Big Bend Adventure
The Guy in the White Mercedes’
Big Bend Adventure
I set out for Alpine, Texas from Houston early on a May morning, behind the wheel of my brand new, shiny white Mercedes C300. I had been looking forward to giving the car its first real workout on the long, long road out to the Big Bend country. Quiet but insistent yearnings for the ineffable skies that frame the rugged landscape out there had been stirring in me for some time; so when the appointed date arrived, I was off like a pilgrim toward a mystic land – on a magic white carpet – with sunroof and satellite radio!
I had the drive calculated at roughly nine hours – not too long under the circumstances, I thought. I felt sure that mine ranked with some of the best equipment on the highway, both for comfort and performance. When in danger of getting boxed in or stuck behind a truck, passing was a breeze; just hit the “sport” button to switch the turbo up from “comfort”, and see you later, the flight of the Concorde has departed! I feel the exhilaration now just thinking about it, although as I write the car is not now in my possession.
Well into driving hour number nine, a Highway Patrol car passed me going the other way about five miles shy of my destination, and I watched with dismay in the rear view mirror as it turned around and doubled back. I pulled over right away and when the officer approached, handed over my documents without being asked, hoping that cheerful cooperation would elicit a mere warning; but no such luck. He mentioned that I seemed to be going a little fast, and obviously I was guilty of exceeding the posted speed limit. I resisted the temptation of pleading that in this car, after that long drive, on this straight and lonesome highway, doing seventy would have been the nearest thing to impossible. I think the deer and coyotes out there might be capable of doing seventy! I accepted the citation in silence and drove on into town, relieved actually that the cited speed was only 87, which I figured was below my average across those wide-open spaces.
A little over a week later, I received the bill from the Brewster Country Justice of the Peace, indicating clearly the whys and wherefores of the situation, including an itemized list of all who benefit from that precipitous drop in the speed limit just outside of Alpine:
Consolidated Court Costs 40.00
TFC 3.00
Courthouse Security 4.00
State Arrest Fees 5.00
Technology Fee 4.00
State Jury Fee 4.00
Truancy Prevention and Diversion Fund 2.00
Fine 55.90
Spd Fee .10
State Traffic Fee 30.00
Judicial Support Fee 6.00
Indigent Defense Fee 6.00
Total $160.00
Reviewing the list gives me the satisfaction of knowing I’ve contributed substantially, comprehensively to justice in Brewster County. Amen.
My final destination was an Airbnb rental house out a few miles west of town in a little valley of rattlesnakes and mini-ranches. It was a spacious three-bedroom house on eight acres – ridiculously large for one alone, but less costly per night than the old Holland Hotel downtown. It also had a back porch with a million dollar view of the night and morning skies, that drape like sorcerers’ capes over the desert.
My host, David, retired from Sul Ross University and owner of a local liquor store, welcomed me hospitably and showed me around. As soon as he left, I got a few things out of the car and sat down out on the back porch to take in and try to absorb the wide expanse of eastern horizon. Dave’s little dog, which had hustled over to check out what was going on, sniffed me around the legs and hand and jumped up in my lap. I had heard that one might expect a friendly welcome out in these parts, and sure enough I did receive one! She licked my face, then jumped down and left. Satisfied that I was good people, she minded her own business on Dave’s adjacent acreage through the rest of my stay.
Once well settled, I drove back into Alpine to get an early dinner and groceries for the weekend, arriving back at the old hacienda around nightfall. Tired from the early start and long drive, I crashed early, with bedroom curtains thrown open to the panorama of thickening darkness. I slept very deeply until about 2:30 in the morning, when I woke up bright, albeit with a touch of sinus irritation, and peered out the window.
What I saw was a light show in the sky of the most magnificent design and proportion. Shooting stars, planet waves, constellations of every known and unknown description, satellites, UFOs, black holes, moons, suns, supernovas, and galaxies appeared as if on the chessboard of the gods. The overwhelming vision called me outside to the back porch, where I sat with my head leaning all the way back over a patio chair, staring up for an hour, transfixed and motionless, wishing I could hold that vision in my consciousness forever.
After going back to bed for several more hours of profound sleep, blissful and secure in proximity of the infinite, I got up and went out to the porch again to watch the sun rise over the distant blue hills. The mystery and magic of the night sky, the transitions of the horizon at dawn and twilight are to me what the Big Bend country is all about. But the sky and horizon can also be magnificent in full daylight, as this day dawning would soon show.
