Rebecca Henderson

On my trip up to Washington from Texas in January 2011, as my dad and I were driving on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge from Portland to the Tri-Cities, we noticed a huge mansion across the river on the Washington side, popping up in the middle of the desert seemingly out of nowhere. There was nothing else around it for a few miles, and it puzzled us why there would be such a large house stuck on the side of a mountain towering over the river. I asked a friend about it after we arrived in the Tri-Cities, and she immediately knew which house we were referring to: “Oh, you’re talking about Maryhill. It’s an art museum. Add that to your list of places you should go while in the Northwest.”

I did add it to my list, and on a recent road trip my friend Jen and I made plans to stop in and see what the museum is all about. Maryhill’s website touts it as “Without question, one of the most unusual and enchanting museums in America.” That’s a big claim to live up to when you’re perched on the side of a mountain a few hours’ drive from a metropolitan area.

Before we discuss the oddity that is this charming little collection of art, however, let me first mention the Stonehenge monument three miles to the east on Highway 14. I was driving along at a nice clip on our way to Maryhill and had to make a sliding stop and turn on two wheels to keep from missing the turn-off for the monument — but there was no way we were going to pass up seeing a replica of Stonehenge overlooking the Columbia, with a windmill farm in the background. Sam Hill, an influential Washington businessman, built the Maryhill version of Stonehenge to be a memorial for local soldiers killed in WWI, as a way of making a statement about the sacrifice of young lives to the cause of war. I really had no idea when I left my house that morning that I would be visiting Stonehenge in rural Washington before the day was out.

The Maryhill Museum itself was a very pleasant stop on our way to spend a couple of days in the Columbia River Gorge, and I recommend it for anyone traveling that direction. The varying collections on each floor are unique and seemingly random, but I was fascinated to read the placards telling how they were all connected — household and personal effects from Queen Marie of Romania (who??), Eastern Orthodox icons, a large number of drawings and sculptures by Auguste Rodin (including a plaster of The Thinker), 73 chess sets from around the world (yes, I did stop to count them), baskets from various Native American tribes, and a display detailing Sam Hill’s contributions to the road systems in Washington and Oregon. Among other things. Goodness.

It was the section on Sam Hill’s life and works that I found most intriguing. I’d never heard his name before arriving at the museum (named for his daughter), and he seems to have a rather depressing story as far as his relationships go, but I was interested to see how much he’d influenced the road system and a couple of the places I enjoy most along the Columbia. The Maryhill Loop on Sam Hill’s property near Goldendale was the first paved road in Washington state (!!) — and he was instrumental in building the Historic Columbia River Highway in Oregon and the Vista House at Crown Point, where you can stand high above the river (if the wind doesn’t blow you over) and gaze out in either direction at the grandeur of the gorge. It was also fun to note that Sam Hill was responsible for the Peace Arch at the border crossing between Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia, near where my friends and I posed for this picture on a cold, cold day in January 2008. Who knew at the time that I was visiting my first Sam Hill monument?

The day after Thanksgiving in 1957, Bob and Ann piled the kids in the station wagon and drove from Sanderson, Texas, to Big Bend National Park. Sanderson to Jacksboro was too far a drive for the family to make for the holiday, so they stayed down on the border and made a true holiday of it by visiting the park.

Santa Elena Canyon, 1957 (notice the height of the people standing by the river, on the right)

For the last leg of my West Texas Interlude trip with Pat and Randy, we ended up at the Chisos Mountain Lodge in the national park — Bob and Ann had made a day trip of it, going all the way to Santa Elena Canyon on the west side of the park and back to Sanderson in one day, but we opted to stop for a couple of nights in the mountains. Shortly after we arrived, we went out for a 1.5 mile loop hike near the lodge and visitor’s center, taking in views of the Window below us. As we set out on the loop, we paused at the map posted at the trailhead, and I recalled a vivid memory of standing in that place with Jen and Janel a year and a half ago, after we’d finished our 5 mile hike to the Window and back. I remembered looking at the dotted lines on the map for the South Rim and Emory Peak and hoping that I would get to come back and see more of the park.

And in that moment of remembrance, I decided that I needed to make it happen. I needed to climb up to the top of Emory Peak. So the next morning, I took my laptop out of my backpack, put in a few snacks and a couple of water bottles instead, and I set off. I tried not to focus too much on the signs posted several times in the first mile of my trip, warning that this is bear and mountain lion country.

