SimpleSimon6 Goes to the Desert

by rollingthunder6



03May97: We depart Columbia o/a 0730. Pretty good ride all the way, bit of a rainstorm a little east of Atlanta. Pull into a McDonald's for a bite; I ask for a McArch or whatever their new "adult product" is supposed to be called; and of course, they don't have it; screw 'em. Then -- we leave w/o me getting anything. S. and I have a good time shucking & jiving, fetching up stories of our past, talking about women, sex, etc. Good "male bonding" stuff. Ride is mainly uneventful, though we count 12 dead armadillos going through Alabama and Louisiana. In Louisiana, around 1800 hrs we pull into the first DQ we see, outside of Monroe; big birthday party going on, plus it's Saturday night (= hangout/cruising site for the local teenagers). We eyeball a couple of young things in a pickup truck. They eyeball us back. They edge around to check out our jeep, the plates -- we are obviously not locals!! They turn out to be jailbait. We move on. Decide to go as far as Dallas/Ft. Worth -- why not?? Decide to crash and burn on the other side of Ft. Worth. Right. We ride the autobahn around Dallas, through Ft. Worth. We start looking for motels as we leave what's obviously the outskirts of Ft. Worth -- not much in the way of motels. We go around a bend in the road and suddenly -- nothing. No lights, no buildings, nothing -- just pitch black sky. We press on. There are no motels. At one exit there's a sign for a Comfort Inn, so we exit, do a VR, then a point recon. The point recon turns into an area recon. No Comfort Inn anywhere. We get back on the autobahn and eventually spot a Best Western where we crash. No sooner am I asleep than I slip into one of my nightmares and start screaming. S. has to wake me up out of it. I go back to sleep and have two more. Not a good omen.

04May97, Sunday: Gorgeous day!! We are finally back into my kind of country -- wide open stuff but with still some vegetation. Lots of free-range cattle. We see lots of raptors overhead -- can't positively identify, but I believe they are vultures. I can feel myself really opening up as we ride along -- I love this wide open stuff: still in reaction mode against triple-canopy jungle!!

Along the way, yesterday and today, I do a lot of reading. Finished Hume's _Inquiry_Concerning_Human_Understanding_ -- really good stuff, well written; a bit problematic in its implications, though. But as the author himself was wont to say, he was the first to admit he couldn't actually live according to his own conclusions in that book. I also read St. John of the Cross's _Dark_Night_Of_The_Soul_. After this one, I guess I have to finally admit that I'm not ready any time soon to become a mystic -- no desire to give up the pleasures of the flesh, for one thing. As for the rest of it .... man, there's some really intriguing stuff in this book; but the question that refuses to quit asking itself in my head is, "How much of this stuff is real, in any sense, and how much of this is delusional?" "For those who believe, no reason is necessary; for those who don't no amount of reason will ever suffice." Incredible stuff ... but of no use to someone like me, on my particular spiritual pilgrimage/journey. Maybe Dionysius the Aeropagite, or Theresa of Avila, or Ignatius Loyola, or Jakob Boehme might be of more use. Have to look them up when I get back. Also, I think there's a touch of the Manichaean to ol' St. John of the Cross, and that's for sure not for me! That (i.e., such an opinion), in turn, though, might be nothing more than my own lack of spiritual development!

Chicken-egg, eh what-what?

Start reading James's _Varieties_Of_Religious_Experiences_ (which would be much better re-titled as "Varieties of Spiritual Experiences" inasmuch as it has NOTHING to do with *organizational* religions) but am having a hard time -- can't keep my eyes off the passing countryside. The stretch from Ft. Worth to Abilene is really nice, but west of Abilene ... it's a little tedious. At one point (between Ft. Worth and Abilene) as we come up on a copse of trees, a great blue heron takes off from up ahead (a hidden pond, in defilade?) and overflies us as we ride by. Also, a little later: on the right, on a hilltop, 50m from the side of the road, someone has created a calvary scene with brightly painted life-sized statues: two crosses (the thieves), a couple of Roman soldiers, Jesus bowed over under his own cross as he arrives at the top of Golgotha. Guess they got religion out here, too.