I’m not a very planful traveler, and especially when traveling alone tend to take my cues from notions on the breeze and impulses they engender. Thus after grazing on blueberries, cereal, and coffee as the sun painted the horizon and appeared over the hills, I decided to drive south toward Terlingua, just this side of where the Rio Grande marks the unpopulated Mexican frontier. The sun had just cleared the mountains by the time I started out.
Driving along that highway in a new Mercedes, through the beautiful desert, with the morning sky manifesting novel patterns, tricks, and omens of light physics in the infinite sky, is an ambivalent experience. The ride is so smooth and great as to be absorbing in itself, at the same time as it can distract attention from the overwhelming mystic power of the light show that regularly occurs in the morning sky over the desert. Though very lonesome, the road does curve and require attention, which comes at the expense of gazing at the celestial sights that might be telling you what you really need to know about God and the universe. That little car gets going smooth and fast before you know it, and then, whoops, here comes a bend winding around a little knob hill to bring your foot to the brake and your mind right back to the cockpit. You’ll encounter another vehicle, usually a big pickup truck, on the average about every half hour or so, and it would not be a good thing, in my opinion, were the frequency to increase. Distance from civilization is a two-edged sword, mostly good.
On this morning, the sky was partially overcast with great rolls of cumulus clouds blowing in from the southwest. Just as I was getting animatedly into some driving piece of something on the Outlaw Country satellite radio station, I suddenly noticed streaks of heavenly light streaming through a crater in a cloud bank, emanating like spokes of a gigantic lampshade for 360 degrees, as far as the eye could see. You just don’t see that kind of display in the city. I was sure there was some kind of spiritual power and sign in the radiating light that I with my limited perception struggled vainly to fully capture and comprehend. Although the breeze was blowing briskly, spires of sunlight through the vortex in the clouds seemed to radiate ever more grandly and brilliantly for many miles of driving, stretching far beyond the horizon in every direction, toward infinity. Mystical, magical light, virtually tangible but also quite ineffable, coming from and pointing to who knows what precinct of almighty spirit. I am a pilgrim and a stranger, and my spiritual home is here in the desert.
Such awe is a sudden and unsustainable emotion. The road goes on, the radio plays, and the eye shifts from primordial refractions of light over the length of the sky to the highway sign pointing ten miles to Terlingua. Merle Haggard’s got Ramblin’ Fever. I need coffee and a restroom. Old Terlingua is nigh, and here I come.
I was looking for a little outdoor adobe café in Terlingua Ghost Town where I had gotten a very satisfying breakfast on my last swing through here a few months earlier, and found it right where it was. I parked on the gravel and took my hat and fragile volume of the complete works of Emerson, put them down on the last table available, and went to the counter inside to order an omelet.
Although Emerson’s transcendental philosophy seemed in exquisite harmony with this stretch of nature, and vice versa, I picked up the weekly (or maybe it’s monthly) Big Bend paper out of Marfa to read while I waited for the food. It was Saturday morning and there was a mix of urban refugees, local hippies and bikers, and cosmic Santa Fe sophisticates waiting for their breakfast, so I managed to read the whole paper front to back, as well as a few paragraphs of Emerson’s essay on Circles before they called my name for the omelet.
In the paper there was a short story by a Fort Davis resident about picking up and getting drunk with Mother Nature after she tricks him into stopping and helping her change a tire on her mysterious cosmic automobile. She proved to be a gentle and didactic soul in the story, one who would seemingly be unlikely to go throwing cosmic beams of light across the length of the land, or for that matter smiting continents with an El Nino, or breaking off big chunks of Antarctica, or anything like that, but it was a nice story out of a kind of consciousness I can remember from sixties and seventies counterculture – a genially demented sort of gonzo fiction that somehow fit right in there.
The omelet particularly hit the spot, and when the girl at the counter asked how it was when I went to top off my coffee, I told her it was quite delicious, easily worth the 45-minute wait. She looked at me funny, like I was being snarky, but it was the truth and intended as pleasant and constructive feedback. I picked up my hat and walked down the white rock hill to the Mercedes, then headed off west toward Lajitas and my favorite little spot on the bank of the Rio Grande. It’s called Contrabando, after the canyon in which it sits, literally the canyon of contraband. There is none in evidence, at least by daylight. This particular spot in the canyon used to be a movie site where Larry McMurtry’s Streets of Laredo with James Garner and a few other movies were filmed in the 80s and 90s.
I missed the spot on my first pass, and when I came out beyond the high rugged palisades that rise on the Mexican side, I knew I had passed it. I doubled back and realized that the site had been changed in the last year. It was now marked on the highway only by a sign that said Information, which seemed misleading because there was no soul anywhere near there, at least of the living human type, that could have provided the least bit of information about anything. So I hope that not a lot of people took that bait and stopped there trying to get their information. It’s a red herring.
