It must rain tonight. It simply must. The ground is crying for it, aching, writhing in stoic aridity. Any change in routine would be cause for a grand celebration, a fête, a parade down Main Street. Dominoe, my faithful canine companion of the Dalmation persuasion, could care less. Dogs can be so superior in intellect and virtue.
Texas is, well, big. The first milepost beyond the Louisiana border solemnly stated 630 plus change. It would take just short of an eternity to trickle down to 1. But don't complain! Belly-achin' ain't allowed in this here parts. Even the trash cans mumble "Don't Mess with Texas."
Today, somewhere past Vernon, East Texas transmorgified into West Texas. It was subtle, but still more of a difference than simply crossing the Mississippi River. Not far past Sherman, small pump wells appeared, bobbing hypnotically to no one in particular. Never saw any big rigs, but got my picture of one and that's what counts. Taken the photo, ergo it exists. I struggle to choose one view of this portion of the "You Ess of Aye" that captures the feeling of being here, and never really succeeded. Take that in the nose, Kodak.
The first ripples in the terrain, mere pimples, annoyances of topography, brought sheer excitement. Pastel earth tones, weather- and time-worn moundlike hills, even the yawning roof of sky brought back that first-time-in-the- West feeling, circa Wyoming. Yes, the sky definitely was growing more expansive, swallowing the margins and pushing back the horizons, dwarfing my insignificance.
I saw a few tumbleweeds lazily saunter across the road.
I saw flat vistas that stretched beyond the curve of the horizon.
I saw vast farmland without sign of any farm house or farm people.
I saw many towns with their Main Street decorated in plywood.
.... and I found a canyon, a real life, gash in the earth, an "in-yer-face" vista, earth slashing cañon! What the hell is Palo Duro Canyon doing here in West Texas? Is it some unwanted, abandoned lost step child from Arizona? Shall we place its picture on milk cartons?
The rouge red siltstone might as well be the same as that in the Black Hills, and those soft crumbly slopes of azure-grey-yellow could have been imported from the Badlands. The muddy sliver of a river? Must of dragged that in from southern Utah. How could something named Prairie Dog Town Fork of Red River have done this much work? It must be some sort of grand forgery, a gross trick, like kidnapping the London Bridge to Arizona.
With but a scant 7 left of the 630-some miles to transgress the pangea of Texas, the ground simply falls off the table. Splat. Welcome to New Mexico. The land in the east was built for the horizontal; here it is turned up on end, with jagged serrated ridges and truncated crumbly mesas poking into the belly of that immense sky. Any starring role for the part of "vegetation" is aptly played by the understudy, a drab knarled grey scrub brush.
Dominoe yawns and sleeps through all of this mid-continental hooplah.
The West is here- the East is there and I embrace the strange uniqueness of it all.
