AFTER WE ARE GONE

                                                                  

We slid onto the highway just outside of Van Horn, TX., into the express lane of the see-nothing blur of Interstate 10 and set the cruise. From last year's trip we remembered the LSD spaghetti bowl of expressway lanes, dueling diesels and snarled traffic of El Paso so this year we made a large loop, above, over and around the city of mostly non-English speaking motorists.

A 5,200 ft. climb over the Franklin Mountains, north of the city, leaving dusty Texas and dropping into the sands and cactus of southern New Mexico.

The stop here was to take a picture of the White Mountains of New Mexico, east of El Paso on Hwy 9. Just as we were about to leave a big bird flew in front of the rig. Jackie’s lighting reflexes pulled the camera to eye, did a “point-and-shoot” with the camera and scored a great in-flight picture of the Red Tailed Hawk. See her blog http://www.juntalanster.blogspot.com/ later today for the picture of the hawk.

Leaf-less Dessert Willows flanking a Yucca along the border.  "Border Patrol Benefits" as it's called here-abouts.

The first sign of civilization emerging from the, barren but beautiful, uninhabited 60 mile stretch  from El Paso to Columbus, NM.  100 years old, built in 1910 and still in use today, this water tower has many tales to tell;  From raids of Pancho Villa to present day in-town shootouts, under it's long legs, it stands as a reminder that nothing exists without water.

The few houses along the road that runs south out of Columbus, two and a half miles to the border town of Puerto Palomas, Mexico have been decimated by the drug war exodus and years of neglect.

For naturalists, sun worshipers and seekers of silence, this desolate country is a longed-for boon. The flip-side is extreme poverty for the inhabitants. A crumbling infrastructure, the most minimal of commerce and little-to-no future in sight until the drug wars are addressed by those not profiting from them.

The sun will rise and set on our Earth Mother long after the pettiness and pocks of man have vanished.