My elation is stymied the next morning. My back is worse than ever. I manage to pull myself out of my tent but when I kneel back down to roll up my sleeping bag my body won’t cooperate. I just can't do it. Physical collapse leads to mental and eventually emotional collapse. I curse my body for failing me again. A string a expletives that would make a hangman blush streams passed my lips and into the still desert air. I bloody my knuckles pummeling the ground and weep like a child, like a little girl suffering her first bee sting. Inconsolable wailing. Not so much from the pain, but from the doubt the pain conjures up. “Maybe I can’t do this”, I think. “Maybe I’m too old and fragile already. I’ll have to move back in with my parents, forget about my odyssey, and indefinitely remain an aggressively mediocre nothing.” Drama queen tantrum in full swing now, I scream, “What the FUCK!? I don’t ask for much, so why!? huh? Why can’t I have a body that works!? FUCK YOU, YOU PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT!” I kneel there, with my forehead on the ground and my ass in the air and just cry. Defeat, complete and devastating. The lowest of the low. Eventually, it subsides,I tell myself to quit being such a fucking pussy and pull my shit together. It takes me hours to break camp and when I finally do, I head right back to the hot springs to soak.
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| Hot Springs Trail |
Again, the back and forth hot and cold loosens up my back and while I still can, I hike the 1.4 mile loop that runs right past the spring. It leads up a ridge and over looks the Rio Grande and the hot spring itself. Flaky limestone and sad little cacti hug the ground making the most of what little resources are available in the desert. I can see for miles over the barren hills of Mexico’s borderlands. Hiking, being upright, my back can handle. It even seems to alleviate some of the tension there so I hurry over to hike the Boquillas Canyon before it seizes up again.
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| Hot Springs Trail |
Along the way, I notice how prevalent a presence the border patrol has. They are everywhere. In SUVs that appear to be cop cars when they appear in my rearview, but the thick green stripe along the side gives them away when they speed around me. I will continue to see a lot of them as the days pass.
Boquillas Canyon is on the eastern most side of the park and when I arrive at the trailhead, it’s the windiest day in the history of humanity. I’m able to hike a mile or so into the canyon, and it is impressive. It’s insane what a little water and a few billion years can do. As magnificent as the canyon is, it’s difficult to fully appreciate in this wind. I try to venture deeper into the canyon, but I’m constantly forced to stop by the sandstorm building all around me. I turn to face down wind so I take the brunt of the gusts in the back. So strong is the wind that it rips my sunglasses clean off my face and I have to chase them toward the water. The backs of my legs sting as sand is pelted against them, so hard that it makes me wince. I recover my sunglasses and escape the canyon with only minor abrasions and surface wounds.
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| Boquillas Canyon |
En route to the trailhead I step over a rock, scrawled across it in permanent marker are the words “Donations for the Singing Mexican Jesus.” The savior is nowhere to be found; singing, Mexican or otherwise. I’m later informed that the wind was due in large part to a cold front coming through the park. “Well god damn, that cold front had a middle and a back end too!” My campsite for the night, Terlingua Abajo, is clear across the park and I point the jeep in that direction with the hope of arriving before dark.
The sun is setting as I take the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. A 30 mile winding road through the desert at the west end of the park. Up and around buttes and mesas, down and through valleys and floodplains. Behind the black silhouette of the landscape, the sky slowly fades from yellow to pink to red to an electric purple. I feel more cowboy than ever, riding off into the sunset.
Camp tonight is a third of the ways down a 16 mile dirt road. It’s dark when I arrive and as windy as ever. Pitching my tent solo, in hurricane force winds is not my forte and I resign myself to sleeping in the jeep.
The next morning, surprisingly refreshed and well rested for a night spent in a car, I cruise the the remainder of the 16 mile dirt track, out of the park and into the small town of Terlingua. They call it a ghost town, but it’s had a revival of sorts as of late. All sorts of hippies, outcasts and degenerates have descended upon it to give it the feeling of a commune. A sense of apart-ness, shielded from the rigors of a world that seems so far off the very idea of it fades away into the ether.
I stop for lunch at the Starlight Theater. Back in Terlingua’s heyday, the Starlight was the social hub of the town. Plays were preformed, dances were held, and bands played all without a roof on the place, hence the Starlight Theater. It’s been renovated, roofed, and turned into a restaurant and bar. I grab a stool and order a burger and a beer. They have Big Bend brand beer on tap, and while the golden ale I try isn’t bad, it’s hardly worth the four dollars they charge for it. I think the ambiance is factored into the price. An empty stage looms against the back wall of the place. A lone cowboy strums an acoustic guitar amidst the tables full of patrons. Between songs he takes deep pulls from a still-frosty pint glass filled with amber liquid. Eventually, he informs the crowd he’ll be taking a short break. His breaks are impeccably timed to coincide with the emptying of his pint glass, I don’t think this is a coincidence.
He parks his ample frame on the bar stool next to me and sets his empty glass on the bar. No words are exchanged between him and the bartender as she grabs and refills his pint suggesting a familiarity he has with the establishment. He tips his now full glass at the bartender, takes another long slug and asks me how I’m doing. My burger arrives right on cue, with wide eyes and high eyebrows I reply, “very well”, as I pull the plate to me. “And you?”
“Just livin’ life man, disappearing in my little corner of the world you know? Ahh, you don’t know, you still got one of those things,” he says, referring to my iPod.
“Yeah, it remembers things for me.” We shoot the shit for a few minuets, I with my burger, he with his beer, until he excuses himself to reclaim his guitar and fill the place once again with a mellow sound and relaxed air of a small town where deadlines need not be met and schedules need not be kept.
While I finish my lunch, I eavesdrop on conversations and learn that theres a birthday party tonight for one of the waitresses. Everyone, seems to know everyone else. Both a blessing and a curse of a small town, depending on your proclivities. I thank the bartender and wander outside.
They call Terlingua a historic ghost town, and I can see why. Outside of the Starlight and the shop next door selling an ungodly amount of tourist crap, everything is either shut down or boarded up. Shutters hang limply from windows, whose glass is cracked, broken, or missing all together. The doors that aren't rotted through are padlocked and shut tight. The whole place has a slightly creepy vibe, but this is the sort of thing I’ve hit the road to see. Backwoods, out of the way places that you don’t hear about on the news. Hidden gems found on accident that lead to experiences that could never be planned.
On the porch of an abandoned building theres a couch with a trunk in front of it, like a coffee table. I flop down onto the sofa, put my feet up and take in the view. Dusty scrubland backed by the faint shadow of mountains. The overcast sky adds to the feeling of being in the opening scenes of a teenage slasher film. Stranded in the middle of nowhere in a small, scarcely populated town. Fortunately, the locals seem welcoming to outsiders, but I still wont be investigating any bumps in the night in the company of any bosomy blondes.
My trip is barley a week old, but it’s already brewing up thoughts of the “why’d you wait so long to do this?” and the “why wait to make yourself happy?” variety. The freedom is intoxicating. I could sit on this couch for the next 3 hours if I choose to, or I could get in the jeep and drive all night to a new place I’ve never been before...
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