A wild-story for wild-story sake:

(maybe a little moralization, we’ll see)

This summer, an old friend and I finally made good on a months-long effort to do some hiking together in the Texas mountains.  Our first plan to climb Mt. Livermore fell through because of a sudden funeral (a recurring theme for me).  That location is privately owned and is only accessible 4 weekends a year; therefore, the raincheck needed another location.  Emory peak at the top of the Chisos Basin seemed like the perfect fit as he’d never been to Big Bend and is a gifted climber by nature. 

He drove down from Amarillo, arrived in the desert, and consented to stay in my camper van; I really should have probably been using signed consent forms at that point.  After a stop-over at the grocers in Alpine for provisions, we traveled the last leg into the mythically eccentric haven that  humans call Terlingua.

Terlingua affects me; I would say that I love it, but I would also say it challenges me and moves me in more than one direction at a time.  Just the sight of it never fails to make me laugh a little to myself (I have a shock/enjoyment chuckle).  Thanks to the unearthly and imposing backdrop of the area’s geology, it looks exactly like a colony on Mars.  But maybe a colony on Mars populated by people who misread their directions to Burning Man. 

Terlingua asks me what I “really need” in terms of house and comforts to “really live.”  There are tons (dozens?) of people living full lives there; ostensibly happy and less cluttered lives than mine.  It also accuses me on this front and taunts that I’m likely too housebroken to be happy there. 

Terlingua tells me that there’s a place in the world for true eccentricity.  The flip side of that question is, “how did you (J) get so square lately?  Is it just an act?  Or is this just who you are now?”  Occupationally, I think about death a great deal more than your average bear.  So, I eventually must face the big questions, “are you ready to die in a nice neighborhood?  Maybe a sterile room near a nice neighborhood? Or… is there still time to reinvent yourself into something authentic?”

In the summer, Terlingua is considered in off-season because of the heat.  The weather is still in a nice range at the top of the park in “the basin” (5400 feet) even in July; however, bed-time temperatures are still easily hovering in the 80s.  My camper van had a portable air conditioner that could be run on 120v shore-power; however, as is often the case, the Natl Park camp sites had no electricity.  The solution was to spend the night in Terlingua (the closest town to the park), rent a camp site with electrical, and leave before sunup to begin the climb in the coolest temperatures. 

Being off-season, I learned that some of the campground proprietors aren’t even in town or else aren’t manning their business phones out of their lack of expectation.  In fact, I only reached one business that day: the vibrantly named Jomomma’s RV Park.  I now know that the park is named after the original owner of the park, “Jo”; the current owner is her granddaughter who knew her by her grandmother-name “Jomomma.”  You see, this subtle detail changes the name from seeming like a quip about my-mother to being something sweet about someone-else’s-mother.  They had electrical hook-ups for my air conditioner, weren’t down a three-mile-long rough road, had a very reasonable fee, and…they answered my reservation request; those are some well-met expectations for Terlingua!

I’m no experienced RV type, but the park was great, not too big, marked out by rocks and cactus, more than dark enough to see the stars, more than quiet enough to feel the presence of the desert and get a good night’s sleep. It wasn’t one of those places that’s just a big asphalt parking lot, or one of those places that just a dirt-scape either; it has true Terlingua character; which makes sense as the proprietor, Elena, is 3rd generation Terlingua.  All this despite being very accessible from the main drag and not needing a 4×4 to arrive in one piece.

Upon arrival, Elena met us, got us situated, gave us a few pointers on Terlingua-life, and wished us well on our climb.  She was warm, friendly, helpful, funny, and I quickly felt like I had a friend in town and knew that she would be on the phone for any reason.  She pointed toward a building where her mother lives but explained that she spent her days sitting up “on the porch” (a Terlingua gathering place in front of the Starlight Theatre Restaurant: worth a google… worth a drive, really) “talking s%#* and calling people ‘peckerwoods!’”  Not wanting to miss the opportunity to be called a peckerwood, we set about exploring for the evening. 

We returned from our nocturnal expedition and prepared to catch some sleep.  It was a confusing few minutes before we learned, from Elena’s mom, now positioned in a camp-chair in the driveway, that the power had gone out in most of the county.  In the end, we spent a sweaty night in a campervan anyway before the power was restored around 4 in the morning.  We departed before sunup, and I imagined that the whole of that experience could now slide into deep memory as a footnote before our journey of glory toward the mountain peak. 

Part 2:

This year, we had about a week of reasonable weather in early September that fooled me into thinking Fall might show up.  I counted the Saturdays until soccer was over and planned a family trip in a pop-up camper I’d been re-doing as of late.  It was the first trip in the little camper, and in truth, it was our first trip in a camper of any kind.  As the false-fall ended and the summer-like desert heat returned, I once again bet on the safety of full-hookups to ensure the function of my air conditioner.  It’s hard enough to sleep without the challenge of stuffiness.

I booked a one-night spot at the official Lajitas Resort RV park ensuring full facilities and securing a huge, beautiful pool for the kids in the afternoon heat.  This also provided a little insurance in case my pop-up project went horribly wrong.  We had a great stay, we slept, we ate, we gaped at the oddity that is Lajitas Resort, we fed the mayor goat-feed, we explored an awesome slot-canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park, we swam in one of the most inviting pools I’ve ever seen, and we left fully satiated on adventure.    My 6-year-old described the pool as “Gatorade Blue”; sometimes I think we’ve got to get them out of modern life before it’s too late.

