Coffee and Adobe, A Main Street Success Story

In a couple of weeks, a little coffee shop will open on the main street of Van Horn. The Main Street and economic development programs in the city made this possible. They worked with Paul, one of my favorite people here, to help him buy the little building (middle three figures) and renovate it (low five figures) to create a very special spot. Paul will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner, along with beer and Texas produced wine. He’ll serve coffee, of course, but only Americano style.

Paul moved here four years ago, with all the optimism and energy of a true visionary. He’s a former rice farmer from Sugarland near Houston, and runs a oil and gas exploration consulting business and a ranch he hopes to open up to nature tourists. The little adobe building was transformed with his hard work, into a truly special place in this town of mostly fast food establishments. Visitors at the front of the building have a clear view of Six Mile Mountain, but the best spot to enjoy coffee has to be from the adobe-walled stone patio. Paul’s got a fountain bubbling and flowers planted, and the color of the deep blue sky against the vibrant orange adobe is enough to make you want to sit there for hours.

Paul’s a great conversationalist, “did you know I’m half Jewish?” and freely shares his views on guns ("I don't care where you live, you need to have them to feel safe"), the town ("the city council needs to clean this town up"), and the military ("the enemy doesn’t follow rules, we shouldn’t have to," and people we both know,"that girl's got pizzazz"). What I most enjoy about Paul is his irrepressible optimism. When his place opens, I’ll have a hangout place, at last.

Ranch Visit

Yesterday I visited a local ranch to take photos for a promotion we're doing on border food and travel to the region. (New Pi members, you may see something about the Trail later this fall!) My host was an El Paso native, who went to culinary school in Vermont, and came back to Van Horn to settle on the family's ranch. She's working to open a restaurant in Van Horn next year which will dramatically improve the culinary climate in Culberson County. I simply can't wait to have Shanna's food available all the time!

Shanna has 200 goats, 20 cattle, horses, geese, dogs, cats and manages to take care of them all while she's renovating our building, planning the restaurant, operating a catering business, developing an orange mint crop for the production of essential oils, and waitressing three nights a week. In many ways she typifies the hardworking people of the region. Almost everyone has to do more than one thing to make a living here. Yes, it makes for a "harder" life by some definitions, but it also makes for an interesting life, too, which I understand after balancing art and job for many years. These are worthwhile struggles.

We drove all over their section yesterday morning so I could take photos of Shanna feeding the animals. When we got to the cattle she wondered why February, one of her cows, was separated from the rest of them. We lumbered over the field in her massive pickup truck to find a completely unexpected healthy newborn calf curled up next to her momma. The baby had been born that morning.

Space

One of the hardest things to convey about living here is the grand scale of space. I haven't found any image anywhere, or any writing that really describes the dual experience of the immenseness and intimacy of the land. When people ask me what's most unique about this place, I think about the border culture, the climate, and the desert, but coming from the cozy midwest, it has to be the feeling of space. Though I'd done a lot of research before I first visited the region, I was unprepared for the vastness of the land. Frontier isn't somewhere else on a map or back in history, but it is right here. You're living it.

Besides the population figures (Johnson County, Iowa has 180.7 people per square mile, while Culberson County, TX has 0.8 people per square mile), there's one other interesting fact that attempts to describe the feeling of scale and our intimacy with the land, and it comes from a ranger at Big Bend National Park. (photo above is from the South Rim Trail in the park.) It also says a lot about the national park experience. He told me:

"Say you put everyone who visited Yosemite National Park last year in that park at the same time. Each person would have a piece of ground about the size of a sheet of paper, 8 1/2" x 11" to stand on. Now, if you round up all the people who visited Big Bend National Park last year and put them in our park at the same time, they'd each have a piece of land two ACRES all to themselves!"

If you wanted to get away which park would you visit? The thing is, even when you're outside the park you still feel you've got the land to yourself. That's an increasingly rare experience in our country, you should come experience it. And visit me!

Flowering Agave

Taken two weeks ago in Big Bend National Park!

