Van Horn Texas

January 11, 2009

We left Deming this morning and headed south to Columbus, New Mexico. The idea was to get off of I-10 and see more country. It worked beautifully. The two-lane blacktop roads were in fine repair and had virtually no traffic. Our only company seemed to be white pickups and SUV s decorated with a green diagonal stripe. Friendly folks, they all waved and smiled as they went about their border-guarding duties.

There are an amazing array of hand-made "hoodoos" along Highway 9. Carefully stacked rocks decorate little sections of the landscape - sometimes numbering fifty or more in a half-acre or so in places. They stand anywhere from 1 to 5 feet high. Often they contain complicated balance feats and are quite attractive. A little research informed me that it's a folk art form everywhere on the planet! I guess the prolific collection is due to the amount of foot traffic, the time available, and just having something to memorialize -- like a border crossing!

El Paso is a most unlikely place. The town bustles and jostles, ebbs and flows, and crowds itself into a tiny little canyon far from anywhere else. It boggles my mind to find this urban spin in the middle of an area that's a hundred of miles of desert and solitude in any direction.

As quickly as you are "in it", surrounded by swirling energy, driving defensively and getting surprised at every on or off ramp you're out of it again - and back into the quiet, open desert. From somewhere in the back of your mind seems to come a mumble;

"What was THAT all about?"

Van Horn is about two hours east of El Paso. It's good place to stop. We enjoyed another great southwest sunset, happy hour and dinner. Time for bed!