I was disappointed to find that most of the adobe structures that had constituted the movie townsite had been torn down and removed since the last time I was there only months before. Only two of the original seven or eight remained, the largest one from the old site and the little booth near the highway that had the Information sign posted in front. Still, the place is a favorite of mine, possessed of serene and spiritual power, I fancy, where the river meanders quietly beneath the high craggy red bluffs that rise on the Mexican side, a half a mile or so south of the present river bed.
The first time I stopped at that place, a few years ago, inspired by a notion on the breeze, I took my guitar out of the car and proceeded to serenade the river and lonesome hills with songs sung in a loud and heartfelt voice. I don’t know why really, only because it seemed like a good, kind of poetic thing to do, to give song back to the river in those quiet moments of a pristine morning. But when I finished and went to put my guitar away, I was greeted with applause and turned to notice a few people standing above where I was, by the roadside. They were two families of German tourists coming down to the site who had stopped short because they didn’t want to interrupt my little performance to the river and hills. I was kind of embarrassed, but accepted their genuine appreciation, wished them a good day and soulful trip, and went on my way. They said it gave them goose bumps, which I thought was nice.
This time no one came, at least to the site itself. I sat down on a low earthen bank a few steps above the river and gazed out admiring the beauty of the canyon and enjoying the quiet serenity as the murmuring waters meandered by.
My eye was somehow drawn to the top of the bluff which was at least a thousand feet high and maybe a mile distant, on the Mexican side. The bluff was rugged, and jagged rock at the top gave the impression of figures or likenesses of people and things. I fancied one figure in particular, high above and far away, as an image of Don Quijote astride his steed Rocinante, holding a large staff in his right hand, as if ready for a righteous joust with an enchanter’s giant. I gazed at this figure for what seemed like a long time as it stood there immobile, and I wondered what it actually might be. I even wondered if it might actually be a person.
I looked away at other figures, and at hawks and vultures gliding gracefully against the backdrop of the dark red bluff, and then back at the Don Quijote figure. Then, to my incredulity, the figure moved! It was not a rock outcropping in the form of a figure on horseback at all; it was in fact, as far as I can tell, a human being on horseback. A Mexican vaquero perhaps, at the rock cliff edge of his country, surveying the vast domain of the river and valley, off into El Norte below. As the figure turned and rode east, I could see the horse’s tail swish from my perch so far beneath. I waved the broadest wave my arms could make, but the austere figure made no reply. It walked the horse a short distance more along the bluff, then turned away south and out of sight.
The place where I was is a mystic site in mysterious country. Furthermore, I’m suggestible to belief in perception beyond the ordinary, enough so to make me wonder whether that figure was in fact an ordinary flesh and bone vaquero surveying the stony frontier, or perhaps some shadow emerged from an unsuspected dimension of the beyond as an inscrutable omen of uncertain interpretation, or something like that.
I could only scratch my head over this, of course, but I had an eerie feeling about the apparition that lingered with me afterwards and puzzles me still. What could Rod Serling have made of something like this on an episode of the Twilight Zone? On one hand, it’s totally straightforward, there was a rider on horseback atop that majestic bluff; on the other, out where this was, that would be an extremely rare vision. I conclude that I’ve been reading too many Carlos Castaneda books; but I would like to see the view from up there!
Puzzling over these weighty matters, I headed back toward Lajitas and Terlingua, en route back toward Alpine, where I intended to chill out from the hot day reading Emerson under the air conditioner. I got well up the highway, about halfway to Alpine when I reached over for that old book, and couldn’t find it. I was a good fifty miles past the outdoor café where I had had it last, but realized I had probably left it there on the table. Would you drive fifty miles to reclaim an old book? For that one, yes, no doubt about it. I bought it 40 years ago at a used bookstore in Tucson, for about $2.50 I think, and it has been an unassuming prized possession ever since. The troves of wisdom and eloquence it contains! The old cloth binding is disintegrating, but those sinuous sentences crack like whips, radiate like light, and resonate like harmonious strings.
It didn’t take me a minute to turn around and hit the gas going the other way on a retrieval mission. On the way, those heavenly streaks of light still shone all along and above the landscape, hours after the first sighting. I was not sorry about the error I had made. I’m absent minded at times, yes, but things tend to happen for a reason, and I felt an odd kind of virtue over going back to retrieve Emerson, my favorite writer, whom I consider the most sublime voice in American literature. Call me old fashioned, and you’re right, it’s true. With all respect to Mr. Poe, transcendentalism lives on, and will forever.