Back in the saddle again

Why the long hiatus? I had two trips back to back (good trips, though) and was hit by a mysterious stomach bug that kept me offline for awhile. So I'm taking advantage of some quiet recoup time by filing some blog entries. Thanks to all of you who've sent me your feedback, comments and requests for specific blog entries. It is so much fun to do this; I enjoy sharing my new home with you. Keep those emails coming. I love to hear from you!

Monsoon Season

When the rain comes, the ocotillo sprout these lovely little green leaves on their branches, giving the desert an uncharacteristic Christmas green hue. We've entered monsoon season, so we're getting hard rains now. The locals make me smile when they complain, "this humidity is getting to me," when we're only at 40 percent. But the rain is a drastic change and a welcome one. In Van Horn, we've had 6 inches of precipitation this year and 2 1/2 of that came last Thursday.

The photos above were taken in the lower elevations of Big Bend National Park after the first good day there of significant rain....since October.

To show you the contrast, check the archives for my April 17 posting (take this link and page down a bit) of flowering ocotillo and you'll see the impact of all this rain. Rain = Green.

It is hard to show you something else that happens when it rains. A wonderful and thoroughly indescribable scent fills the air. Though I do enjoy the wormy scent of a midwestern rain, I have to say the fresh smell of wet desert is better.

Week 53

So, I begin my second year here with my 100th post on the blog. Last week I asked for feedback on this endeavor and this is what you said:

1. More photos
2. More stories
3. Tell us about the people
4. Don't leave out your artwork
5. Take us on a driving tour of Van Horn
6. What's Daisy up to?

Okay, will do. I've added a couple of posts about the 4th of July already today!

More July 4

Our Lady of the Kazoo

To celebrate the 4th, I joined a wonderful group of people at Larry and Beth’s house in Fort Davis. Larry is on my board, and one of the first things he did when I arrived last summer was offer his centrally located house as an overnight stay on travels throughout the region. His generosity was fortunate for many reasons, but top of the list has to be the friendship that developed between me, Larry, and his wonderful wife, Beth. I haven’t written much about people on this blog, for fear that folks would feel exposed or offended. I guess I’ve wanted to protect prospective friends from any hint of scrutiny. But as Larry has said, “you’re one of us, girl,” and with this entry I’ve invited Larry and Beth to join you as readers. Long overdue, I'd say.

I wouldn’t have missed the festivities on their porch, a wide and comfortable spot with views of Beth’s fantastic garden and Sleeping Lion Mountain. Porch-sitting is one of Larry’s great skills, along with museum-directing, writing and welcoming people into the fold. This holiday’s gathering included other smart and clever museum folk, philanthropy folk, and a teacher studying mining history under an NEH grant. And a corgi. And a new corgi pup. All in all, an amiable, interesting and fun group.

Though we ate very well, the marquee event of the weekend had to be the parade. Fort Davis is the quintessential cute mountain town (dirt streets and igneous ladyfinger mountains with a scale reminiscent of New England), and it looked exceptionally cute for the holiday. The courthouse square had red, white and blue striped bunting and food booths all around it, and it seemed everyone was wearing red, white and blue along with their cowboy hats. People were enthusiastic about the parade. I heard someone say, “now THIS is the way the holiday should be celebrated,” and they were right.

Beth made sure I was welcomed into the Ladies Kazoo Band, which was fun from start to finish. Decorating the pickup truck was a hilarious exercise for the five of us, all alpha-females. We were each able to relinquish personal control long enough to thoroughly enjoy braiding crepe paper streamers, rescuing balloons that drifted away from other floats, and taping metallic stars to the hub caps. Once the parade started, we donned sequined tiaras, waved flags and played Souza enthusiastically on our instruments. Though we could tell the girls on the Fort Davis Junior Class float were praying to themselves they would never grow up to be as stupid as us, the rest of the crowd seemed to genuinely enjoy our silliness. especially the middle-aged and older ladies along the parade route. And we took home an honorable mention award, though Larry and my band members’ husbands were the judges, so we may have had some undue influence over their decision.

On our walk back to Larry and Beth’s we left a tiara and kazoo for the Virgin at the grotto Beth built for a client friend and neighbor. It seemed fitting to leave them with her, as an honorary member of the band.