Stopped in Odessa to get gas and fill up the jerry can. Brought produce at a Tex-Mex IGA and sat in the parking lot eating a healthful lunch of celery, apples, and tomatoes. Some Hispanic guy serenades us with his boom box, and I end up buying some Tejano tapes from him.

We leave I-20 at Exit #80 (Monahans) and fill up the water jugs at the Exxon station. Why didn't we fill up in Odessa? Don't ask!! We are now on Texas 18, going south -- we're in the middle of damn nowhere, and you know what I'm seeing that I didn't see the last time I was down here 8 years ago? A lot of plastic grocery bags!! Caught up, wind-driven, in the barbed wire along the road. Shit!!

Arrive in Marathon and top off the gas. There are no signs *in* Marathon on how to get to the park, i.e., which road to take. When US385 dead-ends into US90, take a right, go 10-20m, and then turn left onto a paved road which in fact is US385S. Al this before you get into Marathon. Don't go into Marathon unless maybe you're looking for Pheidippides or gasoline or some such (yuk yuk; my bad jokes follow me everywhere, n'est ce pas?).

The countryside opens up more and more, and gets bigger and bigger, and better and better. Lots and lots of vultures, too -- maybe they ought to make the vulture the national bird of the Texas Republic, when that comes about. We arrive at Big Bend and go to our first camp site -- same place W. and I camped years and years ago. Access is via a very rough 4-wheel-drive dirt road. On the way we encounter a yuppie from Kansas whose fancy Toyota Landcruiser (not sure about this last part; it was a Toyota, tho) has broken down on the upslope of a defile. Upon questioning, he says, "I was making a run up this thing when all of the sensor lights came on and it just quit." S. and I look under the hood and find that the air conduit from the intake scoop has become disconnected from the throttle body. There's an air pressure sensor on most fuel-injected engines, often located on or near the throttle body; that's what went off and shut the engine down. We reconnect things (he didn't even have a Philips-head screwdriver) for the guy and he's gone. Christ! How long would that dumb fucker have been there before it would have occurred to him to look under the hood (which he had NOT done before we arrived)?

We pitch camp at 1900 hrs. (It takes a while to just get there.) Along the way we see/encounter several families/groups camped out -- that's more people than I saw the whole time I was here last time. We see lots of people also the next day -- Christ, how many people will there be here next month, when school is out? Anyway, back to pitching camp -- waiting until 1900 hours is too late -- although it is daylight until about 2000, we are deep into the mountains, and when the sun goes down, bingo! It's totally dark. Reminds me a lot of the times at Bad Tolz in the Alps ....

We are located in a big bowl, with hills, ridges, all around us. As we pitch camp (I break a couple of tent pegs -- very, very rocky "soil" -- good thing I brought along some spares, but in the rocky "soil" the big spares do NOT work as well as the small ones -- they're too thick to go in well and grip, which is an occasion for a lot of sexual yucking and joking between S. and me), as we pitch camp, I see, first one, then two, then three, eventually six vultures appear and start swirling and gliding off the cliffs around our camp, coming down again and again to check us out, hovering overhead. I grab my camera and go ape taking pictures. Fantastic! Run out of film and go to reload -- SHIT! When I go to rewind, I can feel that the film has jumped the sprockets and has never advanced beyond frame one! Shit shit shit and other fouler expletives. By the time I repair the camera and reload, it is dark and the vultures are gone. We prepare food and sit on a log eating. Suddenly two bats appear and fly around and around, in the weird jerky way they have. Way cool. Pretty soon I turn in -- now comes the worst part of peacetime camping for me. I normally get by on 5 hours of sleep -- what am I supposed to do between 2100 and 0500? I can't sleep that long, and getting into my head to pass the time is not a good neighborhood to go to. S. brought along a camp lantern, which he lights, and a guitar. The camp lantern light makes the orange walls of my nylon tent glow softly inside. S. stays outside, plays his guitar and sings in the night for about an hour. Very, very nice -- first time I've ever experienced anything like that. (And I'll bet that by now you're wondering, why doesn't he spend his time reading by the camp lantern light? Well, you see, there are these little flying critters called gnats, and they like the camp lantern light, and the inside of my nose, too .... yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I'm nothin' but a friggin' wimp ....)