I asked about it at the counter, and the girl told me a book had in fact had been turned in and was over there, which was of course the one I was seeking. I rejoiced to have it back, and once again set out for Alpine.
The rest of the day was uneventful. The clouds that had been coming up from the southwest thickened into heavy overcast as the wind came up. A moderate rain began to fall, driven by the wind, which made the desert smell indescribably good. A brilliant rainbow formed in the eastern sky, even as it rained; then another more nebulous rainbow formed behind it, so that the sky was streaked with stray wisps of low-flung cloud and spectra on spectrum of color. Even so, I was thinking I sure hope this clears up before time for the stars to come out, because that is the ultimate light show out in these parts.
It did not clear up, not even into and through the next day. The forecast was for more clouds all through the weekend. When I woke up in the morning, about 4:30 AM, my sinuses were completely haywire, and I realized that the air conditioning vents in the house were the likely culprit. Instinct and impulse again kicked in strong with a message that this would be a good time to start out for home. With sky obscured, I couldn’t think of much else for me to do, besides maybe read in the house or drive around, so I loaded up the car and hit the road in the pitch dark of 5 AM, feeling good about the prospect of a pleasant, if very long drive and relatively early arrival back home in Houston.
At that transitional hour between night and day, one encounters far more wildlife along the roadside than vehicular traffic on the highway. I saw jackrabbits scrambling, deer turning their big dark eyes into the headlights from off the road, and a coyote darting almost to the center line from off to the left side before beating a hasty retreat. An owl swooped over the car and then low off to the right side into the brush. That startled me with delight and made me think that the spirits of the desert may be speaking, perhaps specifically to me, with an inscrutable mystic tongue.
Just as I was ruminating on this, a speeding blur crashed in from the right. I didn’t even have time to swerve before I felt the violent thud of collision with some kind of animate projectile that turned out to be a very unfortunate deer. At least it was a deer until that instant, when it very suddenly became a disarticulated mess strewn along the right margin of the highway. The deer’s moment had come, and some fate or power had selected my brand new Mercedes as the agency of its dispatch. C’est la vie, I guess; if fates or powers they be, they do possess an ironic sense of humor.
I experienced a moment of shock behind the wheel as the car dragged very noisily off to the side of the highway. From the great racket it was making, I thought it must be dragging the poor deer stuck beneath the suspension, but when I got out and looked found that it was clear underneath. I was stunned to find the right headlight knocked out and the front end underneath it folded jaggedly back into the right front tire, which was what was making the noise. This car was obviously driving no further today, and I had to start thinking about whom to call at 7 AM on a Sunday morning to try to get some help getting it and myself off of this very remote stretch of west Texas highway. A voice within me whispered, this is going to be a long and interesting day, perhaps not all bad, so keep your humor and hang in there, and this became my determined state of mind for the duration, shaken only momentarily, a good bit later, by frontline insurance claim reps on the phone.
I tried to flag down three passing big rigs, waving my hands over my head, but all of them sped up as they blew past. I was pleased to find that I did have cell phone service, at least intermittently, and I had the deluxe level of AAA membership, so that was an obvious first call. I didn’t really have an accurate idea of where I was, I only knew I was some unknown number of miles east of Sanderson, Texas. I estimated it at 10 – 15 miles for the AAA rep, who then engaged a tow service from Fort Stockton, which actually was very distant from where I was.
Shortly afterwards, a very kind and concerned Border Patrol officer pulled over and stopped. He listened to my abbreviated story of the deer while he was actually watching a confabulation of ravenous vultures clearing the highway mess in a manner perfectly consistent with both my story and nature’s circle of life. He informed me that I was in fact twenty miles east of Sanderson and four miles west of the ghost town of Dryden. He also gave me headquarters numbers for the Border Patrol and Sanderson Sherriff, and put out the word that there was a guy stuck out here with a disabled white Mercedes.
I called AAA again to inform them more accurately about my location, and they contacted another tow service, this time in Sheffield, up on I-10, a little over an hour’s drive distant. Another Border Patrol agent stopped by, clearly apprised of my situation, shaking his head and commiserating; he left a couple of bottles of water, and offered food, which I didn’t need. Then an old rancher in a pick-up truck stopped, offered help, and chatted awhile about how numerous, pesky, and dumb the deer are out here, and how the best one can do is try to be a good neighbor, even as, out here, the neighborhood may stretch for many, many miles. With the AAA call in and the Border Patrol on the case, I couldn’t see that there was anything more to be done than just wait, but I did appreciate these kindly souls with their benevolent intentions.
