Far West Texas

Last time I’d mended fences in Far West Texas was December 2015. Figurative fences, that is. Giddings taught me that concept, the one of going to check in on old relationships so that you don’t become a stranger to people or places. It’s paid off hugely for him. He’s a professional fence mender, always welcome anywhere he goes for the effort of keeping in touch. Ingratiating yourself with good humor and old stories and a 6-pack goes a long way in this life. Not only is it a skill but the established good will can be passed on to your offspring, as is my case out in the desert. If it’s not my own relationship then I often introduce myself as Giddings’ daughter and doors and arms open for me.

I knew I needed to go to my heart’s homeland before my next baby came and I enter the mother cave for the foreseeable future. I wanted to take Danny and Felix but those long drives would be too much for a toddler so instead I asked my best friend, Rachel, to go with me. Our friendship was born out there in Marfa. People around town preordained our friendship before we even met, sure the two of us would be a good match. They weren’t wrong. The origin is sort of blurry except for a clear memory of the two of us standing beneath a zillion stars whispering secrets to each other the very night before she left Marfa behind for bigger things. We reunited soon after in New York City, fledgling hustlers, and even now I can’t tell you a moment that solidified us as best friends except that we’ve just always been extremely honest and encouraging with each other which has amounted to more than a friendship. It’s a sisterhood.

I landed in El Paso and rented a smart little sky blue Volvo XC40 and began the trek into big sky country. I usually drive around with a toddler in the backseat asking incessant questions and so a simple thing like loud music on a long drive put me in a good place from the start. I’d been warned that the area hadn’t seen rain in a long time, that the Rio Grande was merely a series of puddles, and so I kept my expectations low for beautiful clouds and thunderheads. When I turned off I-10 and onto highway 90 in Van Horn I spied dark skies down the road. And then, about 20 miles from Valentine, the rain came. Rain on the road and rain in the distance, the sky big enough to show me multiple storm systems. I pulled over to take pictures and the smell of creosote hit me like an emotional rogue wave. The leaves of the creosote bush, a hardy, water-greedy desert plant, contain a waxy resin that perfume the air when they’re wet. Growing up I thought that was just what rain in the atmosphere smelled like, not knowing it was the plant and water in tandem. Being awash in it again after nearly 10 years made me weep, a core facet of self bubbling out of my eyes in pure joy. There is nothing like rain in the desert. I drove on to Marfa, checked into the historic Hotel Paisano, and took a sweet little nap while I waited on Rachel to come through the door.

In she came, all love and road weariness and excitement. Our Texas accents immediately began flowing. We sat in the courtyard and ordered margaritas and the first of many a chip and salsa. Then on to a very Marfa dinner down the road consisting of too cute little plates of food like pink deviled eggs and hot olives. In no time I was spilling every single one of my guts to her like she was the Texan wailing wall. It’s important to have somebody you can spill your guts to, at least it is to me. I can tell her literally anything and she is unfazed, so long as I’m ready to hear her opinion of it. We walked around town as much as my 7-month pregnant belly would allow, and noted all the changes since we lived there. In bed that night we argued about where farts belong when you’re sharing the sheets (I say under the covers so long as your ass is facing away from your bed partner, she says out of the covers, always). I slept a blissful, uninterrupted 8 hours that night.

The next day we loaded up on snacks and made our way north to Ft. Davis and onto Balmorhea, but not before stopping in on Rachel’s friend Johnny Williams and his firecracker wife, Mary. Johnny is a fellow in his 90s who used to work for the border patrol and flies planes and whose living room has an unimpeded view of the David Mountains. Rachel’s got such a close relationship with him and Mary that she can walk right into his back door and he greets her with a big laugh and a hug despite being caught in his underwear. Thus began many a running into of old-timers who are full of succinct, perfect Texan bullshit quips and a big ol’ smile to go along with it. The same thing happened moments later at the Ft. Davis general store where Rachel ran into Roseland Klein, a kind old woman who used to run the classical music hour at Marfa Public Radio. Roseland had just come from yoga and proudly boasted of being 95 years old and still able to do a headstand. Rachel later told me that Roseland once told her that the secret to a long life is a daily glass of champagne. On we drove through Wild Rose Pass with all of its red rock turrets and vibrant green cottonwoods and into the flat desert plain of Toyahvale, Texas, home to Balmorhea State Park, the most magical swimming pool in the country. Growing up, my family made annual summer trips to Balmorhea. Giddings taught us to swim there. My brothers caught minnows and turtles and lizards there, they did their first high-dive jump there. I used to make a point of bringing my college boyfriends there to blow their minds. A veritable oasis, the pool is 1.3 acres large and 30 feet deep. The water that feeds it is from San Solomon spring and is an unchanging 72 degrees year round. We picked out a picnic table beneath a Velvet Ash buzzing with cicadas and thirsty bees and went about the important business of sizzling in the sun and cooling off in the water on repeat.