I can't sleep. At 2300 I get up; the sky has cleared up so I call S. out of his tent and show him the comet. It's better than I ever saw it in Columbia, by far. Gorgeous. At about the same time, a hoot owl starts up.

Next morning, we're sitting on the same log, drinking coffee at 0630. Sun is coming up -- "Salve Sol Invictus", I say, and raise my arms up high. That's about the extent of my religion these days. I wonder if I'm not the only person in the history of mankind to practice the rites of Mithras in this place, ever. Weird shit like that goes on in my head sometimes. But then, when *my* jeep breaks down in the desert, at least I know enough to look under the hood, so I guess I'm alright after all. Anyway, we're drinking coffee facing the ridge behind the camp (300-400 meter height, but steep). Suddenly three deer come over the crest and start down, gingerly picking their way through the rocks and boulders and scrub vegetation. Once they are no longer silhouetted against the skyline they are really hard to see, but I grab my camera and move out on a course that I hope will intercept theirs. I don't even bother to change out of the flip-flops I wear in camp (another bad aspect of backpacking: ya gotta wear footwear, which I hate). I spend the next hour or so stalking the deer and shoot about two rolls of film. At one point I get between the two does who have crossed the trail, and the buck, who hasn't. One of the does is up on her hind legs, browsing the top of a bush. I'm getting shots of her when I hear the buck do that huffing-puffing-grunting noise they do on occasion. I back off and turn around and catch him as he bounds across the trail and joins the does. I follow them a while more and manage to get quite close.

Back in camp, we decide to climb to the top of the ridge that runs between the mesas in front of the camp. Last time I was here, I discovered that the view from there is truly incredible. It's a fairly stiff hump up there, but worth it. Along the way I get some nice pictures of various cacti in bloom. When we get to the top ... it's really breathtaking. We each go off and find our own separate little spots and sit in silence for a long time. This place with the mesa walls rising immediately on the right and left of us ... these moments ... are awesome. And the vultures are back. But this time, soaring, gliding, below us as well as above us. And my camera works.

The afternoon turns ... brutal. I decide to relocate our patrol base, which entails a 25-mile cross-country jaunt over rough "high-clearance" terrain. The weather is unseasonably very very hot: 98, 100, 104 degrees (so we find out later). NO shade at all. Along the way we stumble upon an abandoned adobe hooch nestled on the side of a mesa, backed right up against it. According to legend/fact, a Mexican built the place and lived here for 40 years until his death at 104 years of age, in 1947. I mull over the fact that some guy died here the year I was born, and fifty years later I'm squatting on his turf gobbling my home-made LLRP rats and slurping hot water. S. beings to express doubts about the vehicle's continued ability to bear up under the punishment. Besides, this desert stuff isn't turning out to be his bag, after all .... Eventually, I agree to abort the mission after we do the Santa Elena canyon. But now, for me, it's just a walk in the sun. At the top, and inside the canyon itself, it's impressive alright -- but now, now that the op is off .... it's just not the same. There is one more site we do go to, though ....

