#121 / 2010 Survival Camp: Study Butte

2010/SURVIVAL CAMP: ASTOR PARK
#121

Shooting stars by night and a double rainbow in the morning provided entertainment in the vast skies of Study Butte. We spent our first night at Neil’s forty acres in order to help out as he put the finishing touches on the framework of the first permanent structure on his property.

The land tracts in this area run 200 acres to 500 acres and more so neighbors are few. Looking around 360 degrees of the uninterrupted landscape that Neil calls “prehistoric” one can imagine a dinosaur loping across the desert floor.  The nearby Chisos Mountains stand shoulder to shoulder with multiple other ranges I can't name yet. The reference points off on the far horizon have names like Mule Ear Peaks and Emory Peak.

It is timeless out here and the desert stretches out in front of us as vast as an ocean. By the light of a half moon Neil, his brother Henry, Beatlick Joe and I lugged chairs, coolers and a steam pot to an arroyo protected from the furious winds that have blown all day, uncharacteristically from the south.

In the moonlight walking through the towering gullies I felt like I was in a dream state or a movie.  We looked like characters from “Beach Blanket Bingo” heading off to the beach to steam up a dozen lobsters, but we were in Far Out West Texas steaming up a dozen tamales instead with no water in sight.

The arroyo was over ten feet high on one side with a concave mud wall completely sheltering us from the wind. Neil started a fire that reflected off the hard mud and illuminated us as if we were on stage. Our looming shadows accompany us in the background as the clarity of the night sky over head afforded us the opportunity to see things up there like multiple shooting stars and one strong light of such an unnatural trajectory that I am not even going to try to fathom what I saw. I’m not one to lend myself to fantasy and space aliens but I saw lights and movement out there I can’t rationally explain.

As we nestled against our mud backdrop we took turns singing campfire songs and telling ghost stories. Neil officially named his residence Astor Park that night. We laughed and teased each other with such camaraderie and affection that I became quite overwhelmed with my emotions and the beauty of this stark existence. I thought to myself this is the start of something. I feel it in my bones. This is what people pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to do, come out here to have this sort of experience. They take photographs which they will keep for a lifetime, haul out of some drawer occasionally and reminisce about till their dying day.

I felt something permanent lodge up inside my own heart that night. This is something I can hang on to, be a part of, and I intend to. Neil’s generosity is magnanimous. With all the beer drinking and belly laughing I had a case of hiccups by the time we headed back to camp. We made a bed in the back of Neil’s pickup and tied a blue tarp over head. Good thing as it started raining before daylight. We had to get up and put tarps over the building supplies of plywood and concrete that we brought out from Fort Stockton. We crawled back into bed and waited for daylight.

In the morning the wind had died down and there was a breathtaking double rainbow arcing over newly declared Astor Park. After it faded I memorized the landscape. Each acre hosts a yucca plant growing out of the desert floor of Bentonite. That is the main ingredient in Kitty Litter, a substance that clots up with moisture and can make Astor Park a vast expanse of impenetrable wet concrete if there is a hard rain. About every ten feet grows a spindly ocotillo shrub shooting up thorned branches towards the sun like so many bony fingers; every eight feet squats a mesquite bush. These are intermixed with juniper bushes, barrel cactus and clumps of various other cacti species. It’s not hospitable, but it is beautiful.

Reluctantly we had to go back to Fort Stanton with Neil. We want to be here so badly but I have to deal with some emergency dental surgery. I’m on ten days of antibiotics for my abscessed tooth which sprang up out of nowhere and has completely halted my plans until it is dealt with. It requires a dental surgeon, I can’t just go to a dentist Dr. Yarborough told me in Fort Stockton. I will have to retrace my steps all the way back to El Paso if I can’t find an endodontist closer to Pecos County.

Happy Trails

Beatlick Pamela