Day 79

I ate breakfast in Terlingua, which is advertised as a ghost town. It looked more like a trailer park to me. The café was also half full, which showed two signs of life—the people and the place of business. Thoroughly unimpressed, I harrumphed back through Big Bend. It was too hot to hike, so after rehydrating at the visitor center, I kept on to the north.

In his book Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon takes a moment to observe the desert. He tries to observe as much as he can to refute the idea that there’s nothing out here. About two miles outside Big Bend, I did the same for a strict ten minutes. I then checked out the plants on the miraculous PictureThis app, which will identify about any plant you throw at it.

I noticed:

1. The road, paved with black and red rocks
2. The sky (duh)
3. Rows of mountains along the horizon
4. A truck with a teardrop trailer
5. Reflective roadside posts, presumably for that Texas Flood Stevie was talking about
6. A tube running through concrete under the road, for flood control
7. An obnoxiously yellow tractor
8. Gravel
9. Sand
10. Dirt
11. Large rocks
12. Dead grass
13. Buffel-grass
14. A gray moth with delicate black spots
15. Bahia flowers
16. Sumac
17. Honeysweets
18. Mock vervain
19. Verdant grass
20. A brilliant orange butterfly (not a monarch)
21. Wooden fence posts
22. Barbed wire
23. Birds, unseen, squawking away
24. Crownbeard 
25. A spiny hackberry bush
26. Whitethorn acacia
27. Old man’s beard
28. Spanish daggers
29. A large yellow butterfly with black edges
30. Creosote bushes
31. A Mallard RV with aftermarket mud flaps
32. A silver Silverado
33. Ragweed
34. Globemallows
35. Pinkladies
36. Sage
37. Heat in varying amounts (strongest on the road)
38. Metal fence posts
39. Cracked mud
40. Driftwood
41. Flies
42. Ants
43. Haze cloaking the mountains
44. Swooping, stretchy clouds
45. My car
46. Me, myself, and I

Another two hours brought me to Fort Stockton, where I set up shop. There’s nothing much to write home about here. I have to start planning ahead more, as the weather is turning cold. I might end up in more hotel rooms than I’d like, mostly for the guitar’s sake. I also haven’t decided where I’m going next. I’m leaning toward north, with a quick swoop through Kansas and Missouri. Find out next time.