to us, including two assholes smoking.  Frankly, not wishing to be pummeled by their fists, I’m content to let them smoke.  Eventually the drunken smokers leave.  Unfortunately, their stench remains behind.

We’ve entered the real Texas, where folks don’t want the government or anyone telling them what to do, including commonsense things like not smoking.  I order a hamburger and home cut fries, recalling my erstwhile friend Alma’s advice, “Buy what the restaurant excels at.  A salad will suck in a bar.”  Alma knows her restaurants well, being the sole person in her 50s I’ve encountered completely incapable of cooking.  And she’s right.  I enjoy my hamburger while dipping my fries in mayonnaise.  What else could I want?

A local man, guitar in hand, takes the chair and microphone and begins to play.  It’s awful.  The audience begins shouting.  The man stops, adjusts the soundboard and begins again.  He’s really good.  We hear original songs about alien abductions, opera and moving to the zip code 79852, explaining why you’d move here.  “I found myself in the middle of nowhere…”

After the performance the bar clears.  Perhaps people do have day jobs here.  We buy a CD from the singer Alex, learning that his wife sings opera.  No one appears to be from here, but they all moved here, drawn by the idea of living in the middle of nowhere, away from the city, away from mortgages, away from rules, away from lights to a place where you can be yourself, look at the myriad stars and just live.

I’ve found the Texas I’d so feared.  The West Texas of the movies.  The Texas of certain police harassment due to our Colorado license plates.  What did we find?  Kind, loving people.  People feeding Bloodroot because he appears too thin to them.  People interrupting their work day to measure a door to be sure the wheelchair would fit.  Everything I thought was wrong.  Time to examine my own prejudices!