If the GulfShores were about bleached sand-strands and sprawling resort condominiums and the HillCountry about irresponsible free-wheeling and small cow-towns, then what comes next is an anticipated delight. The portents have been increasing; the beaver tail cactus hidden in the woodland understory, the grit-strewn naked limestone pavements, the juniper trees giving way to the mesquite scrub, the mosquitoes that are now absent. Those rolling hills have been pulled, stretched out, now they’re elongated gradual ascents, and dependent upon wind, warmth or mood can be a toil or a joy. Those flatland rivers that were either deep tannin mysteries or sluggish, grubby and glutinous with sediment, that then gave way to the sharp steel-green clarity of impatient HillCountry rivers are now intermittent aberrations, entirely dependent for the sustenance of thunderstorms. Dry gulches of flood-swept tideline grasses, grounded tree trunks, and occasional stranded, dehydrating puddles. Here today – gone tomorrow.
We’re moving through deja-vu and west Texas. We’ve seen this picture film before, and yet it should be no surprise. National governments have no major impact on macro scenic geology, (or at least not until they award licences to extract a mountain), we could so easily be in northern Argentina, highland Bolivia, or as we are, western USA. Rounding a bend to come on a long, narrow linearly-developed rail-town set in the bottom of a canyon. Single storey properties, red roofs glinting in the vast desert light, the whole punctuated by slender pencil-thin Lombardy poplars. Potential twin-town names scroll in my mind, that is until we start to roll down Main Street, when it takes on a particularly poignant USA story. Town centre has withered, the sidewalks are deserted, the cobwebbed windows are papered over, the faded ‘open’ signs now a fib of long term lies. Commercial life, the motels and gas stations have drifted to the perimeter. One Cactus Plaza doesn’t even have one cactus.
The potential is there for stereotypical adjectives like depressing, despairing and oppressing to predominate, if it wasn’t for a simple encounter. We’ve stopped briefly to consider our overnighting options, to review the larder’s contents and consider our next move, when a gent hails us from a distance. Waving from the dark shadows of a motel is Danni and yet another stereotype. It wasn’t immediately obvious that he was in anyway connected to the motel other than the fact that he is Indian, as in south Asian, a group who run so many of the family motels. It transpires that he is the sole cleaner, receptionist and as we soon find out, conversationalist. There’s no heavy selling, he even seems surprised when we decide that we wish to take a room. I get the impression that his interests are more in conviviality that commerce. A fact emphasised by the snack tray in our room and the fact that he insists on cooking us a traditional Indian meal for our tea. Suddenly this town feels very different.
The railroad made Sanderson, there to serve the small sheep and goat ranchers; then the government removed the textile subsidies from wool and mohair in ’93 and the decline set in. The up-train still stops, but only to allow the down-train to pass; those small ranchers, their stockyards and collecting corals now raise tumbleweed and fly-dust, their unprofitable spreads converted to hunt camps and in one instance to: ‘exotic hoof’ ranching. (aondad, mouflon, zebra, axis, kudu, addax, ibex, markhor, bongo, scimitar, red deer).
We’ve been meeting a number of touring cyclists over the last short while and it would be possible to divide them into two sub-sections: those who are desperate to leave the desert and those that are in a total thrall to it. One even seems addicted; he’s been in the Chihuahua Desert for a month and who is now heading north to find “a different type of rock an’ dirt”.
We’re going to do the same. These vast open spaces, the sharp cut light, the cold wind that mingles with the hot sun becomes addictive.
Oddities on the Road….
