Further Adventures with Marfawitz, Volume Three
Marfawitz and I day-tripped through magnificent and forbidding West Texas desert country last Friday so you wouldn’t have to.
Welcome to another installment of Life Its Ownself. I offer insight, analysis and context on Texas and national politics, as well as entertaining stories of life its ownself in the Lone Star State. If you like what you read, please 1) smash the Like button at the bottom of this installment, 2) subscribe to this newsletter, and 3) tell your 1,000 best friends to read and subscribe. Also, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
But first, your moment of Zen … Nightfall over Marathon, Texas, Monday, February 17, 2025.
March 4, 2025
Quote of the Day: “The country is most barbarously large and final.”
The opening sentence of The Gay Place, by Billy Lee Brammer
I am out at my country estate in Marathon, Texas. My friend Marfawitz lives 60 miles away in – surprise! – Marfa. He has three qualities that endear him to me:
He is a good and decent human being.
He is friendly and gregarious, to the point of accosting strangers on the street; and
He has a Ford F-250 pickup truck with 4-wheel drive.
The latter quality has been the sine qua non for some of our adventures, which we try to have on a regular basis when I am out in this neck of the desert. Some of our adventures have been chronicled in this Substack, such as when we went to Lobo two years ago (“I’m Loco For Lobo, and You Should Be, Too!”), or to Fort Davis, Balmorhea and points west last year (“(Further) Adventures with Marfawitz”).
Three or four times now, David and I have driven down the Pinto Canyon Road, which meanders out of Marfa to the southwest, passes by the legendary Chinati Hot Springs, and ends in the little town of Ruidosa (not to be confused with Ruidoso, a much larger and lovelier town in the mountains of southeastern New Mexico). The Pinto Canyon Road is about 50 miles long and spectacular, winding through canyons and backcountry trails as it heads to the ancient Rio Grande.
When we went to Lobo almost two years ago, Marfawitz pointed out the Chispa Road and suggested we should navigate it sometime. It was a longer, rougher course than the Pinto Canyon Road, he said.
It turned out to be a rare understatement from David. The Chispa Road makes the Pinto Canyon Road look like a parkway in upstate New York.
As with most of our adventures, we began with coffee at the Sentinel in Marfa, then headed west on Highway 90. Thirty-five miles west, we made the obligatory stop at the Prada Marfa art exhibit in Valentine.
Then we proceeded on to Lobo, stopping in at what used to pass for the downtown business district. David and I posed in front of my favorite part of the ghost town, the old gas station with the mural on it.
I have always been enchanted by the words on the mural – “Keep the Lonely Places Lonely.” To me, they summarize the spirit of that whole immensity that is the Despoblado – “the empty place.”
SIDEBAR: A couple months ago, I met the artist who did that mural, Mike Tumlinson. He is very talented and works in a lot of different media. When I met him, I did not know he’d done that mural, but I made the connection later. Be sure to check out his website.
The Lobo central business district – by which I mean the ten or so broken-down buildings that make up the ghost town, all behind barbed wire – is surrounded by the Lobo Loop, which is in turn surrounded by RR 1523. It’s sort of like Loop 410 and Loop 1604 in San Antonio, but at about 1/100 scale.
The Chispa Road winds southeastward from Lobo. The roadway is a mere track through the harsh terrain, rough and rocky as we traversed the desert mountains and slick and sandy as we got closer to the river bottom.
At one point in the proverbial middle of nowhere, we ran across a couple of cows standing by the road.
They inspired me to abuse Robert Frost:
Whose cows these are, I do not know
His ranch is miles away, I know
He lets his livestock loose to roam
Among the hills so far from home.
At times, elaborate signage advised us we were on General Land Office property:
At one point, the road led almost straight up a mountain. Fortunately, Marfawitz knew how to use his four-wheel drive, and we successfully crested it.
As we came down out of the mountains, we saw a couple places where the Rio Grande had formed marshes along the roadway. In a few places, the road itself was sandy, necessitating David’s four-wheel drive skills.
Once we were traveling near the river, we knew we were getting close and, sure enough, we soon arrived at the southern terminus of the Chispa Road in Candelaria. From Lobo, we had covered 58 miles in 3 ½ hours. During that time, we saw four vehicles – 2 Border Patrol pickups, a fiber optic trenching crew, and one civilian in a pickup. By David’s count, we had to use the four-wheel drive five times as a navigated the terrain.
I hope you ware enchanted, as we always are, by the sere and rowdy beauty of the country we drove through. Nevertheless, you may ask yourself, “Self, why would these men of learning and judgment – men who had worked at the highest levels of government, men whose counsel was sought by sultans and kings – cross these forbidding desert wastes like a couple modern Magi?”
The question answers itself. From Candelaria, we took FM 170 through Ruidosa and all the way to Presidio, there to partake of the superb green chili chicken enchiladas and iced tea at The Bean. Yes, Marfawitz and I are blessed to be able to wander around the Trans-Pecos deserts we both love for the sole reward of eating some truly excellent Tex-Mex food.
May we all be so lucky.
Consistently, when reading your dispatches, I feel my life becoming a meek and hollow, low-crawling creature, come up from the depths of time to peek around as the big truck passes, and dusts me with mechanized impunity, and I slip back into my dark oblivion to wonder who these great creatures were that passed me by, be-clad in such grandeur and joy.
Reading your post, I wish I were a trail bike rider. I’ll just have to wait to hitch a ride with y’all.