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Life off the grid in the SW Texas desert. An experiment in sustainable living. NUMBERS AT THE END OF EACH BLOG POST: temp at 8PM,high temp,low temp,rainfall,wind conditions(CalmBreezyWindyGusty). YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TheFieldLab Daily live streams at https://www.youtube.com/thefieldlab/live
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Good/Cheap hotel In Alpine
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13 comments:
I love it...whatever it stands for.
Beautiful picture. I have read some stories about the early settlers and mercury workers there. The West has many stories. But I still wonder. The fiction novel based on fact called Hill Country tells about this area where I live now. There is a retired Colonel here near 90 years who is almost sightless who smiles whenever people talk about Marathon and the Big Bend area where he roamed as a child. Of course he describes it as being much more primative and open then and very bountiful.
rot iron in adobe? is this near your place or down toward ghost town? very pretty.
Often wonder when settlers moved west - without weather records, how do they know what were places where they could successfully grow their food?
and actually Texas was Mexico many decades ago and those generations probably had an oral history and culture for that area.
New Mexico has century generational families of Latinos that still own much land and occupy local government.
And of course Native American called the ANASAZI lived for a thousand years west of Texas before a mega drought forced them to leave the smaller streamed canyons and move to places with more reliable water - of which the Latino-named Rio Grande was one.
Alpine is a creation of the railroads ... as was Marathon.
LAJITAS has a far different history in part because it grew up around the Rio Grande which sustained the native populations.
that part of Texas has fascinating history!
I was reading the markers in Terlingua & I was amazed at how young the place was.
@Larry G: I think good frontier farmers would have had a vocabulary of indicator species. That is, they see what is growing in an area naturally, and know other plants that would easily grow in a similar environment.
@Boonut - I partially agree because they were seeing a snap-shot in time.
Although if you are seeing cactus and horn-toads.. you ought have a clue!
.. and the other thing that transformed great swathes of the west - irrigation...
and it relates directly to the Terlinga area because upstream, the Rio Grande is heavily used for irrigation (and in Mexico also) and what actually gets down to Lajita in summer in some years is a trickle.
didn't John try to build a small dam to save water? whatever happened.. to it.. ??
There are ghost towns all over the planet, some are more obvious than others. For example I was born and grew up close to where Disney World is now. There was a ghost town there called Vineland that in the 60's still had a few houses standing, dilapidated but standing. We used to walk the roads there until Disney bought the property and began chasing off anyone who "trespassed" on the public roads there. The area now has been consumed by the new community of Lake Buena Vista.
Each time I go to west Texas I see all the remnants of past lives scattered across the desert floor. Each has a story, many stories are probably forgotten. Each represents a life or lives and an attempt at taming the wilderness. What an awesome place to still have such rich history laid bare for anyone who will take the time to look...
Thanks for showing us more of the neat stuff out there.
They built the house so the window would overlook the mountain in the distance. Now they too are distant memories lost forever.
what's that:
" There's no law west of Dodge and no God west of the Pecos."
?
nice photo!
Strange. It seems from the picture that the iron gate is built within the wall, perhaps as a support for the collection of broken bricks and rocks that are cobbled together with mortar. Can't see any adobe. I'd say it's more recent than it appears. Steve C.
Beautiful picture - allows for so much "imagining" of the gate's origins and purpose. Terrific view, too. Regardless of weather or living conditions, it would feed the soul to see that every day, from behind one's garden gate.
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