I’ll be very honest — I hope I never, ever see a bear or mountain lion. My fear of them is very rational (they’re predators!), so it’s not at all a phobia. Pretty much every step of the way to the top and back I was certain that something was about to lunge for me from the forest. I heard growling a few times (maybe). I also heard something swishing along in the brush beside me once or twice, in step with me, stalking me, stopping when I stopped. It turned out to be my ponytail swishing against the top of my backpack, but for a few moments I was sure my time was up.

Texas Mandrone and agave, on the Pinnacles Trail leading to Emory Peak Trail

For more than an hour, I hiked without seeing another soul coming or going. I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a mistake in coming up there on my own — Pat and Randy and I all felt that it would be crowded enough on the last weekend of spring break that I wouldn’t actually be hiking alone all day. Nine miles is a long way by yourself, just you and the predators. During that first hour I sang to myself and the trees and the Mexican bluejays that hopped along the trail in front of me. After that, I leapfrogged with a couple of families and passed a few other people on the way to and from the top, solitary no more. My thoughts changed from certainty that I was being stalked, to wondering will my size in comparison with the others make me easy prey, or will it make me look less appetizing (I don’t exactly have a lot of meat on my bones)?

Four-and-a-half miles later, I reached the top of Emory Peak. Technically, I didn’t go all the way to the highest point. The last 20 or 25 feet are a scramble up some rocks where you get a 360 degree view — but I and a few others in the groups I’d arrived with were satisfied to watch the brave few climb up there while we enjoyed our slightly-less-than 360 degree view. I am unashamed that I only made it to 7800 feet and not 7825.

view from Emory Peak

I sat down on a rock to snack and rest and chat with the others before heading back down, when I realized I got a cell signal for the first time since we’d arrived in the park. I had received text and voice messages, and with my phone to my ear I heard the guy next to me say, “You’re getting a signal up here? Is that why you made the hike?”

“Yeah, I came up here to check my voicemail.”

view of the Chihuahuan Desert from Emory Peak

I made it back down to the lodge without seeing any bears or mountain lions, nor any prickly pear in bloom (almost, but not quite). Sitting at the restaurant patio with cold drinks later in the afternoon, Randy told me about this article about a mountain lion attacking a 6-year-old kid in February, causing them to close all the Chisos Mountain trails while they tracked the lion — which they didn’t find. Turns out the kid was attacked between the lodge and the restaurant. I later dug around on the NPS website and found a listing of mountain lion sightings in Big Bend for the month of February — one of the seven sightings for the month was at “Chisos Mountains Lodge, room 206, top of stairs.” I was sitting on my bed in room 215 when I read this. I guess I’m just as safe on Emory Peak as I am on the way to breakfast.

(For anyone who ended up at this blog because you’re looking to hike Emory Peak, I did the 9 mile round-trip hike with a 2500 foot elevation gain in 5.5 hours — and I highly recommend it, especially if you’ve already been on a lot of the other trails in the park. It’s amazing to stand at the top and look down at the places where you’ve already hiked.)

“We crossed the wild Pecos,

We forded the Nueces,

We swum the Guadalupe,

And we followed the Brazos”

from Texas River Song by Townes Van Zandt

Well, on this trip so far we’ve only crossed the wild Pecos and gazed in the distance at the Rio Grande, but this song keeps going through my head. As does this quote I recently read in Three Dollars Per Mile by the Texas Surveyors Association:

“The Pecos is a remarkable stream, narrow and deep, extremely crooked in its course, and rapid in its current. Its waters are turbid and bitter, and carry, in both mechanical mixture and chemical solution, more impurities than perhaps any other river in the south. Its banks are steep, and, in a course of two hundred and forty miles, there are but few places where an animal can approach them for water in safety. Not a tree or bush marks its course; and one may stand on its banks and not know that the stream is near. The only inhabitants of its water are catfish; and the antelope and wolf alone visit its dreary, silent, and desolate shores. It is avoided even by the Indians.” 

— Captain S.G. French’s description of the Pecos River from an 1849 exploratory mission for the U.S. Army

The Stone Village Tourist Camp in Fort Davis is to quirky hangouts and people-watching what the Eleven Inn in Balmorhea was to peace and relaxation.

Before Pat made our reservation, she called me to let me know what the sleeping arrangements would be like. She and Randy got a little motel room at this renovated 1935 facility, and I got a “camp room.”

My camp room reminded me of rural guesthouses I’ve stayed at many times in China, with a separate public bathroom a few doors down from where I slept. Well, that’s not an entirely fair assessment — the Stone Village camp rooms are clean and have an aesthetically pleasing decor, so the comparison to a Chinese guesthouse does eventually break down. My room had concrete floors and stone walls, while Pat and Randy’s room (with private bath) had wood floors and finished walls.