It's the dichotomy, I think, that makes Balmorhea so special. Outside the pool fence is barren land and arid winds. Within the fence is life – the screams of children, the whoops of teenagers, the camaraderie of Texans who’ve trekked long miles to cool off together, the blue-greenness of the animal-filled water, the catfish and minnows and turtles and barn swallows and bats and insects and human beings all mixed in the same space. It’s the Texan version of a Saharan watering hole where you see elephants alongside lions alongside gazelle, all desperate for a drink. Slowly paddling around, I let my unborn son know what a gift this was, for me and him to be there together at this moment, and I made a promise to myself in those waters that my boys will know this pool and understand it’s magic the same way it was gifted to me by my parents.

On the way back to Marfa we blew out the speakers in the car playing Dolly Parton too loud. “Scream singing”, Rachel called it. Back in town with fresh sunburns and dressed in our Marfa finest, we met up with a few folks – a force of a woman named Natalie who moved into town right when Rachel and I left and with whom Rachel shares a very special and recently deceased ex-boyfriend, David Tompkins. David died in a flash flood in town a few years ago. No shit. A flood in the desert. Such an extreme way to go in such an extreme place, a story that no doubt carries its own mythology and is terrible and also somehow beautiful in the legacy that is David. We also happened to be there on his death anniversary. My oldest friend Molly Walker’s youngest brother, Travis, joined up with us briefly, all handsome and grizzly and sun weary after his day working at a local ranch. More familiar faces joined us. After dinner we went to a local bar I remember being drunk at in my 20s and I wished to be drunk there again.

In the morning we separated. Rachel went to see Johnny and I had breakfast at the local coffee shop, running into yet another old friend, Ari, who is also pregnant. We pressed our bellies together and I’ve gotta say, even with how brief all these interactions were, with all of these old friends there is a love because there is a history, and I was surprised with just how comfortable I felt being in Marfa. I thought I’d be less confident, maybe an echo of my 25-year-old self, but I felt right at home because in so many ways I was home. 10, 15 years can pass between seeing a friend in the desert and you’re still going to kiss each other’s cheeks all the same.

We pressed on to Alpine. I took Rachel to the mountain behind the university to meet Hiram Sibley, he of the bona fide Texan Sibley royalty and father to children I grew up with. Before we knew it, we were being offered cannabis soda and swept away on an ATV for a tour of one of the most interesting homes in west Texas, a multi-domed wonderland in the round that, as a kid, I always thought was the epitome of wealth. Hiram talks really fast, frequently breaking into Spanish, and had a story for nearly every beam and brick in the place. I’m not sure we came away retaining most of what he told us, apart from a tale of a treacherous plane ride over Copper Canyon and an offhanded remark that Giddings Brown was famous for having “the only successful ménage à trois in west Texas”. Dehydrated and talked to death by Hiram, me and Rachel experienced our first bout of tension which was solely due to the condition of our bodies needing food and water asap. It would be the first but not last reminder of how deceptive the dry heat can be. You think you’re fine until you really are not. A pitcher of ice water and two Caesar salads later and we were back in good spirits, heading east down highway 90 towards Marathon.

I used to drive this stretch of highway 90 daily back when I was 18. I dropped out of college and moved to Marathon to intern for the photographer James Evans. I was also boy crazy and the only boys worth being crazy for lived in Alpine, so every night I drove the 30 miles to Alpine to avail myself of a young man who played the drums in the local rock band and then drove back to Marathon each dawn to work the breakfast shift at the Gage Hotel. Here I was again, flooded with memories, and trying my best to bite my tongue knowing I was inundating Rachel now with too many stories. We both noticed how much greener the landscape was as we came into Marathon, which apparently was not suffering the same drought conditions as the rest of the region. We checked into the Gage, an iconic, upscale cowboy hotel flush with leather hide and cow skulls everywhere. Giddings ran the hotel in the late 80s (this is also the site of his “successful” ménage à trois, meaning he was in a throuple with two women who I now consider aunts, though I think the term “successful” is a stretch because now I know the arrangement was really only beneficial to Giddings. The women merely tolerated each other because they loved him). I’d never spent the night at the hotel. Our room was plush and air-conditioned. I freshened up and met Rachel at the bar, then we drove to dinner at the home of James Evans and his wife Marci.

