Marfa Flights: Aerial Views of Big Bend Country

I. The Journey Begins: The Flight from Marfa, Texas

Routes flown in the making of the aerial photographs in this book. Map by author. THE JOURNEY BEGINS The Flight from Marfa, Texas I. 12 : THE JOURNEY BEGINS 1. Marfa Flats and Haystacks West of the Marfa Municipal Airport The shadow of the Cessna 172 used to take all the photographs in this book glides over the desert floor below us at low altitude as we cross the Old County Road between Marfa and Bloys Camp, where the famous religious cowboy camp meetings were held. In the distance are the twin peaks known locally as the Haystacks. 2. Departing Marfa Flight to Pinto Canyon Flying from Marfa, we follow Pinto Canyon Road southwest across the Ryan Flat. The road appears like a ruler–straight line drawn by an engineer to make the most efficient route across this open country heading toward Pinto Canyon. In the distance are Long Draw and the Oak Hills. The open country clears my mind of Dallas worries. This is another world to me, the beginning of a journey. My old world of tall buildings and big roads is fading in the prop wash of the Cessna. Here the landscape begins to overpower the rectilinear marks of mankind. Texas Ranch Road 2810 shrinks in artifice against the canvas of the Marfa Flats. 3. Marfa Yacht Club West of Marfa A wise person once said that to understand water, go to the desert. Near Marfa are these playas, or dried lakebeds that temporarily hold rainwater. As I see the dry earth below, I am starting to think about how I take water for granted. Some locals told me that this dry playa was the Marfa Yacht Club. I still don’t know if that was an inside joke. The sharp lines of ranch roads and fences cut across these large organic pond shapes. A muddy brown water hole for cattle punctuates one of the green lake beds. The tiny lines are trails formed by the hooves of cattle wandering around what is left of the water hole. I’ve never been in a desert before and I learn from my pilot, much to my surprise, that Marfa gets most of its rain in the summer, especially July. It is April now and the skies are clear. In the mornings, the temperature hovers around freezing, then warms as the sun rises. 4. Marfa Flats West of Marfa Dirt roads geometrically divide the plane of the Marfa Flats in the ranchland surrounding Marfa. Here ranchers still raise Highland Hereford cattle, much as their ancestors did generations ago, but the country is changing—Marfa is a contemporary art outpost with national notoriety and the borderlands are the focal point of intense federal law enforcement presence. 5. Diverging Road and Railroad Marfa, Texas Texas Highway 90 (left) makes a northwest beeline for Valentine, Texas, across the high desert. The Union Pacific Railroad runs parallel to the road, then veers away to bypass difficult terrain. Marfa was founded in the 1880s as a Southern Pacific Railroad water stop for steam locomotives. Hanna Marie Strobridge, a railroad executive’s wife, named the town after a character in a novel that she had read, most likely The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Flight from Marfa, Texas : 1 7 6. Velvet Hills Twenty-seven miles southwest of Marfa Pinto Canyon Road cuts a graceful winding line as it follows the contours of the Oak Hills, which look like undulating velvet. Even on this approach heading southwest, the aerial view begins to reveal the varied textures of the land in Big Bend, which is foreign to my eyes. I already feel the wonder of leaving my ordinary world as my aerial “road trip” begins. I begin to snap images with my two digital cameras to get ready for what lies ahead. One camera has a normal lens, the other a very wide zoom lens. 7. Juniper-Dotted Valley Stream bed west of Marfa Juniper and cedar congregate along a stream bed where the tributaries reach for the hills to catch the water from occasional rain showers. The green of the conifers is a striking contrast against the sandy color of the rolling hills. The distribution of the trees seems like polling results for the presence of water. Since Marfa...