The thing that caught me off guard when I first saw my camp room was the entryway. There wasn’t a solid door — the entire front of the room was a screen. One section of the screen opens, and a thick curtain pulls across to give the semblance of privacy. The curtain doesn’t shut all the way, and since my room faced the main driveway leading to the highway, I felt a bit like I was on display the entire time I was in the room. I was also a little concerned at first that I might get cold at night, since the desert sky was mostly clear and the temperature would drop with the sun, but the down comforter on my bed kept me very toasty all night. Overall, I had a comfortable stay and would recommend the camp room if you’re wanting to sleep in a bed instead of a tent, but don’t want to shell out the money for a private bath.

The next morning, I wandered from my bed to the Stone Village Market across the courtyard — a fun little whole foods store where you can sit on the front patio under dried chilies and wildflowers and watch the town wake up. I drank a couple of cups of the West Texas Wildfire roast from Big Bend Coffee Roasters in Marfa (with agave nectar and organic half-and-half added), wrote a few postcards, and savored the lazy morning before getting back in the car for our next destination: Sanderson, Langtry, and the Pecos River Bridge.

It took me approximately 5 minutes after our arrival at Eleven Inn in Balmorhea to decide I wanted to come back and stay a few more days. We weren’t even planning to stay in Balmorhea when we first marked out our itinerary for this trip for West Texas Interlude, but every hotel in Pecos is currently booked solid by oil companies doing new drilling. Ironic that I’m taking a trip to visit towns once prosperous in the 1950s that have supposedly been in decline for decades because of the end of the West Texas oil boom and the building of I-20 to replace old Highway 80…and we couldn’t find a hotel on I-20 because of a new oil boom.

The boom worked in our favor by sending us to Balmorhea for the night. There are eleven rooms at Eleven Inn, each with its own quirky furniture and chenille bedspread. My room had a fuzzy stool at a wooden desk, two “distressed” nightstands (certainly not distressed to make them appear shabby chic, but distressed naturally over the years), a comfy bed, and a tiny tv perched on the top shelf of the closet. I never turned on the tv, but opted to listen instead to the glorious quiet of a motel courtyard located away from the highway. This morning I heard a rooster and what I think might have been the motel owner singing in the yard.

We made a stop at the state park and the famous pool filled by San Solomon Springs — 1 million gallons of water per hour gurgle out of the spring into the 3.5 million gallon pool, whose overflow heads to Balmorhea Lake and nearby irrigation channels. Tiny fish bumped against our toes when we dangled our feet over the concrete edge into the water that maintains a constant 72-76 degree temperature year-round.

Before leaving this morning for Fort Davis, I checked with the owners of Eleven Inn to see if they would have space for me to come back the following weekend. No worries — spring break will be over by then, and I should be able to come and sit for a while. Pat and Randy will head back to Denton on Sunday, but I think I’ll stay behind and enjoy the quiet, write in the mornings, hike in the Davis Mountains in the afternoons, and stare up at the star-filled sky at night.

It had been a while since I’d taken a day off work to spend outdoors, so when my friend Laura and her parents invited me to go snowshoeing last Friday, I jumped at the chance to clear my schedule and spend a day away from my computer.

Laura’s parents are friends with a family who go regularly throughout the winter to cross-country ski in the Wenatchee National Forest. They have the key to an old cabin owned by the US Forest Service, which they make their base on weekend skiing excursions. The cabin is three miles off the highway, meaning visitors have to pack in their supplies in the winter when the forest service road and hiking trail are snowed over. For our day out in the woods, there were four of us on snowshoes with smaller packs who were only going for the day, three with large packs on skis, and one chocolate lab who didn’t seem to mind that she was the only one tromping through the snow without something on her feet to keep her from post-holing every step.

This was my first time on snowshoes and my first time to see SO MUCH SNOW. Feet and feet of it. It didn’t occur to me until Laura pointed it out — we were passing snow covered treetops at ankle-level. After I realized that, I kept thinking about being on this trail during the summer and looking up overhead to see where we had been walking in the air on this February afternoon.

When we got out of our cars at the trailhead on the highway, the man who had invited us all along pointed out that “This is not a beginner trail.” Great. My first time on snowshoes and it’s not a beginner trail. I think he mostly meant that in regards to anyone on skis, since as we soon found out the trail was uphill most of the way to the cabin. 1000 feet in elevation gain over the 3 miles. Rather exhausting, and torturous for my poor feet in borrowed snow boots that didn’t fit well at all. But the experience was worth the pain in my toes and my ankles (I might not have said that if I’d been injured that day, but I wasn’t, so it doesn’t matter now). It snowed most of the way up to the cabin, six inches by the time we got back to the car — you can see what had accumulated on my backpack after the first three miles. Our hats were covered with a layer as well.