It's sort of hard to put into words who James is to me. I’ve known him since I was five but we didn’t form a relationship until I was 18 when I moved to the middle of nowhere to learn photography from him. That summer he had just released his book Big Bend. I came home after my first year at college directionless and with a .48 GPA. His book was sitting on our coffee table and I remember being transported by it. “I want to do that”, I thought. So, I wrote to him and he said “come on out!”, warning me my apprenticeship would be unpaid and he expected me to take it seriously. Long story short, he fired me after a few months. Serious about boys and rock n’ roll and drug experimentation I was. Serious about sanding the floors of his new studio and framing his prints I was not. Years later, when I got serious about photography, our relationship took off again, this time as mentor/mentee, though I think we also straddle the familial.

His new home was designed by his beautiful wife, Marci, and sits on the very edge of town looking north to the Glass Mountains. It’s an exceptional space. We sat on their porch and ate a chicken dinner James cooked us. I was so happy to see him. I loved bragging on Rachel and her brilliant career as much as I loved watching her seamlessly engage with people new to her. It’s a gift of hers, the immediate way she can relax a room with an effortless joke and an easy smile. Plus she looked like a gazillion pesos in her turquoise dress and Justin boots and red lips. The sun was setting and James was attempting to ask me questions about my life but I could see his eyes were distracted. Finally, he admitted “I’m sorry, but the light is so great on the mountains!”. Spoken like a true photographer. The time was nigh for us to break out our cameras and all the small talk and chicken dinners in the world could not replace the accelerated heart rate between me and James nerding out about our cameras and the beautiful evening light we were so desperate to catch with them. He hopped into his pickup to go grab strobes from his studio and before I knew it, I was James’ subject, me and my pregnancy and the Glass Mountains, and I loved every second of it. At some point a friend of James’ showed up and James introduced me as his daughter, which the friend accepted as fact and nobody corrected. It was very sweet. Before we left that night we had all posed for each other. I was feeling a love so big in my heart and renewed inspiration to always take pictures. James is 70, but he’s got the spritely humor of a mid-twenties Puck, and when he has a camera in his hands his whole body bends and twists like it exists solely in service of making the best photograph. I love him entirely.

Me and Rachel spent that night and the next morning splayed on our king-sized bed, trading stories about how we grew up and the people we loved and lost and the defining moments of our lives that changed their trajectories for the better. Our lives could be books, I think.

We checked out of the Gage (but not before I signed the guestbook “Hope Dickens, daughter of the legendary Giddings Brown”), stocked up on coffee, water and sandwiches, and started the drive to Big Bend National Park. Right as we turned south, I spotted a bright red stripe across the asphalt and swerved so swiftly that I nearly flipped our car. After a few adrenaline-fueled catching of breaths, Rachel forgave me for nearly killing us to save the snake (a red racer, pretty sure) but insisted I not do it again.

There’s a surprising majesty that overwhelms you as you get closer to the park. The Chisos mountains loom in the distance like a mirage against an impossibly big sky, and then before you know it you’re in them, prehistoric earthquake upheavals demanding attention in every direction. It’s a good thing the speed limit is set at 45, one is liable to roll off the road gawking at the landscape. We pulled off the road a few times to take photos, each time only spending a few minutes outside the safety of the air-conditioned car as the outside temperature climbed well past 100 degrees. In the basin of the Chisos we attempted a quarter-mile hike but turned back less than halfway because the heat was so intense.

The heat makes you want to give up, which I was ready to do. Ready to call it a day and retreat to our waiting hotel room in Terlingua. But Rachel had never seen Santa Elena canyon and urged us to go, and me, a tour guide at heart, knew I couldn’t abide not indulging her one of the borderlands greatest natural wonders. We descended from the juniper and agave-filled mountain and snaked our way through the lowlands. It’s like Mars. Strange formations jut out of the scorched earth in every color of dust imaginable. We made it to the parking lot that sits just in front of the mouth of the mighty canyon. The temperature gauge on the car read 121 degrees. We’d come this far, we needed to see the canyon on the other side of the bamboo stands, so we steeled ourselves for the wave of heat and dashed out of the car. Rachel briefly squatted to pee and then we walked all of two minutes to view the canyon opening. Even in that two minutes I could feel the skin on the top of my feet burning. We turned back and speedwalked to the car, noticing that the pee had evaporated in the elapsed minutes.

