Blue Highways: Balmorhea, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Clidk on Thumbnail for MapAn oasis, properly defined by Merriam-Webster, is a fertile or green region in a desert, or something that provides relief, refuge or a pleasant contrast.  Balmorhea, in my experience, qualifies as an oasis even if William Least Heat-Moon doesn't recognize it as such as he drives through.  Click on the thumbnail at right to see where Balmorhea is located, and enjoy our drive through West Texas while it lasts.

Book Quote

"The land rose steadily, then at Balmorhea the highland mesas became the eastern ridges of the Rocky Mountains.  Interstate 10, the only way west, differed here from a two=lane simply by extra strips of concrete - there were almost no towns to bypass.  And so, like the locomotive, Ghost Dancing lapped the miles across the Apache Mountains and Devil Ridge and onward.  Bugs popping the windshield left only clear fluid instead of a yellow and green pollen-laden goo of woodland insects; it was as if they extracted their colorless essence from the desert wind itself."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 9

Artesian spring fed pool at Balmorhea. Photo at Texas Parks and Wildlife Division site. Click on photo to go to host site.

Balmorhea, Texas

The things that one can find in West Texas are varied and surprising.  Balmorhea is a case in point.  I will again refer to a car trip my wife and I made to Big Bend National Park.  We were there for probably a long weekend - maybe five days or so.  The first trip we made there, we camped in the Chisos Mountains, but the second trip we couldn't get a campsite there so we stayed in a campsite down in the desert just north of the mountain range.  While the Chisos, even though they are situated in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, surprisingly have some alpine elements in their higher elevations, the weather is cooler, and there are facilities there where one can shower and refresh, down in the desert the facilities are more rudimentary and the weather is hotter.  We hiked in the desert quite a bit on that second trip, and the terrain and feel was very different from the mountains.

Long story short, on our way out we drove into Balmorhea.  My wife remembers that we drove out of the Davis Mountains and into a kind of valley that looked like a hot dry dusty plain.  And then, there was Balmorhea.  We had heard about the state park and the San Solomon Springs, and we were hot, dusty and hadn't had a shower in five days.

I'm not sure I truly understood the meaning of the word oasis until I gazed upon the pool at San Solomon Springs.  The water looked heavenly and after a quick shower that got the physical grime off of me, I jumped into the cold waters on a hot day and felt almost spiritually cleansed.  A section of the spring fed pool, closed off to casual swimmers but available to divers, had a lot of underwater plant and fish life, and to see an aquatic ecosystem in the middle of an otherwise pretty barren desert was quite amazing.  I think we spent a couple of hours there, before drying off, jumping into the car and heading off toward home in San Antonio.

But as I said, West Texas is full of surprises.  Go out to Marfa, located about 50 miles to the southwest of Balmorhea, and there you will find an old air force training base converted to the headquarters of the Chinati Foundation, which houses the art works and collection of Donald Judd as well as other artists and which brings artists-in-residence from all over the world to teach and create.  In Marfa, you'll also find the Marfa Lights, strange lights that appear near the mountains to the south of town and which nobody has been able to explain.  Some say the lights are ghosts, some say they are caused by atmospheric effects, and some even say they are of extraterrestrial origin.

Or go into the Davis Mountains.  In Fort Davis, about 30 miles southwest of Balmorhea, you can find WPA and CCC architecture and art, as well as some country that will really remind you of the old West of the movies.  The McDonald Observatory hosts Star Parties, where you can go and learn about constellations, look through powerful telescopes for Jupiter, Saturn and other planets, all under a dark night sky unsullied by large city ground light.

It was in this region that one of my most magical and astounding wildlife sightings occurred.  Driving around the Davis Mountains, my wife and I saw an eagle sitting on a fence post.  As we slowed down to try to get a photo, the eagle dropped down to the ground, and then to our astonishment slowly took off with a large snake in its talons.  It flew directly over our hood - I don't know what I would have done had the eagle dropped the snake on the hood or the windshield but the aftermath would have probably involved me having to change my pants.  But the eagle soared about 5 feet above the car, across the road, and over a low line of scrub trees on the other side.  My wife and I sat slack jawed for what seemed like five minutes, before we looked at each other saying "can you believe that!" and "I wish I had the camera ready."

Yes, West Texas seems barren if you fly over it, or look at it on a map or Google Earth, but if you go there, you will find amazing and magical things as well as some scenery that will remain with you the rest of your life.  If you find yourself ever in El Paso, it is well worth a drive to Balmorhea for a swim or into the Davis Mountains to take a look around.

Musical Interlude

Back to some Texas music.  Gary P. Nunn is an established Texas singer-songwriter, and his song What I Like About Texas is a nice tribute to a state with a lot of culture.

If you want to know more about Balmorhea

Balmorhea State Park
Encyclopedia of Earth: San Solomon Springs, Balmorhea
TexasEscapes.com: Balmorhea
Texas State Historical Association: Balmorhea
Wikipedia: Balmorhea

Next up: Eagle Flat, Texas

Blue Highways: Western Crockett County, Texas

Unfolding the Map

Click on Thumbnail for MapLet's pull off the side of the road for a minute in a remote and barren area of West Texas.  Turn off the engine and let the van cool.  The wind blows gently against the van, but we'll walk out and away and begin to see and really listen to what is around us.  We'll find life, nature, the universe and everything and we'll be fully aware of it as it begins to seep into our consciousness the longer we stay, watch and listen.  The road beckons, but for a moment, this is where we need to be.  Click on the map thumbnail to learn where it is.

Book Quote

"Driving through the miles of nothing, I decided to test the hypothesis and stopped somewhere in western Crockett County on the top of a broad mesa, just off Texas 29. At a distance, the land looked so rocky and dry, a religious man could believe that the First Hand never got around to the creation in here. Still, somebody had decided to string barbed wire around it.

