Voyager America

Welcome to the Boom Town...

Santa Fe Plaza store window

Tesuque neighborhood

Traveling, even if one pays a little attention, is a rolling lesson in history. Of course, what constitutes "history" is a question under much scrutiny today, and rightfully so. Does the focus of history revolve around big people and big events, or is it, like Tolstoy believed, the sum total of the multitude of variables and decisions made by all involved? Is history more accurately told locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, or some swirling composite of these areas? Who gets included and who tells the stories? Whose voice is left out and why? Is "knowing" history just interesting in itself, or is it possible that "knowing" history can lead us to make decisions that move us "ahead"?  All in all, we are a nation that does not want to pay too much attention to all this. We seem to understand and make sense of things mostly within the frame of our own lifetimes and mostly within those "histories" that we perceive have some direct impact on us.

I hadn't been in Gatesville for almost 40 years, Big Bend National Park for 40 years, and not at Carlsbad Caverns for 50 years. So, for parts of this trip, I'm reliving my own personal history.  Leaving Philadelphia and traveling through West Virginia (see our first blog), Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, and New Mexico has taken us through some distinct regions. However, a common theme has been the boom or bust cycle our American economy spurs. Very few places we have visited are in some kind of stasis, that grand American vision of "hometown". Rather, places are either in a boom phase, like north Dallas, Texas, or in a state of decay because the economic engine has left their station, like Coalwood, West Virginia. Each specific region adds particular details: geography, weather and water availability, the different people living in an area and their mutual and competing interests, the prior histories of a region and of the people living in the region, innovation and technology and their effects on each area, the rise of new consumer demands (just who creates these "demands" is interesting to consider), the US military interest in a given region, the US and State Constitutions, and tribal laws that hold jurisdiction in an area, and the effects of luck and serendipity to name but some factors.

Santa Fe streets

Carrizozo, NM, streets

Technology and the Internet can lead to new possibilities, like the company in Gatesville, Medical Plastics Laboratory,  that makes life-like plastic skeletons and sells them worldwide to hospitals and medical schools. The national homogenization of hotel chains, dollar stores, Walmarts, fast food places, drug stores, gas stations, and hardware stores has led to most towns with more than 5,000 people having a similar strip of businesses on the main highway by the town, but not in the older, downtown area, which is usually less vital. While all of this does help stabilize local economies, it does not reach more deeply into the boom or bust cycle. If a town is going bust because its economic engine has dried up, these enterprises will go bust with it. The surface scars of towns and areas after the bust are easy to see. The deeper wounds of this American process lie more hidden in the hearts and minds of our people and get played out as we move to create the future.

In thinking about economic concerns, a metaphor that has recently surfaced is the idea of "invasive plants". Living in Philadelphia, I'm aware there is a clear movement to return the region to its native flora and rid the area of non-native, invasive plants. Native flora, it is believed, best sustains a local, ecological balance into the future. What would a "native" economic venture look like that did not simply destroy (take over) local businesses, but was compatible with them, and also could fold more seamlessly back into the local economy (life) when it was no longer profitable? Can the boom or bust cycle be replaced with a more consistently evolving process by creating business ventures that meet a "native plant" standard?

Madrid, NM: From coal town to artist colony

Magdalena, NM, our home for the past three weeks boomed in 1885 when a spur of the Santa Fe railroad arrived. Magdalena quickly became a regional hub for shipping cattle and sheep to other parts of the region and country. 1919 is the high water mark for the number of animals shipped from Magdalena, 21,677 cattle and 150,00 sheep. Ore extraction of Smithsonite, also benefitting from the railroad, added to the boom. Some of the remnants of the boom are still quite visible, but the effects on the citizens today is, at best, only a guess on my part. However, I wish such histories and changes, and their effects on people's lives, will be brought to the light of day for everyone. From such publicly open insight, can a more sustaining and inclusive life be attained? 

Magdalena - Santa Fe Railroad Station

Magdalena Shipping Pens

Magdalena Hotel

In Santa Fe, we came across this forceful, native woodcarving in a shop window. The description of the piece offered by the artist is another view of American history and economy. This voice is certainly part of the open insight hoped for above.