I sat in the car and read (Castaneda) while waiting for the tow truck, making several trips out to try to get a better phone signal and to take care of other necessary business off in the scrub desert brush. The vultures were continuing their festive banquet a couple of hundred yards away. The temperature was increasing rapidly as the rising sun began to scorch through the thin air.
The tow truck finally arrived at 9:35 AM, after I had been waiting two and a half hours. The driver, Joseph, was a strongly built friendly fellow in his late thirties. Was I glad to see him! While he was looking the car over, he apologized for keeping me waiting and said he would have arrived sooner, but the Border Patrol had stopped him up the road to ask where he was going. He told them he was coming down here on a job to pick up a guy stranded in a white Mercedes, which is exactly what the Border Patrol wanted him to do when they stopped him. God bless the Border Patrol, I thought! And God bless you too, Joseph; let’s load this car on the truck and get going!
He asked me where I was going, which I said was a good question. It was a hundred miles from where we were to Del Rio, which, limited though it is, was the next town up the road that would have any kind of services. Beyond that, it would be about 125 more miles to San Antonio, where you could get any kind of service, provided you knew where you were going, which I didn’t. Then of course there was Houston, which I estimated as being a bit over 400 miles east of where we were. So I explained this to Joseph, who stroked his chin and said, “well, hmm, I’ll take you to Houston, what the heck!”
Though I was incredulous to hear this gracious offer, I thought it sounded very good. I checked with him about every fifteen minutes for at least the next few hours to make sure he meant that and understood what kind of drive he was committing himself to, as it was even a longer drive back from Houston to where he had come from; but he never wavered. This is one stout son of a gun, I thought, and told him so. He had a good wife and four kids back in Sheffield, and I know he must have been multiplying some rate times the number of miles, but that was a real good day’s work, and then some, all to get me and my poor baby Mercedes back to where we came from.
We actually had a lot of laughs along the long, long road. I pictured the staff in the dealership where I bought the Mercedes shaking their heads and saying something like, “Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown, we really expected better of you than to bring the car back wrecked within a few weeks, and trashed out, with deer blood and guts smeared all down the right side!” I thought it might be hard to face that kind of shame and was almost relieved to learn that the dealership doesn’t have a body shop.
The part about the grisly deer stuff on the right side of the car turned out to be quite significant for insurance considerations. My agent informed me that it matters whether the adjustors, taking their cues from the body shop estimator, conclude that the deer hit you, or, alternatively, that you hit the deer. If they conclude that the deer hit you, the claim falls under your comprehensive coverage, which means it is not your fault, nor subject to surcharge (i.e., premium increase); whereas if they conclude that you hit the deer, it falls under your collision coverage, meaning that it is your fault and your premium will increase. Thus the vestiges of deer on the right side put me into the clear; the deer hit me. I never even really saw it.
My AAA policy took care of the first 200 miles of towing, which expired in downtown Sabinal, Uvalde County. Sabinal may be a providential place, and I don’t mean to put it down, except to say that under these circumstances it was not a very inviting-looking place to spend the night or try to get your new Mercedes fixed. When I called State Farm to verify their coverage of the rest of the towing from there, it was on the assumption that my high limit/high deductible policy would surely take care of that under my comprehensive coverage. But the young rep on the phone corrected my understanding by indicating that it covered towing only as far as the nearest body shop, so he began looking on his list for an approved shop in Sabinal.
Well, having paid my State Farm premium dutifully for the last 32 years, I mentioned to him that that was just unacceptable from my point of view. But frankly, I didn’t know what else to do. I momentarily considered the possibility of dropping the car off for repair someplace in San Antonio, but then checked on the towing mileage rate with Joseph, who said it was $5.00 per mile. I did the math quickly and then just decided to suck it up and take it home, which we did.
The long and short of it is that Joseph and I had some more laughs rolling all the way down to the Bayou City on the Gulf Coast, arriving a little after 6 PM. He unhooked the car from the trailer outside of an approved body shop on the South Loop in Houston, and I give big burly and tough old Joseph a good fellowship hug and told him to take care on the road back and good care of his good wife and kids. Having been alerted to these goings on, my son and his fiancé had arrived to pick me up, and we adjourned to the adjacent Pappasitos, where I proceeded to tell them and embellish this story over pitchers of strong margaritas. I counted these many blessings to be able to sleep in my own bed that night. And now I can’t wait to get white jewel of a car back out of the shop and back on the road!