We passed one privately owned cabin (pictured below) on our way to the much more rustic forest service cabin. With the falling snow and drifts on the roof, I dreamed of spending a weekend in such a cabin, cozy in front of the fire, tucked in the forest away from cell signals and traffic noises.

With daylight ending fast, we stayed at the forest service cabin only long enough to sign the guest book, eat a snack, and dry off for a moment in front of the wood-burning stove. During the summer, there are four steps up from the ground to the cabin door. You can see from the photo below, snow had drifted up around the cabin, and we had to step down from the drifts to get in the door. It was unreal to me to be inside a building with such a view out the window.

After our quick rest, the four of us who weren’t staying the weekend put our gear back on and started back the three miles to the highway, the snow still coming down around us. Not long into the return trip, it became dark enough that we needed to put on headlamps, and we finished out our trip with the odd vista of falling flakes illuminated directly in front of our eyes, the darkness of the forest on a snowy, cloudy night surrounding us from all sides. Aside from the crunching of our snowshoes, the forest was silent. All of the usual night sounds in a forest were covered with feet of snow.

Jinghong has changed. China changes quickly, so I knew to expect this when I went to visit friends in Jinghong earlier this month. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The area is less Sipsongpanna and more Xishuangbanna with each passing minute.

The Jinghong landscape now looks like any other Chinese town, with high-rise apartment buildings stretching for miles. I’ve only been gone a little less than two years — how does this happen so fast? I moved into an apartment two blocks from the Mekong River in 2006, mainly because I loved the quiet of a garden right on the riverbank where I could run and look at the water and listen to the birds and frogs in the early morning. By the time I came back from a visit to the States in 2008, the garden was gone, replaced with a new sidewalk and the shell of plans for new construction. Now, on either side of the newest bridge across the river stretch shops, restaurants, bars, and apartments. All covered in neon lights at night. The friend traveling with me commented that it reminded her of Disneyland. I was thinking Las Vegas. Either way, it is not the quiet Mekong River area I used to enjoy each morning. For that you will need to go south to Laos or Cambodia, I suppose.

Areas further from the river are just as bad. Sections of land that were once wide open fields for rice and other crops, dotted with villages of Dai wooden stilt homes, are now filled with 5-star hotels, shops, and an expo center (that is used for an event approximately once a year, thus far). Two-story shop buildings sell for $1 million US dollars. In a town where I paid about $100 monthly rent for a 3-bedroom apartment just three years ago. So far most of the new high-rise apartments are empty, though many of the units have been sold to investors from northern and eastern provinces. People who have never been to Yunnan, never visited Jinghong, have no idea what they have purchased in the form of real estate in Jinghong, and no notion of the true cost of their real estate “investment.”

Don’t get me started on the traffic problems caused by hundreds of new drivers who are used to getting around town on motorbikes and electric scooters. Car ownership is not inherently a good step forward — not when you’re talking about a small town with small roads and hundreds of thousands of people.

The clean fresh air that Yunnan is famous for is now dusty with construction and smoggy with exhaust in Jinghong. It could be any other town in China with a population of a few hundred thousand people, except for the facade of Dai architecture that the Han hope to capitalize on. Capitalize. A market freer than ever, while speech is still held captive. I scribbled this out in the Beijing airport on my way home, but was unable to post until I returned to the US, where Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube aren’t blocked.

Though I was perturbed by the blocked websites out of principle, I enjoyed the forced vacation from social media (only because it was temporary and not a regular imposition in my life) and felt like I had a more in-the-moment kind of trip since I couldn’t post and interact with people not directly in front of me. Still, at times my mind forms status updates, even when I’m not able to post them:

* 41 hours after the start of our 3.5 hour layover in Beijing, we were finally able to take off for Yunnan. Hundreds of flights cancelled due to fog, thousands of passengers stranded at the airport. You always think “It will never happen to me” — but sometimes it does.

* In my pocket are a few small green coffee beans from the trees on B Mountain – the first-fruits of the seedlings planted after the truck flipped during their transport (with me and three co-workers in it). Many emotions involved.

* The coffee roaster has made it to the cafe at last!

* Today I held a 7-week-old baby with one arm while using chopsticks to eat potstickers with the other hand. A latent talent revealed.

* I lost count of the mosquito bites I got while I was asleep each night of this trip, but the grand total of spider bites (or, more accurately, unidentified-Mekong-River-jungle-area-creature bites) while sleeping is 1.

You can build as many high-rise apartments as you want, but the jungle creatures will still find their way indoors at night.

