“The Chisos Mountains”
This is a sentimental scene to me. In early June of 2005,
I took two of my grandsons, Seth Duban, age 16, and Brandon Batton, age
14, on a trip to west Texas to visit Big Bend National Park and The Davis
Mountains. After a great lunch, hamburgers and a chocolate milkshake,
at the historic Gates Hotel Coffee Shop in Marathon, we headed south
toward Big Bend National Park .
It was raining hard. Just after entering
the park, it quit raining and there ahead of us about thirty miles
away in the distance were the Chisos Mountains, our destination. I stopped
beside the highway and took some photos of those mountains. This painting
was made based on those photos. While doing this painting, with the
stormy
sky and distant mountain vistas, I was thinking of all the things we
did and what happened to us on that trip.
We got a cabin in The Basin in The Chisos Mountains and spent the night
there. It rained hard again that night. The next morning the sky was
clear and was an intense cobalt blue color. We hiked down The Window
Trail (another painting subject) and then, after lunch, we went to the
western part of the park. There I made a huge error in judgment.
We wanted
to go due north to get to Alpine and then go on up to The Davis Mountains.
However the highway in front of us suddenly was not paved and due to
the rains the previous day there was water standing everywhere and
the creeks had been flowing over the highway. To go back would take hours.
According to the map, there might be 40 to 50 miles ahead of unpaved
roads. The unpaved road looked to be in fair shape and I decided to
give
it a try. It was my plan that if it got bad, then we would turn around
and come back. It was a very bad and foolish decision on my part.
Interested? Please sign up here!
We made it though, but it was the wildest ride of my
life. At first the road was not too bad, however the further we went
the worse it got. The road became narrow, extremely muddy and water was
standing
on both sides so we could not turn around to go back. Every creek was
flowing, with an unknown depth, across the road. So, we would hit the
flowing creeks
at as high a speed as we could to force our way through to the other
side. You might say, my language became somewhat colorful as I would
yell to the
boys to hold on. From my early teenage experiences of driving on muddy
ranch roads, I knew that we couldn’t slow down because we would get
stuck for sure and there would be no help probably for days. The only
thing to
do was keep my foot on the gas pedal and keep going no matter what horror
we could see ahead. Several times it crossed my mind "What was I going
to tell their parents?" if we didn’t make it and somehow I survived.
The boys loved this nearly two-hour long wild roller coaster experience.
When we finally reached a paved highway and safety,
I was mentally drained and physically exhausted. However, as we drove
north toward Alpine, I began to feel a little better because I could tell
that
my grandsons were now looking at me with a new respect and admiration
that teenage boys seldom give to an elder such as their grandfather.
Cheers,
Acree
<< Back to Email
Archive Page >>
|