Second Prize Carving at 96th Annual Santa Fe Indian Market

See Text Below

"Together with Spirit and Nature We Fight"

This piece was made to symbolize the "State of Our World". There is a fight going on that has been exposed to the modern world. A battle known only by those who understand that the Earth is our mother and our home: we only have one. As caretakers of the Earth, we were meant to live in harmony with nature, not destroy it. Mankind, as a whole, now understands the steps we must take to change the state of our world. Clean means of energy are available but we battle the hold of fossil fuels and its industrial empire. Proud Warrior God Katsina, is representing the Warrior Spirit of Mankind. He is battling a two-headed serpent representing the oil industry and its coils on humanity. The red tailed hawk represents "Mother Nature" and its response to the industry's ignorance. As technology has grown in the past fifty years, so has the incline of natural catastrophes.  We can change and save our Mother, but only as one. 

WE MUST LEARN HOW TO LIVE BETTER FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS.

 Voyager America  

BIG Natural Wonders Continue:

Carlsbad Caverns National Park, Carlsbad, NM

The Natural Entrance Trail into the caverns.

"Beauty and wonder...above and below. High ancient sea ledges, deep rocky canyons, flowering cactus, and desert wildlife...treasures above the ground in the Chihuahuan Desert. Hidden beneath the surface are more than 119 caves...formed when sulfuric acid dissolved limestone leaving behind caverns of all sizes and strange but beautiful creations everywhere."

I last passed through Gatesville, Texas, almost 40 years ago and last passed through Big Bend National Park 40 years ago.  Now it is on to Carlsbad Caverns which I have only visited once before, 50 years ago, the summer of 1970.  I came here with two friends, David Apple and Tom McAbee.  We were on an eight week road trip around America just after David and I graduated from Pennridge High. Tom had just finished his freshman year at Hamilton College.  We spent a few good days with David's relatives, the Hunsickers, in El Paso, Texas.  We then drove from El Paso to Carlsbad straight through the night.  And what a ride: I remember the road being filled with jackrabbits, snakes, and Night Hawks----they came onto the tar road at night for its warmth and seemed to be everywhere.  We slept in the car in the Carlsbad Caverns National Park parking lot until they opened and then ventured inside.  The world inside the cave was beyond imagination---so huge---so beautiful---who knew such things existed. From my last time in the cave, I remembered the immensity of the Big Room, that a 37 story building could fit into one part of it (I actually remembered it to be 17 stories so it was way bigger than I remembered), and I remembered these very delicate shapes, called helictites, that were in a part of the cave we did not now have access to. 50 years is an amazing stretch of time to reckon with.  This awesome cave was the perfect place to enjoy such a reckoning. 

Some of the Giants that tower above our heads.

The caverns are filled with stalagmites, stalactites and so many other strange and fascinating formations.

 

The Big Room. Floor space in the Big Room is about the size of 14 football fields.

This formation is called Drapery.

Some of these long formations are as thin as soda straws.

In the lower right corner of this photo you can see the railings along the walking path.
It lends some perspective to the immensity of the area of this chamber of the Big Room.

White Sands National Park, Alamagordo, NM

Our first glimpse of White Sands National Park in the far distance. 
The white strip before the distant mountains is the park.

"Like No Place Else on Earth. Rising from the heart of the Tularosa Basin is one of the world's great natural wonders - the glistening white sands of New Mexico. Great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert, creating the world's largest gypsum dunefield. White Sands National Park preserves a major portion of this unique dunefield, along with the plants and animals that live there."

After an mind-blowing time at Carlsbad Caverns, we drove over the Sacramento Mountains and through the Lincoln Forest to Alamagordo, NM on our way to White Sands National Monument. Because of Covid precautions, the Visitor Centers of the national parks and monuments are not open, however each location usually has a table outdoors, manned by a park ranger, with maps, pamphlets and other sources of information about each location. The ranger at White Sands was extremely excited to tell us about a very recent geological find that has elevated the status of the National Monument to a National Park.....White Sands National Park! 

In 2018, scientists discovered footprints that appear to show humans stalking a giant sloth. The human footprints were found inside the footprints of the sloth as it was tracked. Another set of footprints discovered is believed to be a young female who walked for over a mile with a toddler's footprints occasionally showing up besides her. This is really amazing. You can read more about these incredible discoveries on the White Sands website under Fossilized Footprints. Also National Geographic recently published an article in October of 2020 about these extraordinary finds. Type National Geographic White Sands into your browser to read this story.

White Sands National Park occupies just a portion of this massive gypsum dunefield. You can stand out in the dunes and see nothing but sand, immediately transported to another place and time....and maybe even another planet or moon. A road takes you 8 miles into the dunefield. There are hiking trails, picnic areas, back-country campsites and huge dunes you can slide down. And the sand is pure white and so fine, sparkling like crystals in the sun.