"No plant grew higher than my head. For a while, I heard only miles of wind against the Ghost; but after the ringing in my ears stopped, I heard myself breathing, then a bird note, an answering call, another kind of birdsong, and another: mockingbird, mourning dove, an enigma. I heard the high zizz of flies the color of gray flannel and the deep buzz of a blue bumblebee."

Blue Highways: Part 4, Chapter 8

Vista in Crockett County, Texas. Is this similar to what William Least Heat-Moon saw when he pulled off the road? Photo at behrensranchsales.com. Click on photo to go to site.

Western Crockett County, Texas

I suppose this post is an extension of the last post on quests, in a way.  I was struck by William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) quote above where he turns off the road in a remote part of Texas (Google Earth image is my guess of the location) just to see what was there.  It takes him a while to clear his head of the ringing in his ears from the motor of Ghost Dancing and the other road sounds while he drives.  Once that happens, he really begins to see and hear what's there.  What he begins to see and hear are the sounds of life all around him.  It reaffirms that even in the most remote places, the planet is alive and we simply have to open our senses to it to understand that life on the deepest of levels.

I had a similar experience myself, many miles south of Crockett County.  I may have briefly written about this before but I'll write about it again because it was a very important and spiritual moment for me.

My wife and I had made a trip to Big Bend National Park.  It became one of our favorite places to go because of it's variety and some special moments we had there.  On the western side of the Chisos Mountains, the road drops precipitously off a mesa down to a desert plain below.  From the top of the mesa, one can see nothing but the desert and little speckles of desert plants.  But as one looks, the eye is arrested by the site, almost directly in the center of the plain, a large cottonwood tree.  It is so large and out of place that one cannot gaze on it and wonder why it is there.

My wife and I took the Chimneys Trail to some rock formations and the direction was toward this tree.  I convinced her to see if we could reach the tree but after about a half hour of hiking across desert we realized that the distance was deceiving.  Reluctantly, I turned away.

Some months later, I was offered to go on a weekend camping trip with a colleague to Big Bend again.  He liked to hike, so I told him about the tree.  He was game to try.  We arrived near Big Bend one evening, and slept in the car by the side of the road, and in the morning made the drive to the Chimneys Trail.  We set off down the trail in the morning.  The desert was quiet, as if it were awaiting the sun with trepidation, and all the animals were in their holes to sit out the heat of the day.  When we reached the Chimneys, we set off across desert.

My quest was to reach the big tree, because it was there.  And in fact, the quest became almost like the hopeless quests one reads about in literature.  After about an hour of hiking we reached a shallow arroyo and went across.  Then after 15 minutes, another arroyo, a little deeper.  This pattern continued.  The next arroyo was deeper still, and harder to find a way out of.

Five arroyos we crossed, with the last being the deepest.  It was like a small canyon.  Every time we would crest an arroyo, the tree stood beckoning in the distance, a shimmering green beacon.  The last arroyo was very near the tree, and it almost took us a half hour to find a way up the other side and out.  When we reached the top, there was the tree.

But again, obstacles.  The tree was surrounded by the thorniest, impenetrable desert brush I have ever encountered.  We looked and looked around this thorny hedge but could not find a way through.  I was about to dejectedly give up when on a whim, I went to the edge of the arroyo.  The tree was right at the edge of the dropoff, and there, perilously close to the drop, was a small trail that went through a little tunnel in the brush and to the base of the tree!  We made it!

We sat under the tree.  The shade was nice and it was cool under the tree in the mid-day heat.  We looked out over the arroyo which stretched away on each side of us.  We were a little hyped up from our exertions but slowly, as my companion's eyes started to droop and he began to nap, and I became more attuned to our surroundings, I started to experience, and I mean really experience, the small ecosystem sustained by that tree all around me.  While walking through the desert, all I could hear was wind.  But under that tree, I realized I could hear not only wind rustling the cottonwood's leaves above me, but also the occasional drip of water condensing off the leaves.  I could hear insects of all kinds buzzing nearby.  It was quiet, punctuated only by my companion's occasional snore.  The tree literally buzzed, there in the emptiness and heat of the desert, with palpable life.  Because of it, I don't think I ever felt more alive.

A small piece of bark lay on the ground next to the trunk.  I took it and put it in my pocket.  I still have it to this day.  We stayed about an hour, and then refreshed, and with new life, we set back on our trek to the car.  I have no idea how far we hiked that day, but I know that for one hour, it was one of the few times in my life I was not distracted by anything and was fully engaged in my environment.  In a way, I had undertaken a quest, reached my goal, and found enlightenment from whatever you may call it.  God?  Nature?  The universe?  Whatever it was, I was reminded that there are things that are more beautiful and more powerful than me.

I'd like to think that, on top of a broad mesa in western Crockett County, that LHM experienced something similar.  Just after the quote above, he takes an inventory of the life that he can identify in what is supposed to be "barren" land.  He finds a lot of life around him.  He remarks that even though some might call it a land that God forgot, that someone still put barbed wire around it.  Barrenness is only an illusion, in my experience.  We can find importance and meaning, and even the trace of those who have gone before, pretty much wherever we go.

Musical Interlude

Here is an extended set of Lubbock music legends The Flatlanders.  The song I really wanted in this Texas musical interlude was If You Were a Bluebird, but I couldn't find a decent video of it being performed - either the song was cut off at the beginning or the sound was bad.  So, If You Were a Bluebird is at the end of this video.  Despite its length, it's worth watching Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore tell a story and you get two songs for the price of one - which is this case is free!  So what's not to like

If you want to know more about Western Crockett County

Crockett County
Texas State Historical Association: Crockett County
Wikipedia: Crockett County

Next up:  West of the Pecos, Texas