Finally, the heat took a toll. My body wanted to shut down, just go to sleep. Certainly, the added furnace cooking up a baby within me wasn’t helping things. I’ve never experienced heat like that. I can’t imagine any living thing being stuck in it. As we drove to Terlingua all I could think of was the thinness of metal and glass separating us from being baked alive. I put all my faith into that thinness and chewed gum to keep from falling asleep and steered us to Terlingua.

We rented a room at La Posada de Milagro, a rock compound in the Terlingua ghost town owned by Mimi Webb Miller, rancher and former girlfriend of Pablo Acosta, aka the Ojinaga Fox, the most famous drug smuggler in the region. Finally, a chance to rest. I slept in the bed and Rachel drank a beer in the clawfoot tub and snoozed there. Later, we dolled ourselves up and wandered over to the Startlight Theater for dinner. Memories abound here. As an adolescent, I used to crush on the owner’s husband, a mustachioed man who looked like a white-haired Clark Gable. My parents took me to the Starlight for my 14th birthday dinner and afterwards Giddings asked me to walk with him. In the parking lot, he admonished me for the hicky I was desperately trying to conceal on my neck with makeup. “Don’t let them brand you, honey” I remember him saying. I once saw Giddings put a live white scorpion in his mouth on the porch of the Starlight. I drank margaritas with my future husband there, just before we made love on the altar of the adobe church up the road.

Even though it was evening, the wind still blew an uncomfortable 90 plus degrees outside, and the inside of the Starlight offered little relief. The servers were dripping sweat but they and the patrons didn’t seem bothered much by the barely-functioning AC. Rachel and I ordered cheeseburgers then turned our attention to the local fellas taking the stage to croon covers of Townes and Willie. One of them was a willowy string bean of a man, tanned and greying and handsome. In another life, I thought, I’d be living down here, hair long, tan, childless, sipping a beer at the bar and clapping for my warbling cowboy. Then they started singing “Till I Gain Control Again” and all of a sudden I was weeping, totally unable to gain my composure. Rachel seemed delighted at the abrupt display of emotion and, somehow, losing my shit in front of her felt really good. I didn’t even know why I was crying except that it just felt so right to be home. I managed to stammer “I’ve been gone too long” and dried my tears on the paper napkins. We wandered the ghost town for a few windy minutes after dinner, threw some rocks down the old quicksilver mine shafts, and called it a night.

We woke on our last day to a breakfast at Mimi’s little restaurant attached to the hotel. My plate had refried beans so lard-filled they were the lightest of browns. We also ordered mango and chamoy smoothies, a vibrant orange-yellow against a fiery pepper red. On our way out of town we stopped at the Terlingua cemetery, one of the stranger burial grounds in the country, where the soil is too rocky to put bodies in the earth so they lay underneath heaps of sun baked stones. The graves are typically marked by makeshift crosses made of weather-beaten, nailed together crosses and then anything the living bring to the gravesites to commemorate their dead – beer bottles, rafting oars, ceramic chickens, plastic angels. I saw a few names I recognized, friends of Giddings, including the grave of David Tinsley, one of Giddings’ best friends who died in a head-on collision not so long ago because he broke his own rules (no drinking and driving, no smoking pot and driving, no driving at night). (He’d apparently violated all three).

We drove the loop along river road which hugs the Rio Grande. At the top of the tallest hill, we pulled over to peer down at the river which is all but gone. On the drive to Marfa we revealed some insecurities to each other, mature acknowledgements of our faults that I think can only be spoken of so clearly because we’ve been to therapy and done the work.

My final hours in Marfa were spent at an old friend, Yoseff’s, house. Yoseff is one of the people I met in Marfa when I was 26. He was an art intern, too, except he ended up making Marfa his permanent home and is now expecting a child there. He put together a beautiful Mediterranean feast. Faces familiar and new showed up for a meal full of old stories and laughter. Again, my cup was filled. Again, I promised myself and others I wouldn’t stay away another 10 years.

Rachel and I parted ways with a few kisses on the lips and a layered, needlessly unspoken solidarity. More is said through the grasping of each other’s shoulders and the long look in the eyes that says something like “I see you. I know you. Don’t forget it.” We’d really been through something, riding around that desert together, being in that heat together. Our sisterhood runs deep and now it’s even deeper. She is my ride or die.

On my caffeine-fueled drive back to El Paso I remembered to gather branches of creosote which now hang in my shower, filling the steam with the aroma of desert rain. I made it home the next day, the windows down as I pulled off the highway to Woodstock, the breeze a cool 72 degrees and the landscape a lush green. In that moment I felt so much gratitude, both for the temperate, verdant forest that is my home and for the expansive desert that is my heart.

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