I've been feeling pretty stuck in my routine lately, too attached to my sofa and just going through another day of sleep, work, television, sleep, work, television, wanting to get away, just for a few days. Take a trip, get out of my routine. So I did. I thought about it for a week, talked about it for a week, trying to decide whether to head East or West. The beach or the mountains. And then I got up Saturday morning, packed a bag, thanked my boyfriend for the picnic he'd made for me, and headed out.
I'd still been debating where to go the night before. I love everything about the beach: the salty smell of the ocean, the hot feel of the sand, the rolling crush of the waves. But I've been to more beaches recently than mountains, and the mountains just felt right. They were calling, as the saying goes. I'd thought about going to Guadalupe Mountains National Park, mostly because I'd never been there, but I knew there was a cold front coming in, storms rolling in from the north, and it was an hour farther away, so I decided on a rough destination of Big Bend National Park, a place I've been to several times but not for a few years.
There's a nostalgia to Big Bend. Perhaps it can't help itself, even if you've never been there: Everything about it references a time gone past, the Old, Wild West and back beyond. Big Bend is a place where time both stands still and happens on a larger scale. Unlike other national parks that seem overrun with tourism and traffic and modernity, Big Bend is a vastly remote space. Its roads are open and empty, it's scenery going on for miles and miles and miles. It's the first place I ever seriously hiked, the first national park I ever really visited and home to the first mountain I ever climbed. Years later, I still feel the painful numbness in my legs from my hike up Emory Peak, the real possibility of having to be carried back to the car a just-missed alternate history.
The drive to Big Bend from Austin is long, but it's one of the best in Texas, especially at this time of year. U.S. 290 through the Hill Country is still exploding with wildflowers, with yellow and red and purple. Johnson City and Fredericksburg are both fun Texas towns, not far from Junction.
Wildflowers along U.S. 290. Photograph by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic.
I've done a lot of road trips. I tend to take two different kinds: Either ones so packed full of things to do that every minute is planned out (Land plane at 6:30 a.m. Rental car from Hertz by 7 a.m. Drive 132 miles to So-and-so destination. Spend four hours hiking so-and-so-trail. Drive 1 hour to campsite...) or ones in which nothing is planned out. This one was the latter. All I knew was that I was driving, headed West, ready for whatever I wound up doing. It was a test of whimsy, of whatever happens, of going with the flow. And I liked it that way.
You can't drive through Texas without seeing some Longhorns. Photograph by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic.
Driving out West is meditative, contemplative. The land passes with the time, turns time into land, into layers, into an understandable dimension. Much of the drive consists of cell and radio silence, and, though I guess I could learn about i-pods and bluetooth speakers and downloadable podcasts and whatever else, I didn't have any of those things. I listened to the wind instead.
The road through Big Bend National Park. Photograph by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic.
I love road-tripping but I'm not sure I'm a great person to road trip with. For one thing, I'm always wanting to pull over to take a picture of something, to look at something, to find out what something is. Touristy billboard signs will get me. Interesting yards. Signs to parks. Whatever it is, the chances are I'll slow us down for it. For another thing, I'm a bit of a minimalist when I'm traveling. I don't really think about what other people think about when they are road tripping or traveling, which seems to be things like food and places to stay. I really don't care about either of those things, at all. Someone can mention food to me during a road trip and I'll ask them what the problem is. We don't need food! Buy a snack at the next gas station. We're on the move, don't you know? People can go days without food and be okay. Drink some water, water will keep you going. And a place to stay? If we're in a car we already have shelter. What more do you need? I just need a place to charge my camera and laptop batteries for an hour. And I'm also not an easy person to keep up with. I always want to be on the go. I don't want to relax on the beach, I want to go snorkeling, I want to build sand castles, I want to collect sea glass, I want to go hiking and I want to do all those things before the sun goes down so that tomorrow we can move on to the next place. I don't know many people who would drive 16 hours in two days just to see some mountains, but I will do it alone, again and again and again, if I allow myself to.
The scenery in Big Bend National Park on the way to Rio Grande Village. Photograph by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic.
It's hard to get away, to find the time, to allow yourself a break from the day-to-day. There's just this never-ending to do list of work and stuff and goals and this never-ending reel of distractions and procrastinations and this never-ending cycle of work, sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep. Time is the biggest luxury. But sometimes you need to spend your time to keep yourself sane, and that has to be okay.
The view of my campsite at Big Bend National Park. Photograph by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic.
I found a great camping site in Big Bend, in the middle of the Chisos Basin. I set up my tent and watched as the clouds and wind rolled in for the night. Though I'd missed the storms happening north and east, I couldn't escape the clouds and the cold. Since there weren't any stars to catch, I started reading. I started reading "The Greatest Story Ever Told — So far," a book that attempts to describe the latest discoveries in physics and cosmology in layman's terms — and kept on reading The Handmaid's Tale. And I wrote for a bit, too, just to get some things off my chest, to take stock of what I know about myself and my life right at this moment. I honestly don't know much, but I know that, like all good things, writing is therapeutic for me. It's a way of letting go of the things I don't want to hold inside. But I found myself thinking about all the things I do keep inside, how good they are, how much I take care of those things and treasure those things, and wondering whether the world would be a better place if I did the reverse: If I wrote about the things I wanted to keep close and kept close the things I wanted to let go. I don't really know.
The view of my campsite at Big Bend National Park. Photograph by Maria Sprow/ Artinistic.
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