Desert Vibes: Walkabouts and Wanderlust
Welcome to Presidio, Texas. Where, you ask? It’s a small border town–the only border crossing for hundreds of miles between El Paso and Del Rio. The temperature today is a cool 82 degrees Fahrenheit, the skies are blue, the sun is bright, and the humidity is low.
If you think this part of Texas is barren, you might be surprised at how much you can see and do. You can check out the art scene in Alpine or hike a canyon trail in the Big Bend state or federal park. You can visit the McDonald Observatory and drive through the Davis Mountains. Or, if you’d rather go east, take a scenic drive down Highway 170 towards Terlingua. Be sure to stop in Lajitas where the mayor is always eager to see you–pay no heed to the fact that he’s a goat.
I, however, spend most of my days at the RV park. It’s a nice place filled with nice people. I peck away at my stories and work on new marketing plans for my novel Evolving Elizah: Initiatum. I walk with Crash on desert trails, and some days I ride my bike to a nearby wetland to watch the sun go down. I’m not entirely sure if it’s birds or angels singing and dancing across the golden water, but I’m pretty sure it’s angels.
Instead of going and doing, I choose to be at peace, and it’s easy enough to find. I hear it in the melody of the mourning doves, and I feel it in the desert breeze that blows blissfully across my sun-warmed face. I see it in Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper, and Cassiopeia as I study the night sky, wrapped in a cloak of darkness that hides all I am and all I’ll never be.
Most days, it’s enough for me. But occasionally I feel the need to go and do, to overwrite old memories with new ones. You see, I’ve been here before. I have clear memories of this place, even though nearly four decades have passed.
I was about seven when my family traveled from Odessa to camp at Big Bend. We had a solid history of miserable family vacations, and in that sense, our visit to Big Bend was typical. What made this trip different is that we weren’t alone–my paternal grandma and her husband Frank flew out to Odessa from San Francisco to go with us.
Six of us squeezed into dad’s company car–a gold Chevrolet Caprice Classic. Mom, grandma, and my sister rode in the back seat. As the smallest and youngest person, I had a dubious seat of honor in the front, wedged between dad and Frank.
I imagine that car ride is the closest I will come to knowing how an ant feels, just before combusting under a magnifying glass on a sunny day. In the Davis Mountains temperatures hovered around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Beyond the mountains, temperatures soared to 120 degrees. Frank, a heavy drinker with no heat tolerance, sweated puddles as the sun shone through the windshield. Dad blasted the air conditioner to no avail, aiming all the vents at Frank while the rest of us roasted.
To further complicate matters, we also had to stop for groceries along the way. Mom and grandma clashed over food purchases just like the archenemies they were, a reminder of how much they despised each other. I don’t recall how they both survived the conflict, but somehow we continued our journey, dad’s car drooping under the added weight of groceries and animosity.
I thought my senses were fully engaged as we drove along the vast empty stretch of road that would take us to the other side of nowhere. My eyes and nose were fully consumed by Frank liquifying next to me, and mom’s strident and angry voice kept my ears fully engaged. But then I perceived something else–a clanging vibration of a piece of road debris dad tried to straddle, something metal that rolled and ripped its way down the underbelly of our sagging car. It didn’t take long to figure out that whatever he hit had punched a hole in the gas tank.
If we had known how to harness the power of my mother’s explosive fury, I have no doubt that the car could have run forever. But short of that, all we could do was keep going, watch the fuel level drop, and hope we made it to the next town–Alpine. Dad kept driving. Frank kept sweating. Mom alternated verbal floggings between dad (for his obviously inept driving) and grandma (whose excessive grocery purchase clearly weighed down the car too much to clear the debris.) I existed as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, waiting helplessly to see how it would all unfold.
We didn’t make it to Alpine, but we got close. Everyone except Frank, who was in the final stages of transforming into a human puddle, helped push the car over the crest of the last hill and into a filling station on the outskirts of town. Dad found an epoxy kit to patch the gas tank, and the rest of us found shade and cold drinks. We took to the road once more and found Big Bend, and now I’m here again.
My experience is much more pleasant this time. Instead of berating and abusing each other, Crash and I are kind. He waits patiently for me to wake up in the morning, and I wait patiently as his nose explores the vast mysteries of our desert trails.
My heart is different, too. The consequences of my life choices make my heart both sink in despair and soar on wings of victory, but at least they were my choices. I didn’t have real choices the last time I was here. Back then, my heart was filled with fear and anger–shame for my mom’s cruel nature and grief that no one would rescue me from it.
Now the desert feels like a different place–a more beautiful place, even though I know I’m the one who has changed. I try not to dwell on memories of our trip and what they mean, because there’s a real chance they don’t mean anything. Sure, I learned and grew through the hardship I experienced, but there are other ways to learn and grow–better ways. And so, I will add new memories to the old, and maybe even overwrite them–with desert winds and starry skies, a loving dog, and the singing of angels as the sun sets.