Since starting my research for West Texas Interlude in earnest, I’ve had to think of some creative ways to start piecing together a timeline of my grandparents’ life in the 1950s so I can plan the itinerary for the road trip portion of the project. I’ve gone through the hundreds of slides, only a portion of which have notes with them so far, and plotted out locations and years based on the number of candles on birthday cakes for my dad and his siblings. I’ll work more on the timeline and maps with my grandmother when I go to Texas in a couple of weeks, but it’s been fun to get started with this part of it.

To further my excitement, I found a couple of Texas road maps from 1954 on eBay for super cheap. I love that one of them is from Conoco (my grandfather’s employer at that time) and has a family standing in front of a 1950s model car — it perfectly captures the essence of this book I’m working on and its journey.

I can’t wait to sit down and pore over the maps and think through the differences between then and now when driving across Texas. One major difference is that I-20 from Fort Worth to El Paso was not in existence when my family lived out in far West Texas — the 1954 map shows the route they would have taken along Highway 80 to get from home to work. How cool that on this upcoming road trip I can look at the same type of map my grandfather might have used, rather than trying to guess at the old roads using my current atlas or GPS.

I guess I had that old map in mind when I went to the book sale at the Kennewick library this weekend — I came home with a book of sketches and trip notes from 1971, Back Roads of California. Later in the day I commented to a friend that I bought the book because it is “inspirational,” garnering a puzzled look and a question from her. Yes, old 1950s road maps and sketches from back road journeys in the 70s are inspirational. So many places left to see, so many roads left to travel. Sketches and trip notes have the potential to send me into a daydream lasting an entire afternoon, the outcome of which might shape the next spontaneous two weeks worth of travel. You never know.

“The West seemed both a garden and a desert, an ambiguous wilderness of untold happiness and opportunity, filled with dread and evil.” from Frontier Crossroads: Fort Davis and the West by Robert Wooster

Unless they’ve been there themselves, when I tell most people about my excitement at getting to travel in West Texas again next spring, they just look at me with a confused expression. Isn’t West Texas just…empty? Flat, desolate, barren, hot, dusty, boring? Why would you want to go there…again?

They must not have paid attention to the light on a canyon wall at sunrise. They haven’t stood at the edge of a vast plain of tall grass at sunset and felt the waves of gold washing over body and soul. They must not have visited the garden places — the Davis Mountains, McKittrick Canyon in Guadalupe Mountains National Park, any number of places in Big Bend. They have only looked at the dirt. They have looked at the distant horizon and felt the panic of not seeing a building between here and there for fifty miles, instead of looking at the distant horizon and feeling the exhilaration of not seeing a building between here and there for fifty miles.

One person’s dread and evil is another’s happiness and opportunity. What seems lonely and frightening to one is invigorating and beautiful to another. Some become weary of the drive on seemingly endless highway, bored and anxious, hypnotized by the monotony of the scenery. Others know that going through the miles and miles of desert is the only way to get to the best spots. And they know that when they’re standing at the bottom of Santa Elena Canyon, staring straight up the walls with the Rio Grande at their feet, it is worth the long journey to get there.

view of Mt Rainier from White Pass Scenic Byway

Over the weekend I went to Seattle to visit my sister and niece. Since the weather was gorgeous (first time to reach 80 degrees in Seattle this year) and I’m on the last week before my national parks pass expires, I decided to drive the long way from here to there, through Mt Rainier National Park — or Mt Rainy, as my niece calls it.

view of Mt Rainier from Sunrise Point in the national park

view from Sunrise Point, in the opposite direction from Mt Rainier

It’s been a fun year, and I hope to have a reason to buy another annual pass soon. To celebrate a great year of parks, here’s a recap of stories from the blog:

Last July I took my first ride in a bush plane and experienced Alaskan mosquitos in Kobuk Valley National Park.

In September, I bought the annual pass at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado and drove as far as I could on the Trail Ridge Road.

I fell in love with West Texas on a camping trip in Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains last October, but missed out on the opportunity to camp in White Sands National Monument in New Mexico.

On the drive to Washington in January, I stopped at Saguaro in Arizona and Joshua Tree in California for a quick intro to a couple of desert southwest parks.

I saw the end of the Lewis and Clark trail at the national historical park in Washington and Oregon in March — and the beginning of the trail at Harpers Ferry in West Virginia in April. I squeezed in a drive through Shenandoah National Park in Virginia on that April trip east, as well.

When my mom came to visit in July, we saw the Whitman Mission National Historical Site near Walla Walla, a couple of bonus parks in Canada (Kootenay in British Columbia and Banff in Alberta), and had a gorgeous drive through Glacier National Park in Montana.

I think I got my money’s worth this year.