Yesterday’s near
empty tank brought a sleepy headedness to Pearl. She finds it hard to think without fuel and feared
that Bigfoot might munch on her too. “He
may like metal you know,” she admonishes Keith. “And I am quite attractive, younger and better
looking than any of you lot.” We have a
precedent here. On a prior trip, I
recall Bloodroot admiring himself in a spoon proclaiming, “Ah, Beauty.” Am I to be ever surrounded by this clueless
vanity?
We buy gas in Van
Horn. Primed with petrol, Pearl completely
recovers from yesterday’s scare. She
heads out down Texas route 90 whistling along, exuding the happiness common amongst
all young things. We cruise through a
stark dry country dotted by the Van Horn then Sierra Vieja Mountains to the
west. “Texas? Mountains?” you ask. Yes, west Texas boasts numerous mountain
chains as the Rockies wind down into Mexico.
We drive through
an empty place, encountering perhaps five cars between Van Horn and Marfa. Yet the desolation creates beauty. We see roadrunners. Unlike their cartoon namesakes, they move
quite slowly. Pearl chases the birds off
of the road.
Around forty miles
north of Marfa we find a Prada store alongside the road in the middle of absolute
nowhere. Another tourist couple stops,
snapping photos. They tell us, “This
art was created by a New York artist who tired of Manhattan and wanted to relocate
as far from the New York art scene as possible.
He picked Marfa, Texas.” Fact
checking on the internet, I learn that these people were completely full of
it. Two Scandinavian artists working in
Berlin created the sculpture as a comment on consumerism.
Locals immediately
vandalized the work, breaking the windows, spray painting the building and
stealing all the genuine Prada articles inside.
But this working class rage, this honest response to obscene consumerism doesn't fulfill the artists’ desire. The
artists quickly rebuilt the fake Prada store installing Lexan plexiglass
windows, numerous security cameras both outside the building and concealed inside
the new bottomless Prada purses. Prada donated
the merchandise twice.
I see the very same
anger exploding, inciting the have-nots to attack Prada, one of wealth’s great
symbols, also driving the more impoverished Taos locals to spray paint graffiti
all over the property of the rich back in Taos.
The artists
themselves want the sculpture to decay into the environment. They do intend a statement on
consumerism. Their statement isn’t
Marxism and class struggle but rather the impermanence of all. Even the fabulously wealthy will die, fading
into dust just as the Prada store will dissolve into the desert.
We drive on to
Marfa. Marfa has become a center for
minimalist art but we fail to find any of it.
We drive around the town for a bit, stop at a coffee shop/laundromat
duo, obsessively buy more petrol and drive on.
Marfa has revitalized its economy by attracting artists to live and work
out here in the middle of the desert. We
see a lot of desperate rural poverty on this trip; it’s good to see a small
town doing well.
We arrive at our
hotel around 3PM, the only early day we’ve ever had. Some confusion arises around our
reservation. We finally learn that
Bloodroot made the reservation in his name.
As a family of this century, none of us has the same last name.
After check-in, we
have three hours of daylight. “Let’s
go!” says Pearl as we head out to Big Bend National Park. This afternoon we cruise down the Ross
Maxwell Scenic Drive taking us past desert vistas and tall mountains devoid of
green.
We stop first at
the Tuff Canyon. Bloodroot charges off down the trail into the gulch. Keith follows him down into the canyon at a
bit more leisurely pace. I drive Sven in
circles above them, contenting myself with wildflowers – lupines
everywhere. Scanning the scenery, I
begin to think.
As the eternal
student of languages I never master[1],
I note that English has two identical words for elevated flat land forms –
butte (mound) from the French and mesa (table) from the Spanish. English, the eternal amoeba, grows by absorbing
all other language words, even carefully whispered ones you think that she doesn’t
hear.
My mind wanders
back to the Norman Conquest (1066), a time where one would expect the language
of the victorious French to replace Old Norse/Germanic English. Au contraire, English expanded to include the
new words brought by the Normans, leaving us Anglophones with two words for
most things. You can come (German kommen)
or arrive (French arrive). The French word generally a bit more high-faluting,
our language eternally reminds us of who conquered whom all of those years
ago. Bloodroot posits, “Mom, you’re
lending credence to my theory that European languages are really all just
elaborate hoaxes.”
The boys return,
interrupting my musings. We climb back into Pearl, Bloodroot scurrying to the
Castolon Visitor Center to collect the all-important national park stamp. He then spends ten minutes perfectly parking
Pearl, during which time the visitor center closes. No stamps today.
After shedding a
few tears of disappointment for the missing stamps, we venture on out to the
Santa Elena Canyon down by the Rio Grande, where we discover an entirely
different world. Limestone cliffs rise
1500 feet above the river. The river’s
water feeds trees and vegetation producing greenery rare for this area. Across the river, the mesas join together
leaving a small passageway, inviting, but unfortunately in Mexico.
On the Santa Elena
Trail, the boys hop across the Terlingua creek and begin walking along the Rio
Grande. They hike up a narrow canyon, watching
the river recede as they climb. Reaching
the top of the switchbacks, the boys look north to the Chisos Mountains and
south into Mexico, only a few hundred feet away. They walk until dusk descends
in the canyon, snapping photos of the moon on their return trip.
Meanwhile, I motor
towards the river for a better look.
Sven quickly raises concerns about the sand, fearing that we will spin
ourselves into a hole like Rumpelstiltskin, perhaps emerging in China. Listening to reason (for once), I return to
the picnic table, look out over the river toward the tall cliffs of Mexico, and
read my Taos book about Kit Carson.
As the day ends,
we drive back out of the park to our hotel in Terlingua, Texas. When we made our reservations last fall, the
hotel staff measured the door to make certain that Sven would fit into the
room, calling us back with the results. Sven
would fit.
In reality, the
sidewalk and door frame aren’t really wheelchair accessible. Each time I enter, I take a running start
from the parking lot to bump up over the sidewalk curb and the lintel of the
door frame. Sven often gets stuck. The boys will then provide a power assist for
his motor, pushing us into the hotel room.
Our room has no
cooking facilities but we do have a picnic table outside on the sidewalk. We set up our new stove, chop vegetables, and
prepare a wonderful steak stir-fry. The
hotel dogs begin circling us warily. We
befriend them by feeding them beef scraps.
They love us.
After dinner, Bloodroot
is still hungry. He walks over to the
hotel’s bar/restaurant seeking ice cream.
A server takes one look at him, sees a starving child needing feeding,
and promptly dishes up five scoops of ice cream, which he devours. We all wish for Bloodroot’s metabolism. She refuses payment.
[1]
Not for a lack of interest. No employer
ever considered me cool enough for an overseas job assignment.
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