There is another side, a dark side, to these pure white sands. As big as the national park feels to you when you are standing deep into the dunes, it pales in size compared to the rest of this massive dunefield. Located to the north of the national park is the huge White Sands Missile Range. It is the site of the "Trinity" nuclear test, part of the Manhattan Project. "Trinity' was the code name of the first detonation of an implosion-design plutonium nuclear device. The complexity of the design of this new "atomic" bomb required a major effort from the Los Alamos Laboratory in northern New Mexico, and concerns about whether it would work led to a decision to conduct the first nuclear test at White Sands Missile Range on July 16, 1945. The rest of the story is a very grim part of our history and the history of the world. The same kind of bomb was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945.

The beautiful pure white dunes of the national park in juxtaposition to the dark, harsh reality of the missile base and its history, is quite an unsettling contrast. Today, White Sands Missile Range regularly conducts missile tests. What kind we have no idea. But residents of Alamagordo hear them all the time.

Could this be the surface of the moon?

The recent discovery of human and giant sloth footprints at White Sands
National Park tell a fascinating story as depicted in these illustrations.

The sands of White Sands are forever shifting and changing shapes.

Many plants and wildlife thrive in these dunefields. Bobcat, Coyote, Kit Fox, American
Badger, Apache Pocket Mouse, Lesser Nighthawk, Burrowing Owl, Grasshopper Mouse,
Pallid Bat, Desert Cottontail Rabbit and Greater Roadrunner all live here.

Derek suggested that we take Selfies in the
different places we visit. We are happy to comply.

Voyager America

Heading into the last stop in America....

Big Bend National Park and Big Bend State Park, Texas

I came through Big Bend country 40 years ago.  I was rolling toward Colorado with Jesse Rettstadt to see friends.  Once we hit Fort Stockton, Texas, and headed south to Big Bend, it felt and seemed like we were in absolutely empty land, heading to the edge of the earth.  There were no phone/electric poles along the roads, no fences, no houses or buildings of any kind, only arid landscapes with distant, hazy mountains. The Big Bend region was the same: Terlinqua was a true ghost town with two rows of abandoned buildings and four-foot high wooden sidewalks.  One of the abandoned shops was home to Far Flung Adventures, the local rafting company that would take you through the Santa Elena Canyon.  Lajitas had one general store and a few homes. David

Ocotillo...beautiful, graceful plant that is everywhere
throughout Big Bend....a true survivor in the desert.

The landscape is vast and just goes on and on and on.

Big Bend is BIG. It is really bigger than big. It is immense and its immensity is difficult to comprehend. Your eyes see forever across vast desert expanses dotted with scrub bush, ocotillo and prickly pear cactus that define the landscape. This diverse place is home to 1,500 types of plants that thrive in the park and support ecosystems full of pollinators, herbivores and varied wildlife including bears, bobcat and mountain lions....which unfortunately we did not see. As you climb through massive canyons up into the mountains their immensity is equally hard to understand and put into perspective. Unfortunately, no camera can capture this. Big Bend National Park is way out at the southern tip of Texas where the Rio Grande River cuts a huge bend in the land between Mexico and the United States. It is actually named for the 90 degree turn in the course of the Rio Grande near the souther tip of the park. It is not a very wide river, but it has been a mighty force for centuries and is ever-changing to this day.

"The Window" looking from the Chisos Mountains to the desert below.

The Chisos Mountains campground is a great spot to bird.

Big Bend is famous for its birding, with more documented species of birds visiting the park throughout the year than any other park in the National Park system (approximately 450). The park's diverse array of habitats ranging from the riparian corridor of the Rio Grande to the forested canyons of the Chisos Mountains provide an attractive stopping point for birds traveling along their major migratory routes that intersect the park.

The energetic Roadrunner is rarely still.

Cactus Wren in Chisos Basin Campground.

Cactus Wren emerging from her nest.

The Lost Mine Trail.....one of our favorites with breathtaking views!

On The Lost Mine trail.

Santa Elena Canyon....a popular rafting and kayak trip.
The canyon walls here are 1500 feet high. A breathtaking spot.

Today, a golf resort stands on top of where the Lajitas General Store stood 40 years ago. There is a small airport so golfers can fly here to tee off. The mayor of Lajitas is a goat...yes this is not a typo. Clay Henry is his name and he and a partner live in a big cage outside the new convenient store. 