Getting to Lajitas for almost everyone includes passing through Terlingua.  Thus, on our way home, we came through town and then turned North toward Alpine for about 3-5 miles when we had a …. blow out… after business hours, on a Saturday, in Terlingua. For further stress, my spare had even stopped holding air… it’s hard to grasp just how hopeless the situation really was.  My internal sense of optimism still can’t fully embrace it!   

I had been under the vehicle cursing myself for having neglected my “spare” situation, I’d already sweated through my clothes, and I was in denial about how much trouble I had on my hands when I started hearing another female voice beside my wife’s. Having come to the end of what I had been trying, I climbed out, slumped in the shade of my van, wiped the sweat-stuck dirt out of eyes and off my face, decided to at least try and retain my human decorum, and introduced myself to the lady who’d stopped to help.

I was flustered by the situation and was slow to catch on, so I asked one of my go-to conversational maintenance questions: “what do you do here in Terlingua?” She replied amicably “I run Jomomma’s RV park” and I replied “Oh! i stayed there a couple months ago.” Elena just smiled a friendly grin and said emphatically, “S*!*, I already know!”

She had recognized my van from the summer and stopped to help; I would later get the impression that she’d have stopped regardless of the familiarity.  She got out her own tools, called friends to come and bring their tools, and kept us optimistic as best she could. She tried to call the only tire-guy in town and didn’t get an answer. In the end, we loaded both my spare and my blown-out rim into her truck and she and I headed to the home of the guy who ran the only tire business in town. By this time, it was every bit of 8pm. On the side of the road, one of Elena’s friends told me, “well, if anyone could get Diego up… it’d be Elena.”  I had no idea how to contextualize that statement.

Elena knocked on his door, entered his home, persuaded him to fix us up, spent 20 minutes helping him get ready to work, and even looked through his used tire inventory for what we needed! When the work was through, the tire man (so many thanks to Diego’s Tire Repair Terlingua TX!) didn’t take anything but cash and I didn’t have enough on me; Elena offered to pay him and let me pay her back via Venmo. Wow.

It was during this odyssey while Elena and I were darting around Terlingua when one of my least favorite things occurred.   I call it “preacher bombing” people.  I don’t know if you and I have met, but “Baptist Pastor” isn’t usually in people’s minds after meeting me; some people who occasionally attend our church still assume I’m the youth director who just happened to preach that day.  Truth be told, it’s probably not even one of the top five ways I see or identify myself.  Often, I meet new people, relate to them like I do anyone else, and we begin an open new friendship where I am genuine in my conversation and interest in them as a person.   Then, as if they’re waking me from a dream with a bucket of water, they’ll ask, “so what do you do?”  Often this occurs after they’ve admitted to shoplifting, told a dirty joke, and strung together cuss words like a paper chain at Christmas. 

In that moment of that conversation, the weight of what I’m about to say chokes me; I’ll even, at times, consider giving my self an alternative job title like “community organizer” “ancient textual teacher” or “I run a non-profit.”  But alas, I’ve already begun to feel the weight of what I already fear to be a form of dishonesty; better come clean now.  Boom.  I set off the preacher bomb.

There are a few recurring responses to the explosion: 1. They clam up, better not say anything further incriminating until their lawyer arrives. 2. They give me their spiritual credentials to make up for whatever they’ve said during the period of free speech.  3. They get the spot-light off of them and onto me…” what’s that like?” “how’s that working for you?”  I feel bad for doing it every time.  It’s complicated, but I’m likely to never be ready to begin every relationship by saying, “Hi, I’m pastor Josh.   Would you like to read a Psalm right quick?”  For what it’s worth, I’m also not comfortable beginning these new friendships in the passive deception that I’m just a normal dude.

I watched Elena’s reaction through squinted side-eye.  I’d already noticed a couple decks of Tarot cards sliding back and forth across the dash of her pickup and discussed half-a-dozen topics that “pastor josh” wouldn’t have been welcomed into.  Of course, just to be clear, none of this mattered to me; people are where they are, not where you wish they were, not where you think they should be.  Truth be told I was gleefully interested in the below-the-surface spirituality of a woman who had so freely given hours and work in the heat to me and my family. 

God bless her; Elena didn’t flinch.  The rarest of all reactions to being preacher bombed.  Maybe it was the freewheeling spirit of Terlingua, maybe it was the amicable nature of our conversation up to that point, maybe it was just Elena’s evident well of internal grace, but she stayed a good human and thus allowed me to remain human.  Throughout that evening, despite my now-discovered professional link to the cultural carnage wrought by evangelicalism in recent years, we continued to communicate as friends.  Family stuff, religion stuff, Terlingua stuff, the beginning and the end of the world stuff; we even stopped by the grocery store (Cottonwood) giving me look into local life that I always enjoy but rarely seek out because it’s a little weird. 

After she returned me to our family carriage, she hung around until we got the tire on and saw that it was holding enough air for the journey. All told, Elena spent 2.5 hours with my little family that Saturday night…no exaggeration, I confirmed it with my google maps timeline. We were completely “up a creek” with two anxious young children, and I HAD to be at work/church the next morning. Elena saved our bacon at a time when I still don’t know what “plan b” would have been. And she did it all with a smile and seemingly enjoying herself as she helped us. I had no idea I had a friend in Terlingua, but now I have no doubt…my family and I have a good friend in Terlingua, and I recommend that you make her acquaintance.

Relevant Places:

Jomommas Rv Park – Terlingua, Texas

Diego’s Tire 432-371-3014

Maverick Ranch RV Park, Lajitas TX