The Other Side of the Desert

From Van Horn, Texas, there’s a straight road heading west, called Interstate 10, and no other road, except in some places, a frontage road along it.  As I rode the frontage, many big rigs passed me on the main highway to my left.  This one, like several others, honked as he passed, and I raised my hand to him, thankful for a little human interaction.

Sierra Blanca is mostly boarded up or falling down.  It’s not the strong community it was when Tom Ellison went to war and returned a hero.  At age eighty-eight, he still opens the big sliding door to his mechanic shop, but doesn’t get much business anymore.  He cuts and polishes rocks for sale there too, and both of his wives wore his jewelry on the ears, their pictures prominently displayed.  His most recent wife died in February, and Tom mopes around the shop, happy for a listening ear, someone whose father made tools like these, and who grew up watching people come with broken things. 

It’s not uncommon to see a holstered handgun in rural Texas, mostly worn by Border Patrol, but also by most anyone.  “The reason al qaeda won’t attack this country is because citizens arm themselves.  We do it legally when we can.”  And then he asked if I carry a gun.  

I left Sierra Blanca, riding past this old house in early light.  Something about it speaks of old ideas about land and habitation, of using local rock, topped with store-bought lumber, keeping warm, and cool, and enjoying the hills and the sunset.  

my shadow

in the morning

I follow it home

it reaches ahead

tugging  

I set out with some fear back in Del Rio when I started onto the west Texas desert, into its vast windy interior, from the place where I gave up last summer.  And today I came to its edge.  In this hazy view, you see the valley of the Rio Grande River, and Mexico beyond.  From here I dropped a thousand feet into farmland, a world apart from the high desert I’d been pedaling for the past ten days.  The monster that defeated me last year is conquered.  

I rode within a mile of the river, and never saw it.  These farms with their families living within sight of Mexico are turning ground, planting cotton, filling their irrigation ditches with water from the Rio Grande.  

the wind is my horse today

he runs through the sky

and over the sand

all the way to the edge

of the great desert.