The road from Van Horn to Marfa, Texas, is unbelievably boring. I woke up from a night in a highway motel that involved multiple trips to the McDonalds next door and A Perfect World on cable, and went straight back to—you guessed it—McDonalds. Holding my second McGriddle in one hand and my phone in the other, I was surprised to see that the day’s route involved one turn. Just one. Turn left onto Route 90 and keep the handlebars straight for 73.7 miles.
The romantic in me looks forward to chances like these to “get away from it all,” spend some real time with one’s own thoughts, and take things slow. What a golden opportunity, I thought, to put aside these petty distractions we call Life. I imagined myself a Zen Buddha perched on a bicycle, and crumpled up my greasy fast food wrappers (burped, probably) and put toe clips to pedals.
The first thing I noticed is the awkward lack of things to notice. Fields of scrub led into other fields of slightly browner, shorter scrub, plus the occasional scrub bush. In all seriousness, I remember seeing a tree and realizing that I had been staring at it for several minutes. It was the first thing not made of asphalt, grass, or barbed wire I had seen the entire day. “Oh, wait, hold up, what’s that road sign on the horizon? This should be interesting—’Historical marker 1 mile’—wow, I can hardly wait.” The bronze plaque had this encouraging message for the weary and bored traveler: “Van Horn Wells was the only dependable water supply in miles of arid terrain and was used by indians for centuries.” Pep talk delivered, I pushed on with the renewed vigor of someone determined not to die in the desert.
I pedaled past scrub and more scrub. A real conscientious, educated fellow would find this landscape interesting, I thought to myself. Perhaps I was the problem, not west Texas. There’s more to life than beer and babes, Grant, just take a look around you! Some research later that evening proved this theory false. On the subject of west Texas, or the Trans-Pecos mountains and basin, the Texas Almanac has this to say: “With as little as eight inches of annual rainfall, long hot summers, and usually cloudless skies to encourage evaporation, this 18-million-acre area produces only drought-resistant vegetation without irrigation. Grass is usually short and sparse.” Despite the straight-laced verbiage, the almanac’s disappointment comes through loud and clear: “this 18-million-acre area produces only …” Like the parent with the kid that comes home with a nose ring and a C- in math, the almanac also reports that the area is home to several poisonous plants, as well as two godforsaken species named “hairy erioneuron” and “ear muhly.”
Thankfully, another road sign appeared on the horizon. At this point I was happy for the chance to practice my reading. “Litter bin 1 mile” made for a quick study, but wow what a plot line. The litter bin itself was the Mount Rushmore of my day. I took about two dozen pictures—recognizing what would one day be a cherished memory—and pedaled on.
As for my Zen Buddha project, all I’ll say is that you can’t start a fire without some kind of kindling. An engine needs fuel. A painter needs paint. And a thinker, if he’s going to think deep thoughts, needs some thoughts to think. You can imagine my discouragement when Taylor Swift’s “Our Song” played in my head for the 400th time.
This particular portion of Texas is wide and wild enough that the shoe company Prada found it amusing to open up a fake store in the middle of the desert. Technically it’s a permanent art sculpture by Elmgreen and Dragset, but the store is full of real Prada shoes and handbags, and is interpreted by some to be a criticism of capitalism, consumerism, luxury branding, and gentrification. Elmgreen and Dragset said they would never repair the store, but the forces of capitalism and consumerism led vandals to bust out the windows and steal all the shoes and handbags the same night the sculpture made its debut. The Prada Marfa was dutifully repaired, the merchandise replaced, and is now guarded by security systems and cameras. Instead of criticizing luxury branding and gentrification, the Texas Department of Transportation nearly tore the thing down because it was providing advertisement for Prada but didn’t fit the specifications of a billboard. I watched dozens of people stop at the store when I was there, and there are just as many Prada Marfa souvenirs for true fans.
A random art sculpture in the middle of nowhere is good preparation for visiting Marfa. There are supposedly three small towns between Van Horn and Marfa—Valentine, Quebec, and Ryan—but they’re all practically ghost towns. Marfa, however, has survived. I asked the woman who checked me into my hotel how Marfa had managed to pull such a trick. She said, “Honestly, honey, it’s the artsy fartsies, that’s the only reason.” There are at least 15 art galleries downtown, in a town that’s less than two miles wide. It all started with the artist Donald Judd, who moved from New York City to Marfa in 1971. The Marfa art scene picked up speed slowly over the next several decades, securing the town’s survival. Hipsters and west-coasters walk the street. There’s a beautiful old hotel called the Hotel Paisano, and a majestic, domed city hall just off the main drag.
Marfa has some side-businesses, as well. The Coen brothers used the town as a location for No Country for Old Men and the locals as extras and bit characters. The 1956 western epic Giant was also filmed there, which brought such stars as Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean into town. And then there’s the Marfa Lights, a mysterious otherworldly phenomenon involving alien lights that no scientist has yet been able to explain. The road to Marfa is boring, but the town itself is weird in the best way possible.
How weird? Biking through town I spotted a man dressed all in white with a floral scarf and a straw hat sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, arms outstretched. “What are you doing?” I asked him. “Waiting,” he said, opening his eyes after a long minute. “What are you waiting for?” I asked, expecting an answer like “the apocalypse,” or “the purge.” “Friends,” he replied. “Are you meditating?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“I try to always be meditating,” he said. This was the Zen master I’d been looking for.
