Border Crossings

It was a calm morning with a comforting primordial smell.  The few lights of Langtry diminished in the tiny mirror attached to my glasses as I rode west in darkness.  The moonless sky glittered with tiny lights in the otherwise absence of light, except for my headlight glowing on the pavement ahead and my flashing red light warning drivers approaching behind.  But there were few drivers, and most of them in big trucks, the most courteous I’ve found.  Within an hour, the great light began its glow behind me, and I turned back often to bathe in it. 

     at the top

     of the hill

     stopping to gaze back

     behind me

     the day's ride

            poem by Benita Kape on facebook—tanka poets on site

Along the sixty miles that I pedaled to Sanderson, stands hardly a structure—a few distant ranch buildings, a few windmills, and a tiny store in a place they call a town, Dryden.  Most of what I saw is typified in these two pictures.  On the left is what drivers see; on the right is the way it looks when I lay the bike down for a rest. 

These vultures may have
crossed the nearby border
with Mexico.  Their passports? -
Wild Innocence

An advantage of riding slowly on the shoulder is that I sometimes catch a glimpse that drivers miss.  So it was that under a mesquite tree, this lovely flowering cactus.  Of course, drivers see the vultures eating last night’s rabbit-kill, but the birds are gone before they can get a picture. 

Art by Gary Blankenship

I feel as if floating through Texas in a blur of imaginary things that are floating past me.  The miles roll on into the hot afternoon; mind drains to feed the legs.  Thoughts turn to images as I drink water, happy to have its life-sustaining flow. 

Danny, Manager of Budget Inn

Sanderson arrived at about four in the afternoon to a cowgirl on a tired horse.  I didn’t come with high hopes for a good night, after the marginal motels in Comstock and Langtry—Comstock did not have running water, and Langtry was just dirty.  I rode to the Budget Inn, and there standing in yard, I met Danny, the manager.  He showed me a room that had everything that matters—wifi, non-smoking room, air conditioning, ensuite bath, and running water.  The price was so low and I was so tired that I took it for two nights.  

Danny said there is only one tiny store in Sanderson, and that the only restaurant is seldom open.  Since the store was over a mile away and hard to find, he said he would drive me there.  He talked as he drove, of this little desert town, said that most businesses have closed.  “I am vegetarian,” he said in a heavy accent, “My mother and I order our Indian food mostly through the mail.”  I told him that I love Indian food, the spicier the better.  After some conversation, he asked if I’d like to join them for dinner.  One thing about the work of turning pedals all day it that you do get hungry, and it didn’t take me long to say yes.  But what he meant was that he would bring his mother’s home cooked Indian food to my room.  The food was good, andI thanked him profusely when he came back to get the dishes.

Danny is not a Texan in the usual way, not a beefeater or smoker, does not pack as far as I know, and has no drawl.  But his Texas hospitality is unsurpassed.  It is morning now, and he knocked on my door to ask if I would like some Indian Breakfast.

I have been riding near the Mexican border for three days now, and some thoughts come to mind about border crossings.  The vultures I saw yesterday may have crossed the border, and Danny surely crossed borders in coming here.  Plant seeds blow from one side to the other.  Clouds and butterflies fly back and forth.  All have something to declare, and what they bring might not be duty-free.  Nothing respects borders except us.  International boundary and cultural boundary, a boundary between earth and self.  Maybe the erasure of a boundary, of distinction, comes about in the way the distinction between prose and haiku is erased in haibun.

Rio Grande River

the boundary

bound to my side

and yours

bound for the ocean

If you followed me last year from Florida to Del Rio, Texas, you probably remember the map prepared by Michael Angerman.  He plotted my course each day as I rode.  And he is doing it again this time.  You can zoom and pan on his map and see where I have been and what is near me.   http://goo.gl/maps/e2fS5