We leave Big Bend and after a 2-day drive arrive at Hueco, a site of jumbled syenite porphyry rock outcroppings smack dab in the middle of the Chihuahua desert. A determined half-hour or so climb takes us to the top of one of the formations. Again, a spectacular view: miles to the nearest mesas and hill ranges. S. and I split up. I spend the afternoon alternately exploring and reading my _Varieties_Of_Religious_Experiences_, and trying to "meditate" (such as the likes of me are capable -- hell, this "meditating" is nothing more than carrying on a mental conversation with yourself; been doing that for years - what's the big deal?). At one point I stumble onto a rock passage/cave and hole up in there for a while, steeping myself in the dank-dark coolness, and finding different sunbeams to read my book by as the sun moves across the afternoon sky. Around 1800 I spend the last daylight hour before I have to ruck up and di-di, stripped down and laying on a more-or-less ergonomic rock (the ruck, drive-on rag, and wadded up jungle fatigue shirt providing strategic padding) catching rays from my own private slow-setting sun. The air is crisp and clear. The waning sunlight shadows are so stark and abrupt in contrast to the areas still illumined by the sun. You close your eyes and there's a golden haze on the inside of your eyelids that positively sucks at your eyeballs ... so seductive, it would be too easy to slip off into recollections of the past, of happier and not-so-happier times and climes. "Selective recall syndrome", no doubt. I direct my thoughts elsewhere ... in spite of my readings and ruminations, I feel no further advanced in whatever it was I sought when I came out here ... to do this right, I probably need to come out here ALONE and for a lot longer period of time. Eventually, I give up on it and just sit for long minutes, emptying my mind instead, just ... existing mindlessly in the golden sunlight, conscious of nothing but my breathing. Suddenly the image of T_____ floats into my consciousness; God damn but I'd love to bring HER out here. Yeah, right; I can see it now already: Simon Stylites celebrating the rites of Astarte, and making up for lost time at that! Son of a bitch! Spiritual retreat indeed -- you just can't give it up, can you, boy? I laugh at myself, out loud even, and open my eyes. The lower edge of the sun is just touching the top of a nearby boulder in front and above me; through squint-slitted eyes I stare into and watch it until it has slipped totally behind the rock. Salve Sol Invictus.

Later, on the way back to Columbia we stop by the Viet-nam war memorial in Midland, to pay our respects. Out in the middle of nowhere, S. and I must be the only people for miles around, strangely appropriate in the crepuscular light of the early evening. There are some interesting write-ups on some of the bricks in their Court of Honor. Since I was a part of all that at one time -- shit, that's ALL that I'm any part of at all, any more, to hear my wife tell it -- I can read between the lines of some of the stuff inscribed there, and suddenly, it all starts striking close to home again. Too close. After a while, I want nothing more than to sit down and have a good cry, but that's not possible with S. around. I haven't gotten to where I can cry when other people are around (I guess my "male sensitivity training" hasn't sunk in very far yet); and besides, S. wasn't a part of any of that .... so instead I turn my Ranger tab way up high onto "max" setting and we get the hell out of there, in awkward silence, with teeth clenched for a long, long time.

Last night traveling ... speeding through the dark of east Texas and northern Louisiana, listening to Tejano and Cajun tapes I bought from that Hispanic street vendor in Odessa ... let's see ... since 1960, this is the 4th time I've been in the Southwest. I like it more each time. I could live out here real easily. I like the people, especially the Hispanics. I'd have to learn Tex-Mex: the remnants of my Castillian Spanish of 35 years ago ain't for shit out here ... didn't get anything figured out, worked out, or decided, "Psycho-spiritually" or somatically - I didn't get a goddamned thing out of my system ... of course, maybe if the op had gone as planned ... as if travelling 1500 miles to a desert hideaway was really, really a prerequisite for that ... still quixotically chasing and "beau gesting". Shit, I thought you'd left all that behind ... I guess not, after all ....

We pull off the autobahn in Monroe and go into the huge Pecanland Mall for a meal. They have one of those "food court" things and we decide to hit the "chinese " option. I get the suspicion that the checkout/cashier woman is a Viet, and before I know it, I find myself trying to talk to her in Viet-namese. She is plenty surprised alright, and so am I -- I don't normally talk to strangers, Viets or roundeyes. Dumbass thing to do. I wonder if I'm starting to lose my edge ....


rollingthunder6
born in the past, where he still spends a lot of time
Sun 20 deg Taurus 97 / Moon in Aquarius


Back to Glorious Photo of RT6