All events that typically define this spring season-our festivals, our weddings, even our funerals-have been restricted. Travel has been restricted on scales large and small. In the paralysis of our current state of being, there is, quite simply, nowhere to go. It would be a day or so before the reviews raving about Apple’s cataclysmic new work of art started plastering themselves across my timelines, claiming it as a sort of anthem of these strange times, with its gutting emphasis on confinement and the fact that most of the album was largely created in her home, featuring jingles and jangles of household objects as syncopation, and the occasional dog barking.īut on that Friday, upon the clean slate of my empty anticipation, Apple chanted-against a wild and disruptive percussion-again and again through the space of my sedan: “On I go, not toward or away. Anyway, it was the day Fiona Apple’s new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters was to drop, and having been-like most of the world-under house arrest for the past three weeks, waxing and waning between Netflix binges and guilty strains to make something with my time (anything: bread, a poem, a phone call), I hadn’t gotten into my car or listened to any new music in far too long. Lockwood photo louisiana landscape road May 2020Īpril 17 seemed as good a day as any to get in the car and drive. But it was comforting to know that even in the middle of nowhere, the road really does go on forever.C.C. After three miles, I reluctantly turned around. I started down it, but the rugged ranchland and frequent arroyo crossings were more than the Honda could handle. But between the signs a dirt road beckoned me on, into the wild country. The end of the road is marked by two hazard signs, each with bright orange and white stripes and an imposing diamond in the middle. This is as remote as a town on a highway can get. Mexico is just across the river, but notions like borders and sovereignty have little meaning here. A few folks are stirring, taking note of the arrival of an unfamiliar vehicle. There are no stores or businesses in the tiny settlement, just a small whitewashed Catholic church on the right side of the road, an empty tin barn on the left, and a scattering of trailers and adobes that may or may not be occupied. Two hours after leaving Marfa, I reached my destination. You’ll miss the La Junta General Store and Ben’s Lounge, the only way stations open to travelers on my favorite drive, and the winding twelve-mile drive to Candelaria is punctuated with numerous low-water dips and unexpected obstacles, such as the family of five javelina that sauntered across my path. Don’t take the return to pavement as a license to hotfoot it. A few miles and three mailboxes later, a stop sign at the quiet village of Ruidosa marks the junction with FM 170. At the unmarked fork in the road, bear left for Ruidosa-or take the right-hand detour to Kingston Hot Springs, a no-frills resort that is scheduled to reopen this fall after being closed for years. The dirt track winds through the canyon for ten miles, passing an abandoned mining operation before dropping out of the Chinati Mountains onto a long desert slope that reaches all the way to the verdant Rio Grande floodplain. Telephone lines and barbed-wire fences disappear, and nothing is left but road, land, and sky. The 7,730-foot Chinati Peak rises from the horizon under a perfect blue sky marred only by a distant thunderhead, and the rolling terrain slowly gains altitude. In less than a minute civilization is a memory as the road is swallowed by the waist-high grasses of the Marfa Highlands. My favorite drive in Texas begins west of downtown Marfa, by the Texaco station. For those adventurous enough to take it, the rewards are scenic vistas and a sense of isolation that are remarkable, even by West Texas standards. Most maps show the Pinto Canyon road (FM 2810) as petering out in the desert, but trust me, it goes through to Ruidosa, where you join FM 170 for the drive upriver to Candelaria. The few visitors who make it up this far usually follow FM 170 up the Rio Grande from Big Bend National Park, but I prefer to go cross-country from Marfa through Pinto Canyon. Just empty space on the map.Īpproximately 750 driving miles from salt water, Candelaria is in the middle of nowhere, the town at the end of the road. Beyond Lajitas lie Redford, Presidio, Ruidosa, Candelaria, and … nothing. Ten times the riverside route changes highway numbers as it passes through Brownsville, Laredo, Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and points west, but only once does it stray far inland from the international boundary-between Langtry and Lajitas, where the Rio Grande is entombed in canyon lands so steep and rugged that not a single settlement occupies Texas soil along this section of river. THE LINE ON THE MAP BEGINS AT BOCA CHICA on the Gulf of Mexico and hugs the Rio Grande from its mouth to the Pecos River.
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