The Real West
T
his isn’t Lubbock or the
Panhandle Plains, nor the
monotonous oil-spewing region
of Midland-Odessa.
This is the land that time and an
ever-changing climate built in dramat-
ic and violent fashion, and in much of
this vast space, time also forgot in the
same manner. Those forces formed
the region known as the Trans-Pecos.
This is the only area in the Lone
Star State that contains true moun-
tains. These are high-desert moun-
tains, “sky islands” in the Basin and
Range Province, and as such, they are
as much a part of the West as any other
mountain range. In the high elevations
of the Chisos, Davis, and Guadalupe
ranges, montane forests of yellow and
white pine, Douglas-fir, oak and aspen
abound – relics that survived when the
fringe effects of the last ice age depart-
ed some 10,000 years ago.
With the exception of the
Guadalupes, these mountains aren’t
what you will find in Colorado or
Montana or Idaho. However, these
desert sentinels are not lacking in their
own stunningly scenic beauty, thereby
making one feel small but grounded;
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Cenizo
not spoiled like some in the more
prominent “calendar mountains” of
the higher Rocky Mountain states.
The Del Norte, Glass, Chinati,
Delaware, Franklin, Sierra Diablo, and
Christmas Mountains, among others,
are all spectacular individuals, each
deserving of their names, praise, atten-
tion from travelers and locals and
admiration of their stories that were,
and still are, aeons in the making.
The Glass Mountains, while not as
popular as the Davis, Chisos or
Guadalupes, still have many notable
distinctions. This mountain range is
geologically part of the Ouachita
Mountains, whose visible and visited
portion lie some 600 miles to the north-
east, near Talihina, Oklahoma. The
rest of the Ouachita Mountains in
Texas are buried thousands of feet
beneath younger sediments. The Glass
are also “the easternmost major range
in Texas”, and an “exposed part of the
largest limestone reef system in the
world”, as Joe Nick Patoski wrote in
Texas Mountains. Because of that, this
mountain range is the geological stan-
dard in which other limestone reef sites
around the world are correlated
Second Quarter 2014
(matched) for geologic dating purposes.
These mountains were once the
source of the largest springs in this part
of Texas, Comanche Springs, which
fed Comanche Creek. Unregulated
diesel pumping of these springs for irri-
gation beginning in 1951 caused the
springs and creek to dry up and cease
all flow by March of 1961; this
destroyed the habitat and life source for
the Comanche Springs Pupfish
(Cyprinodon elegans), which was listed
as federally endangered in 1967.
This is true open country, a place
where one can get lost and forget about
the time. Such misplacement re-cali-
brates one’s internal compass, and if
one listens, the land will tell a story
more powerful than Hollywood or any
New York Times bestselling author can
craft. It is in this Chihuahuan Desert
country that the land gave birth to leg-
ends like Judge Roy Bean, known as
“The Law West of the Pecos” in the
town of Langtry. This sprawling terres-
trial giant with a desert southwest cli-
mate has taken a merciless beating and
seen high death tolls for millennia; its
story requires an open mind and a new
way to listen, to pay attention to detail
and an ability to savor the fleeting
moments. Despite the big scenery that
overwhelms most people, renders
many silent, and intimidates those from
big cities, it is the little things out here
that matter most, for they are the foun-
dation of this rugged and sometimes
daunting land.
This is Far West Texas, a land that
has so far escaped the damaging devel-
opments of the ubiquitous oil and gas
industry. It’s also the land “where the
Rockies meet the Appalachians,”
Patoski wrote, and is quickly becoming
the last of the open country.
In the film Open Range, the character
Boss Spearman takes a look at the wide
open land before him and says to his
friend, “Beautiful country. A man can
get lost out here, forget there’s people
and things that ain’t so simple as this.”
This is the land that makes a human
being humble, and the modern
hominid soon realizes he isn’t quite as
evolved as he prides himself to be; that
this society he has helped to shape by
virtue of his work towards the common
goal of “progress” is unable to match
the scenery before him.