Boy Meets Mountain

I think I’ve fallen in love. West Texas. Big Bend. The high peaks of the Chisos. The Bofecillos. The calderas of Pine Canyon and the Solitario. The clotted veins of dried lava tubes. The sky-high piles of volcanic ash doing its best to cover the remnants of dead seas. A long ago land of fire and water, now quiet and washed by eons of rain and wind, laying bare the bones of old volcanos, and giving us the river cuts of Santa Elena and Closed Canyon.

Maybe I see myself in the dry, desiccated landscape. Old, but peaceful in my age. Moving slow through time. Drifting with my memories. I have plenty. But do the mountains remember what it was like to breath fire? Does the ground remember the heavy seas it once shouldered? And do the coyotes and bears and cougars wonder at the old bones? I hope so, but I doubt it. The mountains have it right. That was then. This is now. We are what we are. Old things, giving way to new things.

I believe this might be my last good place in Texas. I’ve lived on the coast. Sent kids to college in east Texas. Worked the oil patch. Hunted and camped in south Texas and the Panhandle. I’ve been to all the major cities. For business and pleasure. It feels as though it might now be time to cross the Pecos into another world. I’ve been one with another. Maybe it’s now time to be one with myself. To sit with mountains. To learn the names of the stars. Befriend them. Maybe even to be buried in a dry, unmarked grave, covered by an old sea floor. That feels historic and even a bit poetic.