Terlinqua, just outside Big Bend, has restaurants and shops in the "ghost town" and one whole side of the town's buildings have been torn down.  The Terlinqua Cemetery looks much the same, but with a new fence, explanatory signage, and an arched entrance. The cemetery dates from the early 1900's when Terlingua became a flourishing mercury mining town. It served the district as the final resting place for residents and mine workers that succumbed to dangerous working conditions, gunfights and the influenza epidemic of 1918.

Accommodations were hard to find in Terlingua on this trip. We did find tent site availability at Basecamp Terlingua, a fairly new and very hip place that offered tent sites, tipis, lotus tents and pods (not sure what the pods are). Our campsite had running water and electricity on site, and just up the hill are great showers, bathrooms and a coffee room complete with a Keurig machine. Very nice for a campground. Two of the three nights we camped there were very cold....30 degrees, with the day temperatures around 90. A sixty degree drop in temperature was a jolt to the body, but we slept in hats and layers of clothes in our sleeping bags and came through those nights just fine.

All along the road from Terlinqua to Lajitas are rafting businesses, restaurants, and places to stay.  The change has been dramatic, but thankfully it still remains so far away from "the rest of the world". The land down here, dominated by Big Bend National Park and Big Bend State Park is immense, strong, at times harsh, beautiful beyond belief, where magic and myth still speak loudly. 

 

World Famous Clay Henry, Mayor of Lajitas. Look closely into the cage and you can see Clay 
sleeping on the pile of stones in the front and his partner looking on in the back.

Along the road in Terlingua.

Basecamp Terlingua

Terlingua Cemetery celebrating lives in many
interesting and wonderful ways.

 

 

A much overlooked park living in the shadow of the national park we were told, Big Bend State Park occupies vast areas of land and mountains just to the west of Big Bend National Park. It has been a popular filming location for numerous western movies such as Streets of Laredo and Fandango.

It was a cold and windy day in Big Bend State Park.

Sunset in Big Bend National Park.

Voyager America  

"The stars at night are shining bright,                            Deep in the heart of Texas...."

From Dallas, we headed southwest to Gatesville, Texas, the childhood home of my mother, Josephine. It would be Karen's first time seeing Gatesville and I hadn't been here since 1982, when my Grandmother passed. My family visited every other summer when I was a boy. I also came down here right after high school and during college, and a few times after college. Several times I brought friends on my visits and they were charmed to death by Granny and our relatives and friends. My sister, Karen, came down to Gatesville the summer she was 16 and then returned to Texas to attend SMU as an undergraduate. It has always been a warm and welcome place for both of us.  

Granny and Granddad's house....we were saddened 
to see that it has not been kept up like they did.

Gatesville, the county seat of Coryell County, was organized in 1854.  Texas had just become a state in 1845. Both my grandparents were born in the region in the late 1800's. My dad, raised in Pennsylvania, did his basic training for WWII at nearby Fort Hood and that's when he and my mom met and fell in love. While my dad was fighting in Europe,  they kept their relationship going and married when he returned from the war. My mom went to TCU during the war and, as was considered to be one's duty, graduated in three years. She maintained a terrific group of high school girlfriends and a number of them married northern servicemen who also trained at Fort Hood. The servicemen would come into Gatesville, a dry town, on weekend-leave and folks put cots on their front porches for the servicemen to bed down. Cots on the porch, no booze, but lots of natural love-energy must have made for some very interesting stories-----that for some strange reason, I never heard!!!

My grandparents' graves site.

My Grandmother, Carey Brown, who everyone called Cooter, was the youngest of 12 children. She ran a fastidious home, could talk a blue streak, and always made me feel loved. On one of my visits during college, she looked at me with a quizzical expression and said in her deep southern draw, "You look like a hippie, but I love you anyway." Many of her extended family lived in or near Gatesville, so we were always around fun family folks when we visited. Today, most of our family have departed Gatesville.

Coreyell County Courthouse in the center square of Gatesville, TX

My Granddad, Hurl McClellan, had two brothers and grew up in nearby Coryell City. He was the Post Master of Gatesville, appointed by FDR, and I remember him always wearing a white shirt and tie and putting on a broad brimmed hat when we went outside. He was a caring, but quiet man, and when Granny got to talking, she just cracked him up. On one of my later visits, Byron Leaird, our next-door-neighbor who we called "Uncle Byron", owner, after his father, of Leaird's Department Store in Gatesville, took me to the old general store in Coryell City to show me where Granddad grew up and hung out. We sat in the old store, drank a Dr. Pepper, and Byron talked of old times. Byron's wife Grace, who we called "Aunt Grace", was a wonderful ball of gracious love and energy. They were simply great neighbors and part of the family.

