Excitement levels returned to astronomical levels shortly after due to my very first real life tumble weed sighting. It’s the perfect word..tumble. That’s precisely what they do. Up and down they flow along the rolling hills like a skiff on the waves. From the drivers seat, they appear cartoonish. Most likely because that’s the only place I’ve had experience with them; on Saturday mornings in Yosemite Sam cartoons. It may seem mundane, but it’s another new experience added to the list. Their novelty wears thin however, after a fourth one bounces off the hood of the jeep. They quickly become a nuisance and I grow tired of them. Fifteen minuets later the excitement returns in full force after I see a real good one…
I make a short stop at the McDonald Observatory. While the surrounding landscape is beautiful, the observatory itself is basically a kids museum featuring outer space and broken exhibits. The scene strikes me as strangely appropriate. The stars are the limit but the budget is the reality. It really is comical. I need not exaggerate. Film strips zip along on rickety projectors. Stress cracks are clearly visible in the screen. Buttons and levers are broken or missing all together. “At least they’re trying!” I think, “But sometimes supply exceeds demand.”
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| Hilltop McDonald Observatory |
I cook a dinner of chicken and rice at a rest stop and study the map. I look to the horizon in a direction I believe to be west and the mountains that separate land from sky. “That’s the Guadalupe mountains right there. I’m getting close.” I look back to the map which names several other mountain ranges in the area. The Baylor Mountains, the Delaware Mountains. I realize I have no idea which ones I'm looking at and wonder who decides where one range ends and another begins. Places on a map are so well defined. Packaged up inside visible lines and established borders. The ending of THIS place, the beginning of THAT place. In real life it’s a gradual change like the seasons, where one slowly melts into the next. A change is only apparent after the fact. The place you are now looks and feels different than the place you used to be but the actual border was probably crossed a long time ago. No use wasting time going back looking for it now, you’ve been there already. Better to explore this new place, where you are now. Borders are imaginary anyway and in nearly all cases, arbitrary….geographically speaking.
I have this experience the following morning as what MUST be the Guadalupe Mountains climbs out of the horizon in front of me. Nothing but a strip of asphalt and endless desert in my rearview. No borders in sight, but I’m definitely somewhere new. I can see El Capitan in the distance. The world’s largest marine fossil reef. Millions of years ago this whole area was a tropical sea. Slowly the water evaporated leaving the reef free to be covered by sediment. Eventually intense pressure and erosion uncovered the reef and forced it back to the earth’s surface leaving the massive rock formation that dominates the landscape. From here it’s all sharp corners and jagged edges but the sides look flat and smooth as if it’s growing straight up out of the desert floor.
The visitors center is nestled in the foothills with the actual mountains as a not too distant backdrop. I’ve already been spoiled by the enormity of Big Bend. This park appears tiny to me but beautiful nonetheless. I spend the rest of the day wandering the trails through the foothills. The Pinery Trail takes me past the remnants of a stone wall that once was part of the Butterfield Stage Stop. The Butterfield Overland Mail route predates the pony express and could get your letter from San Francisco to St. Louis in a short 25 days. No internet? No texting? And people survived? Oh the horror!
The one and only campground around is in the park and only 8 bucks a night. Sounds pretty sweet but upon closer inspection your 8 dollars gets you a concrete slab to pitch your tent on and a concrete picnic table. In this wind the table would only serve as a platform for your belongings to blow away from so I opt to save my 8 bucks and crash at the rest stop up the road. The rest stop building helps in abating some of the wind and each picnic table here has a light and it’s own wind break making cooking dinner here very agreeable. The sky darkens to purple across the highway as I take a few more steps toward perfecting sleeping in the jeep.
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| View from my dinner table |
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