Viva Terlingua?

June 29, 2022 12:04 PM

Farewell to the Last Frontier. "For those who live here year-round—among them, cave-dwelling desert rats, sun-scorched river guides, musicians, alcoholics, survivalists, artists, eccentrics, wanderers (and millionaires camouflaged as one or more of the aforementioned figures)—that sense of isolation is often experienced as a kind of primordial liberation. The feeling of being free from convenience and unshackled from expectations—of existing in “Terlingua time,” as locals put it—has always been as appealing to the flag-waving pilot of a forty-foot RV as to the tent-dwelling, peyote-smoking vagabond. But like some Daoist riddle, the more newcomers seek out Terlingua’s magic, the harder it is to find." (SL Texas Monthly)
posted by Lyme Drop (13 comments total)

About the new occupation: "a four-hundred-foot well (the only way to get water)"

About groundwater in the region:

One place that critically relies on groundwater is the Rio Grande- Rio Bravo (RGRB) river basin, which creates the border between Southwest Texas and Mexico. More than 16 million people in this region in both the US and Mexico depend on this resource; it accounts for 25 percent of the water that is used for irrigated agriculture and public supply in the basin.

Not just the people, but the local wildlife and the river itself also heavily rely on groundwater. In some stretches of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, such as the Big Bend region, more than 50 percent of the water that flows in the river comes from groundwater during the months when the river volumes get low. It’s also the main source of water for wetlands and springs, which are of critical importance for freshwater biodiversity and migratory bird conservation.

One of the main challenges to protecting groundwater is that it is, of course, underground. Groundwater levels are not easily monitored with the naked eye and so supplies can be unknowingly polluted or even overdrawn, meaning that more is taken out of the ground than can be sustainably replenished. Groundwater can be polluted by landfills, septic tanks, leaky underground gas tanks, and from overuse of fertilizers and pesticides.

The water in RGRB is critically endangered. Surface water in the basin is 150 percent overallocated and the basin’s groundwater resources are similarly overdrawn. The river itself has lost approximately 90 percent of its historic flows and has been declared one of the ten most endangered rivers, globally.

posted by clew at 12:23 PM on June 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

Two of the better birding areas in Big Bend National Park (apart from the Rio Grande itself) are old ranches where the galvanized steel windmills have been maintained by park staff. They are oases in the desert, attracting wildlife from miles around.
posted by Bee'sWing at 1:06 PM on June 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

Texas is a good place to see the next total eclipse in 2024 so I hope to have my electric RV in service by then.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 2:27 PM on June 29, 2022

Soundtrack for TFA.

"peyote-smoking vagabond" is a tell, of something or other.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 2:30 PM on June 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

peyote can be smoked?
posted by clavdivs at 3:01 PM on June 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I too, did not know you could smoke peyote. I would think that you would waste a lot.
posted by Splunge at 3:24 PM on June 29, 2022

If only he'd consumed peyote correctly he wouldn't be a vagabond today.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:44 PM on June 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

peyote can be smoked?

I recommend using mesquite chips.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:04 PM on June 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

That would make it taste terrible.
posted by clavdivs at 5:38 PM on June 29, 2022

d'oh
posted by clavdivs at 5:39 PM on June 29, 2022

'Be easier to keep it lit though
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:19 PM on June 29, 2022

For anyone else struggling with the oddly familiar article title - ¡Viva Terlingua!
posted by cult_url_bias at 11:34 PM on June 29, 2022

I've been to Terlingua, and it's hard to describe the weird, ancient and extremely haunted place in the desert... Beautiful, alien, a magnet for weirdness. I spent new years Eve drinking by a fire with strangers, never to be seen again, before sleeping in a jeep, grieving my recent divorce and wandering across Texas in some kind of pilgrimage of sadness and vaguely untethered self-searching.

For the first time ever and not again since, my camera glitched out taking pictures of the ancient church, wooden structure baked to rock hardness in the dry heat. The cemetery felt like such a blend of cultures, unique housing of the semi quiet dead. I spent an hour having a conversation with a ghost boy who wanted a piece of pottery of a rabbit, last smashed relic of my divorce that wasn't just pain. Down the road is a full size pirate ship, the conning tower of a submarine, and the statue of Lady Liberty.

The Starlight was pretty full, so I ended up eating oatmeal cooked with something I'm not going to admit to, plus fancy cheeses and sausages from an art gallery party nobody seemed to mind that I was crashing, even as they could tell I was an outsider. Perhaps something of the exquisite desolation of the scenery matched my soul at the time, for in many ways I wanted to stay. It wasn't home there, though, no camping out in the caves or using century old rubble as part of my makeshift shelter.

It saddens me but fails to surprise me that the bubble is once more mined, the toxicity of quicksilver failing to grant immortality falling prey to the equally corrupting lure of money and prestige. You can't purchase uniqueness, you can't truly purchase a place among the outsiders or the dead, or the refugees from the world you're trying to flee. Maybe some of them do belong in Terlingua, but many are just the next generation of ghosts. It's sad that they're leaving the scars on the land, but all things must change.
posted by Jacen at 2:27 AM on June 30, 2022 [9 favorites]