Clay McClellan, who may be a distant relative of mine and who I hung out with on my early visits, now owns Leaird's Department Store, which" Uncle" Byron Leaird ran. Clay is related to Byron through "Aunt" Grace. We sat together for quite a while remembering old friends and relatives, summer golf games together when we were young teens, and all that has happened in Gatesville in these last 40 plus years. He really filled in the picture of Gatesville for us and it was a highlight to see him again. NOTE: We sat together and took off our masks just for a minute to take this photo.

Going to Gatesville was always a lot of fun for me, a real adventure. Wearing a cowboy hat and big belt buckle, drinking Dr. Pepper, seeing the Alamo in San Antonio, swimming in Raby Park, going out to Uncle Byron's ranch, eating big hamburgers at the burger joint (everything is big in Texas), going to see the local rodeo, riding a horse, and fishing on Belton Lake all hold a special place in my memory and life. But mostly it was being wrapped in the love of my family and knowing that half of my makeup comes from Texas. And I went down that way on my own after high school because I just loved hanging out with Cooter while she talked about everything under the sun, cracking me up just like my Granddad.

Voyager America  

Journeying West in the Time of Covid  Fall 2020              Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Dallas, Texas    

Hello Dear Friends and Family,

In mid-October we hit the road for our Journey West in the Time of Covid. This trip was in part prompted by the great desire to see the thousands of Sandhill Cranes migrate to their wintering grounds in Bosque Del Apache, New Mexico in November, to visit Gatesville, Texas where David's mother was born, and to experience Big Bend National Park in Texas. The second impetus for this trip was a need to get out and really see America in the wake of this unprecedented and terrible pandemic. Thirdly, rest and relaxation were sorely needed. So we packed our car and headed west in Pennsylvania, then south into a corner of Maryland, and finally to our first stop....

West Virginia: Life is old there, older than the trees, Younger than the mountains, growing like a breeze....take me home, country roads.

Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia

    

The Grand View of the New River in the national forest.

Ever since I read Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam years ago, I have been intrigued with the "Mountain State", the beauty of its mountains and rivers I'd only seen in photos, juxtaposed against its coal mining history and the tough life of coal mining families depicted in Hickam's book. It is an uplifting story about childhood wonder and curiosity, resilience, and following one's dreams, especially since Homer went on from his hometown of Coalwood to a career with NASA. 

While in Coalwood, in one of those magical road trip moments, we happened to meet Don Davis, a childhood friend of Homer and the rocket boys, who after years away from Coalwood, was revisiting for the weekend. He shared stories about Homer and the boys, showed us important buildings in the town including Homer's house and the Company Store, and shared his own story about growing up in Coalwood and leaving the town to pursue his dreams.

A plaque in Coalwood honoring The Rocket Boys.

Don Davis by historic markers in Coalwood.

Abandoned house outside of Coalwood.
Signs express some of the struggles of the region.

Text of the signs above:

Speculators hog by birth, hog by nature and hogs by acts of the legislature.

Clean Coal Tech....$100 billion to develope PINN. Indian and Elkhorn Creek dry feed by pond and ditches. 

Drinking water, fish, crawdads and minnows gone. Chemicals glowing.

We the People.

From West Virginia we rolled through Virginia, Tennessee, and were thrilled to cross the Mississippi from Memphis into Arkansas. We found great country music on the radio around Nashville, and sweet soul music in Memphis. We crossed Arkansas and made our way to Dallas, Texas.

Rolling over the Big Muddy (Mississippi River) at Memphis.

Cypress trees in the Wapanocca Wildlife Refuge in the Arkansas delta of the Mississippi.

 Cotton fields in Arkansas.

In Dallas we visited SMU (David's sister Karen's alma mater), Maggie Parry, David's mentee in the Penn Leadership Program, and Enrica and Aldo, my cousins. We visited Maggie at the Greenhill School where she currently teaches second grade. Her grandfather founded the school in the 1950's and it remains one of the leading progressive K-12 schools in Dallas. We were fascinated to learn that Maggie's grandfather grew up in West Virginia and as a teenager spent time working in the coal mines to help support his family. It was a true gift to see Enrica and Aldo and catch up on all the family news. The graciousness of others while on the road, like a Tex Mex dinner with Maggie and her husband, Mike, and Enrica's homemade almond cookies, make for wonderful days.

In the center of Greenhill's campus stands this
plaque honoring Maggie's grandparents.

Enrica and Aldo by their lovely Persimmon tree.

Next installment...more adventures in Texas....