Put fifty dollars in the tank yesterday and headed southwest with the border and the Rio Grande in mind. Back down I-20 West to Monahans and the Sand Hills National Park feeling eager to get beyond where I had already been.
The dunes were white and the wind blew strong forcing me to squint while I walked up and down watching the sand rippling in waves across. On the wind, I heard traces of children screaming and laughing. A few were sliding the steep slopes on rented saucers, the ones we used in snow where I come from. I added this to the list of things to show my own kids, something we will do together, and I will hear them laugh with the same joy as these.
And then I remember that my children are grown, or nearly so. A wind gust slaps my face with a blast of fine sand. I remember, right then, when I believed both you and I were both horses, even though I knew it wasn't really true, but believing is so much better than math.
Too much of that kind of thinking so I head for the truck, and then the two of us head for Fort Stockton.
There are oil fields all the way out there. Such a huge part of West Texas looks like a Frankenstein monster threaded and run through with pipelines, tanks, pumps, drilling rigs, flares burning off gas
and a particular nauseating subtle stench surrounds it all.
I listened to two men speculate about what happens when you pump oil and gas out of the ground. One said the cavities immediately fill again, with what substance and from what source, I don't know. The other said the cavities result in sink holes. Empty spaces just under the crust that eventually give way to a yawning abyss. I imagine this whole basin dropping underneath me while driving 80 miles an hour.
Driving past RV parks and a man camp of trailer homes arranged in long rows, I notice a place called the I Don't Care Bar and Grill.
The dunes were white and the wind blew strong forcing me to squint while I walked up and down watching the sand rippling in waves across. On the wind, I heard traces of children screaming and laughing. A few were sliding the steep slopes on rented saucers, the ones we used in snow where I come from. I added this to the list of things to show my own kids, something we will do together, and I will hear them laugh with the same joy as these.
And then I remember that my children are grown, or nearly so. A wind gust slaps my face with a blast of fine sand. I remember, right then, when I believed both you and I were both horses, even though I knew it wasn't really true, but believing is so much better than math.
Too much of that kind of thinking so I head for the truck, and then the two of us head for Fort Stockton.
There are oil fields all the way out there. Such a huge part of West Texas looks like a Frankenstein monster threaded and run through with pipelines, tanks, pumps, drilling rigs, flares burning off gas
and a particular nauseating subtle stench surrounds it all.
I listened to two men speculate about what happens when you pump oil and gas out of the ground. One said the cavities immediately fill again, with what substance and from what source, I don't know. The other said the cavities result in sink holes. Empty spaces just under the crust that eventually give way to a yawning abyss. I imagine this whole basin dropping underneath me while driving 80 miles an hour.
Driving past RV parks and a man camp of trailer homes arranged in long rows, I notice a place called the I Don't Care Bar and Grill.
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