Nadir in Far West Texas

Cathedral mountain sunrise near Alpine Texas

“Oh, that’s not fiction.”

It’s early evening in the old Holland Hotel, across from the train station in Alpine, Texas. A big plate glass window collects the end of the dusky light, illuminating the preternaturally shiny cow skull over the Century Bar.

The woman’s long white hair has strands with minds of their own that leave the mass of their cousins and wander out into open air reaching from her space into mine.  “Yeah. NASA’s got a secret division devoted to time travel. They’ve been at it for years.”

She sets my copy of Time and Again down on the bar and taps it with her thumb. “But this guy, see — he must have known about it. I bet the whole thing really happened. How’d they do it? Drugs?”

“A combination of self-hypnosis and period surroundings.”

She slides the book back to me. “That’s where he got it wrong. Definitely drugs. And I oughta know — because I’ve taken some of them.”

I think, “I’ll bet you have.”

She goes on to tell me about her out of body experiences near the pool in their “ain’t much of a place” apartment in New Mexico.

“I’d eaten this piece of pound cake I bought at a convenience store. And that’s when it all started. It was the next day, and I was lying by the pool and my ankle started itching. This spot kinda lumped up and then the skin broke open and a fly crawled out. Then all of a sudden I was like high over complex and I could see everything.” She took a long pull on her draft beer and looked at me.  “I think the government’s putting stuff in our food.”

What does one say to this?

I look at the young couple on the other side of me. It is unlikely they will save me from the bat-shit crazy woman.

The bar tender stops by. “You want another one?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

Long horn cow skull Century bar in the Holland Hotel Alpine Texas
Long horn cow skull at the Century bar inside the Holland Hotel in Alpine, Texas. Photograph, Ann Fisher.

He sets to work on a craft-cocktail level margarita and I focus my entire soul on the process.

“Could I have a look at that tequila bottle?”

Since my food hasn’t arrived yet, it’s not like I can just leave. But I need more tequila. Maybe a lot more tequila. My mood turns from melancholy to decidedly grouchy. My sunrise in Big Bend has evaporated since I’ve failed to find a tent site in the park, and I’m listening to a lunatic. It’s gonna take something strong to keep me nice.

Ignoring my avid interest in the back of the Espolòn bottle, my bar mate decides to take our conversation to a new level.

“My name’s Willa Lee.” She reaches out her hand.

I imagine walking into a saloon in the old west and laying my Colt on the bar. And drinking a lot of something. I shoot this woman just for being irritating. I see your out of body experience and I raise you one.

Espolon tequila
Espolon tequila at the Century Bar in Alpine, Texas. Did my out of body experience begin here? Photograph, Ann Fisher

“I’m, um . . . “

I look down at the lime hanging on the edge of my glass.

“Margarita.”

Why not?

About this time, a man with a grizzled beard and a ponytail walks into the bar. Thank god, it is the person Willa Lee is waiting for, and he takes a seat and her attention.

When my venison ragù comes, I ask the bartender to box it while I make quick work of the cocktail. Eating by myself back at the Maverick Inn sounds like the best idea I’ve had in several days. I take my leave of Willa Lee, exit the Holland Hotel, and promise myself that I won’t talk to anyone else for the rest of the trip.

This west Texas journey is something I cooked up while taking my third chemo infusion a week earlier.

What’s the problem with my plan? The Big Bend region is hyper-popular in spring. When the wildflowers bloom, so does business in far west Texas, which means last minute rooms are hard to come by. The lodge at the National Park — full. My favorite hotel in Marathon — full. Motel in Terlingua — full. I wanted five or six days, but all I could reserve was two nights at the funky El Cosmico in Marfa.

I don’t give a damn. Four days post chemo, my hair is shedding in large quantities. I shave my head, throw my tent in the back of my Honda CRV, and leave Houston. As single minded as a road runner with a lizard in its crosshairs, I aim to get a dose of wide open spaces on my week off treatment.

El Cosmico Marfa Texas
El Cosmico, Marfa, Texas. Photograph, Ann Fisher

I arrive at El Cosmico in Marfa on Monday afternoon for a two night stay. Vintage trailers, a collection of teepees, and a group of yurts: a place to get your desert hippy thing going.

In my mind, I’m marking time until I can get down to the desert that I’ve really come to see. I manage to snag a room at the Gage Hotel in Marathon, which will be a perfect ending point to my time in Big Bend. Now, if I can just get a tent spot in the park for the two intervening nights . . .

Into Big Bend

The distances between many places in west Texas are long.

I leave Marfa for 2.5 hour drive down to Big Bend National Park this morning, stopping briefly for gas in Alpine. Mission? To nail a site in one of the three campgrounds.

After days of turning inwards and making it through chemo, it is time to fly into the desert and turn my mind’s eye outward. I glory in the great sweep of the land that was once a prehistoric sea.

When I reach park headquarters at Panther Junction, the rangers’ info shows eight spots still open at Cottonwood — the campground an hour away, very near Santa Elena canyon. Photographing the monolithic wall of stone at sunrise would be perfect — and I am hopeful, but by the time finally I get there, all the sites are taken.

When I eventually return to the main east-west road through the park, I need to quit moving and think.

Nadir. The word comes to us from Arabic, meaning the opposite of zenith — it is the lowest point. For a cancer patient undergoing chemo, the word bears a particular significance. Ten days after my infusion, it means I hit the lowest point of white blood cells in my body. I have a hard time fighting infections. I tire easily. After four hours in the car, I am all done.

