I.

My mother’s father hated West Texas. He detested the sound of the wind over the plains, and the constant battle to keep the red dust out of the house. To be fair, he grew up in central Texas under the trees, and I think he came to the rolling plains after the war. My guess is that the drought of the 50s had a part in his hatred of the area. To be less than fair, my grandfather’s dislike for West Texas colored my opinion of him. That is probably when I first subconsciously used a person’s opinion of West Texas as a Litmus test of their righteousness.

My parents were far too poor to travel, so all my travel as a child was with my grandparents. Sometime in summer they would drive up from South Texas to pick me up, and we would spend several weeks fishing somewhere away from West Texas. At first it was in a slide in camper in the bed of my grandfather’s truck, but later they were able to buy a travel trailer. I saw a lot of south and east Texas state parks, and one trip to nearly the Canadian border. I begged them to take me to Carlsbad Caverns, but they said they were too old, and besides there wasn’t anything worth seeing in the desert anyway. As a child in love with the desert, it made me hyperaware of all the differences between my grandfather and me, and for a time I resented him for those differences.

II.

Three weeks before cancer killed him, my grandfather unfolded a map over the blanket covering his legs, and we travelled inches instead of miles, reliving trips we shared, and also taking each other down roads we had travelled alone. By then we both knew this was the last trip we would take together. He related the years he built electric transmission lines across the Great Plains, winter in northern Nebraska, late spring in South Dakota. Of riding a motorcycle around Taylor County after the war until he got married. I told him of my desert trips.

At some point his thin finger traced a path to Iraan,

“I’ve never cared for west Texas, but there is something about coming to the overlook above Iraan in the early morning or evening. Kind of a magical place. “

I learned a lot about that man in following few weeks. Some of which I’m still mulling nearly two decades later, but this bit about Iraan more than other things. I loathe taking the same path on the same trip; there’s too much country I haven’t seen in different seasons to waste time retracing my tracks. Just the same, I go out of my way to see Iraan from the overlook whenever I am in the area. Iraan is just a little town along the banks of the Pecos. It is probably the equivalent of “flyover country” for those speeding through to see Big Bend National Park, but I agree with my grandfather, if there is magic in this world, it is probably found overlooking Iraan in the twilight.