After sleeping in a ditch on US 385, Devon and I biked 30 miles to Marathon, Texas. It was a short distance, and Devon was as cheery to get on the road as he had been the entire trip: “Dude, every day there’s a new pain that makes me forget about the old pain.” If Devon has taught me anything, it’s that if you can’t find life’s silver lining, make one up.
Marathon, Texas, like all the little towns we’ve seen on US 90, was spawned by the railroad. Unlike most of those places, Marathon (pop. 470) has survived by catering to tourists headed to Big Bend. I’m used to small towns welcoming my business, but this time all the hotels, motels, RV parks, and hostels were booked to capacity. Marathon has an especially nice old-west style five-star joint called The Gauge that was happy to let us stay for $300 a night. Finally we found a room at Eve’s Garden Organic Bed and Breakfast. Do I need to explain further? The name is self-explanatory. Devon took to calling it “the hippy commune.”
Eve’s may have been the last place I expected to take a male friend, but the architecture of the hotel itself is incredible. The structure is a hodgepodge of domed rooms, staircases, and greenhouses, all painted in bright blues and oranges, making it a colorful anomaly out here in the desert. Eve’s is an art project come to life, and it reminded me of Dr. Seuss in the best way possible. Our suite opened to a coy pond and rows and rows of beautiful flowers in hanging baskets. We had quiche for breakfast the next morning with the other guests.
The interesting thing about Eve’s is that it’s made almost entirely from papercrete, bricks made from recycled paper. When made correctly they don’t catch on fire and provide wonderful insulation. Still, they aren’t permitted by building codes in most areas because of lengthy bureaucratic processes and tests. One of the other people we met here, the owner of the pizza restaurant in town, Wes Spears, said that’s one reason why he and other people end up moving to Marathon. Out here, you can do whatever you want as long as none of the neighbors complain. Wes is also an expert in papercrete and built a number of the buildings throughout town. He told us that in Marathon “we got plenty of grubby and goofy places out here. But that’s Marathon. And out here we just don’t give a crap.”
The next morning Devon and I biked to Sanderson, Texas. After miles of range land you come upon a highway intersection and a big sign that tells you you’ve managed to find the “cactus capital of Texas.” At first you’re worried that there’s nothing in Sanderson except the 10 or so buildings in front of you. But the entire main drag is either abandoned or up for sale. There are three motels in town, but the townspeople warned us away from the third. There is one restaurant in town, but it’s closed three days a week. Every time we asked where we might find something—Aloe Vera, duct tape, groceries—the answer was always the same: Stripes, the gas station, is the only business that’s reliably open and well-supplied.
Sanderson has a long, rich history in connection with the railroad, but ever since a deadly head-on train collision, Union Pacific moved its crew change point to Alpine, further down the line. Border Patrol, a major source of population for all the towns on US 90, has also downsized in recent years. If they drilled for the oil that’s under the town it would revitalize the area, but those that know Sanderson well have been hearing those rumors for decades.
Devon and I boxed his bike up with beer boxes from, you guessed it, Stripes. The plan was to put him on the Amtrak going from Sanderson to San Antonio, where he would could then fly back to Washington, D.C. For a long time Sanderson was considered the loneliest Amtrak station in the country, averaging less than one passenger a day. That’s somewhat misleading, though, because there isn’t actually a “station,” per se, in Sanderson. There are train tracks, some broken down warehouses, some rusting freight cars on a siding, and a gravel patch. The Amtrak passenger waits expectantly at said gravel patch, ticket in hand, and hopes the train stops when it comes. Devon and I stood waiting in the light of a single streetlamp. When the train did come around the bend, we both felt the need to wave it down as if we were hailing a taxi and not a thousand-ton diesel beast.
Sanderson is an ultra-small town and that made it all the harder to let Devon escape back home. Traveling alone, there’s more reason to ask yourself, “Where the hell am I?” and “what am I doing here?” Biking with a friend makes all those questions irrelevant. I quickly found a food stuff to replace my traveling companion—microwavable chicken pot pies by Banquet for $1.39 at, you guessed it, Stripes—but it’s not quite the same.