I walk into the desert and sit next to a great coachwhip plant, cradling my camera in my lap and feeling out of sorts. I’d known better than to think I’d have the energy to hike on this trip, but never expected simple driving to take so much out of me.  The wind whispers through the creosote bushes. Small flowering plants, invisible from the road, cover the desert floor; their tiny white blossoms give forth a light, sweet fragrance that makes bees happy. Next to me, the ocotillo waves its fifteen foot tall stalks gently to and fro.

Ocotillo in Big Bend
Ocotillo (pronounced “oh-cat-tee-yo”), also called coachwhip, is not a cactus. It’s a thorny shrub of the fourquieria family, and one of my favorite desert plants. Photograph, Ann Fisher.

There are masses of them here, all topped with their fiery spring blossoms, but their branches are naked of leaves. When there has been enough rain, the ocotillo sport green leaves AND blossoms. When it’s dry, the plant sheds its leaves and lives off the chlorophyl in its stalks. It’s like that in the desert. Plants make do with the rations they have. In the spring, blooming is top priority for the ocotillo. Later, when the summer rains come, it will be time to leaf out again.

I consider my options. There’s no cell service out here, so it’s not like I’m going to check Expedia for hotels. I could tuck tail and cut my trip short. If I head back to  I-10, I know there will be open rooms up in Ft. Stockton. I continue to sit with the bees and listen to the desert. The prickly pear have started their spring bloom and yellow dots its way through the landscape as far as I can see. After taking a few pictures of bees and flowers, I feel more myself, even if the midday light is crap.

Back to Alpine

I drive west to Terlingua to check on rooms at the motel in person. No luck, but with a cell phone signal, my internet search shows rooms at the Maverick Inn in Alpine.

Following another 80 miles to Alpine, coming almost full circle from where I’d started the morning, I am dead tired. After a nap, I set off to the Holland Hotel to have dinner at the Century Bar and Grill, where my time travel book takes me new places with Willa Lee.

Crawling into bed later, I think it’s the right decision — to stay two nights in Alpine. I simply don’t have the energy gamble another round-trip drive on a tent site for a single evening. You think a trip is gonna go a particular way. We think life is gonna go a particular way. So often it doesn’t. You re-group, and re-think. You fit your steps within the given time, and if you can open your heart to the new path, you feel it.

Several times through the night, trains whistle past, mournful, their sound traveling long across great open spaces, “WHAAAaaaaaaaaa uuuuuuu, UUUU uuuuu.” Then again, more distant.

Cathedral mountain and the Marfa plain at sunrise far west Texas
Cathedral Mountain and the Marfa plain at sunrise, near Alpine. Photograph, Ann Fisher.

Next morning I rise early and head out onto the Marfa plain. This is also part of the Chihuahuan desert, just like Big Bend, but it’s sparse grassland — where George Stevens filmed the monumental Giant with Rock Hudson, Liz Taylor, and James Dean. It’s not the landscape I came for, but it’s full of horizon to horizon sky.

I visit with a Chihuahuan raven at the Marfa Lights site. He talks, and I talk. Then he laughs at me because he knows that I have already broken my promise not to speak to anyone else on the trip.

With my unexpected time in Alpine and Marfa, I devote myself to exploring the artwork of Donald Judd, poking through bookstores, napping, and writing.

I’ve been to the Big Bend region many times over thirty-odd years, but had never really explored Donald Judd’s work. I always had other things on my agenda.

Donald Judd’s 15 untitled works in concrete, 1980-1984 stretch a long way. You’ll find them next to the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Photograph, Ann Fisher.

When I venture over to the Chinati Foundation, I spend an hour wandering around Judd’s 15 Untitled Works in Concrete — fifteen massive sets of concrete blocks that stretch nearly a kilometer down Highway 67 in Marfa. I love the landscape and light and dark contained and defined within the massive slabs. I see my life contained within one of the boxes. In the boxes we all choose to live within.

On what I think is my last night, having dinner at the White Buffalo bar in Marathon, I check one last time for rooms closer to the park. There’s a little cabin in Terlingua that’s come open, and I jump on it. What’s one more day? So I arrive at my next chemo treatment a little tired . . .

I get my sunrise in Big Bend.

Oh, and I’m having phony business cards with Margarita Espolòn created.

Sunrise in Big Bend Chisos mountains and mesquite
Sunrise in Big Bend, with the Chisos Mountains in the background. Photograph, Ann Fisher.

Ann Fisher

Writer, traveler, and cancer fighter. Get out there and live life!

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2 thoughts on “Nadir in Far West Texas

  1. Kim A. Hazel August 3, 2019 at 5:45 pm

    Now that’s a beautiful way to get respite from the chemo treatment. The photos are really gorgeous and show your appreciation of the desert. I’ve never been to West Texas, only as far as Hill Country (a little bit of it). I can relate to the “Nadir” and like how you worked through it. Wishing you back to health and continued enjoyment of margaritas!

    Reply
    1. Ann Fisher August 6, 2019 at 8:04 am

      Yes, fellow cancer warrior, I KNOW you understand about nadir. I am happily through 11 of 12 rounds of chemo — and will be going to a maintenance treatment once that is over. Looking forward to less chemo and more travel!

      Reply

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