45 miles per hour – for the
slowness of the approach up
the conduit. What expectation
the approach churns up!
The entry of FM 170 from
the top of Big Hill is of a differ-
ent order. That classic of desert
icons: ridgeline behind ridge-
line walking out the vastness.
Mist folded into mist. When
that sliver of a river far below
becomes a guide and winds us
back into time. As if we might
see, in the reaching before us of
that untouched, clean-as-slate
space, Alsate and his band of
Apaches on horseback crossing
at Lajitas. Hunter-gatherers
foraging? The Tertiary spew-
ing hot plumes of ash?
Dinosaurs lazily grazing the
lushness of a shore of the
Mesozoic Gulf ?
Or is it, as our view extends
out, that we are simultaneously
dreaming down a vastness in
our own psyches, equally mist
folding into mist, depth into
depth, where we lose ourselves
and simply are?
118 south of Elephant resists
such flights. Remains firmly
physical. A bodily force pro-
pelling us across the rolling
swells of the O2 flats. This, the
middle realm of the passage,
taking its name from the cattle
ranch it is passing beside, and
all that of Alpine and the
Double Diamond, all the stuff
of our modern times is fading
as we move into – we know not
what. For there, in the middle of
the flats, the sense is of a world
emptying out – except for
Santiago, the portal mountain,
now standing stern and forbid-
ding in its initial profile on our
left, while on the far horizon, we
see little more than blips of tiny
tepee-like projections.
But curving down onto
Upper Ranch, beginning there
at the sign for the Cowboy Mine,
the passage ramps up in earnest,
and those little projections on the
horizon, as if just emerging,
grow up in complexity. Nine
Point Mesa lines out left. The
Corozones and the Christmas
Mountains behind, and behind
all, ghostly, the Chisos.
On the other side of the
road the scalloped edges of the
Solitario pass the eye to Agua
Fria Mountain humping up
huge in its mammoth crouch,
and Hen Egg Mountain
becomes that perfect, great
ovoid. Then alongside Adobe
Walls, opposite the Longhorn
Motel, the road gathers into
itself to shoot the roller coaster
of that wonder of a disorient-
ing spate of igneous intrusions
(a tip of the hat to the colum-
nar beauty of Willow
Mountain), makes that final
drop beside Bee Mountain into
Study Butte and hits the bot-
tom floor running.
Again, as beside Elephant –
the land rushing out like a
breaking wave.
Only here, it’s as if the feel
of the physical landscape, that
has long accompanied us from
Elephant, condenses down,
infuses the visual of the Study
Butte badlands with a seeming
solidity of substance – as if airy
space had suddenly been made
tactile. Like that within Donald
Judd’s aluminum boxes in the
artillery sheds at his compound
in Marfa. Only here it’s every-
thing outside, the desert itself.
The feel of a hand out the car
window is one of slicing
through an air that has become
a kind of invisible soil. Our
bodies, too, somehow breathed-
up in their very cells, stand tall
in a heightened sense of Being.
What to call, how to deal
with these dimensions we
encounter entering the Bend?
This yearning for the unbound
(Holderlin). This baptism of
solitude (Paul Bowles). This
sense of absence (an obverse of
openness), from which pres-
ence arises. Presence, the
ancient name of Being
(Heidegger).
But already nihilists are
screaming foul. Maybe beauti-
ful, but strike that and what
remains is just a superabundant
quotidian of rock and cactus
and raven. Yet they come, the
god-possessed, the spirit seek-
ers. Take away the word
“imminence” and what they’re
hearing is God “about to”
speak to them.
Take away the scrim of a
timeline and that vastness is an
exhilarating rush into a new-
found freedom. Or murky dives
into the deeper realms of Self.
But more than the cate-
gories we might append, what
is important, at least initially, is
the movement these dimen-
sions kick up within our souls,
spirits, mind. That’s what’s so
alive! How the bright presence
of desert grace revivifies,
renews the blood rush of being
alive. Then that first step out
into the desert space carries
within itself a quickened
wholeness, the body felt as tak-
ing charge of the space it occu-
pies, present to that presence
that is all around it.
Still the experience is most
noticed, most freshly in our
face, when entering. Stealing
upon us in that place where we
are always silently alone with
ourselves. Gazing out the car
windows as we penetrate mile
after mile. Or stopping, getting
out, staring off. Maybe walking
off a ways. How it teases, draw-
ing us on. Wanting further,
deeper. To take us by the hand
and move us out across that
ballroom floor that is the dance
through desert space.
The Episcopal Church
Welcomes You
Scripture • Tradition • Reason
Sunday 10 a.m. Christian Education and 11 a.m. Morning Prayer or Eucharist
Wednesday 6 p.m. Contemplative Prayer
Friday 5:30 p.m. Prayers for Evening and the Healing of the World
First Fridays 6 p.m. Concert
St. James’ Episcopal Church • Ave. A and N. 6th St., Alpine 432.837.7313
A magical
oasis in the
Chihuahuan
Desert
of Texas
Off the
Pinto Canyon Rd
near Ruidosa
rustic lodging
camping
day use
432.229.4165
chinatihotsprings.com
under new management
Mike Murphy
Debbie Murphy
Broker/Owner
Agent
Mexican
and
American
Food
Famous Beef & Chicken Fajitas • Ice Cream • Clean, Fast Service
Rene & Maria Franco, Owners
513 O’Reilly Street • Downtown Presidio
432.229.4409
Cenizo
First Quarter 2012
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