On the Road: Big Bend National Park
by Jen Payne

Our trip led us closer and closer to Big Bend country, with high, looming mesas and arid deserts as far as you could see. Wire fences noted ranches and homes along the road.

It is difficult to describe how foreign this place is. Branford is a growing town of 29,000; Austin explodes at 500,000. By comparison, the towns we visit on this trip count populations like 7,800 (Fort Stockton), 455 (Marathon), and 250 (Terlingua or Study Butte).

As we drove Route 385, we followed old electrical poles--short well-worn wooden stakes, in no particular shape or conformity. Some still wore glass transformers, now perched in sad and telltale disemploy.

Signs of approaching Marathon, Texas encouraged familiar images: shops, restaurants, people bustling about for last minute holiday gifts. Instead, we crested a small hill and looked down into town--a two block expanse with a gas station, gift shop, bank, coffee shop and The Gage Hotel. Like an oasis in the vast, flat-out landscape.

As I flew into Austin the day before, we passed north of Houston. The pilot announced it on the intercom and I bravely looked, expecting to see the great metropolis as if peering down from a skyscraper. I strained to see for several minutes before I saw it...a small remark on the ground below, like a chess piece on a giant game board.

In the same way, Marathon sat in play in this desert.