Circa 1976
Copyright Terry Turner 2009
We were driving across the vast levelness of western Texas headed for the Big Bend mountains and the Rio Grande. My passengers, some engineers looking for fun, and me, a white guide, late to the game, at the age of 37. Loaded with rafts, canoes, and a C2, we were equipped well enough for the river which is calm enough. And it only surprises one, if unsuspected rains come roaring down the canyons and at such times, be wary, hell is rising.
The black night stretched endlessly across the dreamless desert. Though our searching eyes saw nothing, we sensed, we knew the endless flatness of the land --- a long level flatness racing toward a rupture of mountains.
Hours passed. Conversation faltered, then ceased. Finally, out of the darkness, pink and white appeared in the distant eastern sky. Gray fingers of light began creeping silently through the desert. The gray light slowly revealed the stubbled face of the desert floor punctured here there with looming prickly cactus and carelessly strewn boulders.
The gray green of the brush was just becoming distinct from the pale gray morning when the sun, in single blinding flash, leapt over the horizon and stood, angry and red. A blazing Martian god, daring the desert to move or lift its head. Instant by instant the fiery fury rose higher and higher to loose its full burning power on the prostate August desert. Its roaring heat turned the clouds into a glowing furnace from horizon to horizon.
The submissive desert lay quiet, knowing it must feign death to survive yet anther day of scrutiny by the angry red eye. The humiliation of the vast desert and the steady rise of the omnipotent sun notarized our finite existence more surely than death and with much less mystery.
I took great joy in the visual feast of the approaches to the Big Bend of Texas despite the stark and almost lifeless plain which we crossed. We were a mere dot inching across millenniums of erosion for the plain which we crossed had once been soaring mountains, now by time, reduced to a dusty desert.
I was not pleased to note that vultures came with the sun and took both an early and abnormal interest in our arrival.
We were still hours from the river and a full day and night from the roaring hell of the rock slide in Santa Elena canyon. I had driven most of the night, so I turned the wheel over, and made myself comfortable on a raft packed in the back of the van., and drifted off to sleep.
But sleep is not my favorite occupation. It’s the dreams --- the people and the things in the dreams--- dreams do not leave me refreshed. I went quickly into a restless sleep and immediately a dream arose. A shape, a darkling shape, spoke to me. "Friend, friend, " it said in a quiet voice, "friend, turn not way. Neither seal your lips, nor close your eyes for I have seen you as you really are. I saw you long ago, a perfect soul then, long before the dark night of this new time."
"I saw you long ago in these mountains. I saw you under the shadowed warmth of a cloudy sky where we stood in the mouth of an ancient cave. I saw reason sparkle in your speechless mind. It was long, long sun years ago." Then he, or it, sighed, and said, " Ah, how true speech would have been could we have spoken then."
Ah, to sleep without dreaming.
Ah, to sleep.
Ah, sleep.
Sleep.
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Be prepared for emergencies
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Addendum: The river, running through Santa Elena Canyon is usually a trickle but, if heavy rains occur up river, it is ranging torrent, class VI or ???. The roar alone is terrifying. If you have not been on the river at flood stage in Santa Elena you have not seen water
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