This week our Meander wandered into the Big Bend area of West Texas and one of the most uniquely weird small towns in America ~ Marfa Texas.
Marfa is pretty heavy on the art galleries, nice restaurants, and relatively expensive hotel rooms for a place in the middle of nowhere. Surrounded by scenic sagebrush, Marfa has been famous with Hollywood and other artists for the last 50 years. Anytime Hollywood needs a small dusty Western town, Marfa seems to fit the ticket. Recent movies that have been shot in Marfa include No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood (shot concurrently in 2006). Before those two, James Dean’s last movie, Giant, was filmed in Marfa in 1956.
Other touristy features that “keep Marfa weird” include the Marfa Lights (supposed sourceless lights that dance on the horizon) and a random “Prada, Marfa” storefront art installation. This storefront is miles from any town big or small, so when we say its in the middle of nowhere we’re not kidding. If you’re motivated to try to see the Marfa Lights there’s an actual viewing platform and an annual Marfa Lights Festival that looks like it might be worth checking out.
From Marfa, we moved to southernmost tip of West Texas, Big Bend National Park. After freezing nighttime temps in Utah, Texas provided quite the opposite: sweltering daytime highs above 100 degrees and evenings in the mid to upper 80s. It’s still a bit hot (108 when we got brave enough to check) until the sun goes down each evening, but the wildlife seems to come alive after about 8:30 p.m.
It has been pretty wild to travel across all kinds of landscapes over the last couple of weeks and imagine that most of this parched land was once covered by a massive inland sea and quite the opposite of the desert we see today. Between 17 and 38 million years ago ancient volcanos formed the Chicos Mountains in Big Bend National Park, a high desert oasis that supports flora and fauna more similar to what we would find in Colorado. Things like aspen, pine, black bears, deer, and mountain lions in addition to desert wildlife like coyote, javelina, road runners, hundreds of migratory birds, and several species of cactus.
We were so close to Mexico we could see it across the Rio Grande multiple times per day. We never crossed, although you there is a wadeable crossing at Boquillos, Mexico, but without showers we decided crossing the slow moving stinky river wasn’t in the cards. In Boquillos Canyon overlook there were hundreds of “souvenirs” set out for purchase on the honor system just barely inside the United States border. We later found out it would have been illegal to actually purchase any of these items in the park.
Moving through these places we often wondered, what kind of person took a look at this barren, dusty land and said: “Hey, I think I can make a life out of this!” Was it an opportunity, or a last resort? Whatever the case, there were plenty Native Americans, Anglos, and Mexicans with tremendous courage, resilience, and grit who created homes in these arid, desolate lands.
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