Home for the Holidays Part 2: Christmas

My parents had decided to get my brother a cell phone for Christmas. Apparently all twelve-year-olds have their own cell phones nowadays. I remember longing for a cell phone back when I was in high school before realizing that there wasn't really anyone who I wanted to talk to on the phone anyway. As the youngest responsible adult in the family, I was placed in charged of taking my brother cell phone shopping. My cell phone in Vanuatu is probably the sweetest piece of technology I've ever had the pleasure of owning because it has a little LED flashlight on the end of it. This is immensely useful in Vanuatu because one often finds oneself caught outside after dark without and flashlight and, while I've gotten pretty good at navigating through the pitch blackness, a light is good to have if it's been raining because large puddles can crop up unannounced. The flashlight phone is the cheapest model that Digicel offers and the flashlight is really the only actually useful cellphone extra that I've ever seen (the camera phones seem pretty cool until the realization strikes that no one has a computer to save their pictures on, so all their photos are relegated to the one inch by one inch phone screen. Movies suffer a similar fate), and a lot of people that I've seen purchasing the more expensive models wind up complaining that they lack a flashlight (also, the flashlight model seems to have the preferred version of snake since people are always borrowing my phone at the nakamal to play the game). The flashlight did not seem to be a major selling point in the US, however, as I found my favorite phone stuck in the back corner of the T-Mobile store with all the other neglected devices that no trendy techie would be caught dead with (I think it's time for a retro cell phone fad. I want to see them bringing back those phones from the late 80's that were basically just bricks with antennas sticking out. I know I'd buy one. Anyone else?).

According to my brother, texting is the new calling. Having an actual voice conversation with someone is considered monstrously uncool, it's much more trendy to try and express yourself using 160 character text messages painstakingly typed out on cell phone keypads. We actually use texting a lot in Vanuatu, but this is because we're charged about fifty cents a minute for voice conversations, thus basically all communications, including those regarding serious medical issues, are limited to these quasi-emails (ie: “have skin infect. need ur erythromicin”). In the US, however, I suppose it's evolved as sort of a high tech way of passing notes in class. Also, the introduction of Apple's iAmReallyObcessedWithCheckingMyEmailEverySecondOfTheDayPhone, which came out just before I left for Vanuatu, seems to have kicked off something of a cell-phone-as-a-pocket-computer trend. As we browsed through the store I noted a fair number of phones sporting full QWERTY keyboards whose buttons are conveniently sized for those of us whose fingers have been replaced with toothpicks. Some phones even had computer applications on them, like Microsoft Word or Excel, programs that we apparently loved so much at work that we want to be able to enjoy them on-the-go as well. We weren't looking to turn my brother into a mobile productivity center just yet (I actually noticed a kid while I was home who was probably in grade school, had an iPhone, and was using it to play with a virtual Zippo lighter. Yes. The screen showed a Zippo lighter that you could snap open or closed using the iPhone's motion sensors. I mean, are you supposed to use that in conjunction with a program that allows you to light and smoke virtual cigarettes and then contract virtual lung cancer? Are real Zippo lighters so prohibitively expensive now that it's more cost effective to have your iPhone simulate one?), but a texting-friendly keypad was deemed preferable. Eventually we did find a phone that was sufficiently cool to pass twelve year old standards and sufficiently inexpensive to pass parent standards, but I couldn't help but think about the horror that would be unleashed should Ni-Vans ever get their hands on internet phones. I pictured my inbox crowded with incomprehensible messages in Bislama and a veritable ocean of useless forwards. Perhaps it's best that some countries remain underdeveloped.

On Christmas Eve we drove to San Antonio. Although no one in my family really lives in San Antonio anymore, it's still considered something of a home base for us. Plus, there's this awesome Mexican restaurant there that's always open (like, always. Christmas, New Year's, Wednesdays at 3am, always) that we've been going to forever. It's approximately the size of a supermarket and it's difficult to picture how it could possibly get more tacky, but the food's pretty good and tradition is tradition. We met up with some of my extended family for lunch and then headed out to the Riverwalk. The San Antonio river runs right through the city of San Antonio (makes sense, right) and, as part of a flood control project, a network of walking paths follow the river along beneath the street level. A number of shops and restaurants have opened up along the river as well and now the whole thing is a nice sort of pedestrian commercial area.

On Christmas we had smoked duck, which was probably one of the greatest things in the world. My Dad, in what was perhaps one of the best decisions ever made, had purchased a smoker while I'd been in Vanuatu. It was a barrel style BBQ, a fat cylinder cut in half longways and hinged. Charcoal or wood can be placed directly beneath the grill in the main barrel, but there is also a smaller barrel attached to one side as a firebox, with the smoke from the fire there being drawn up through the main chamber. Thus, one can place meat in the main part of the grill, get a fire going in the firebox, and smoke meat without directly exposing it to the heat. We picked up a couple of ducks from the grocery store and smoked them for about five hours. Ducks are so amazingly greasy that big puddles of drippings were left in the bottom of our grill after cooking them. Despite this, the ducks were not in the least bit dried out and they probably made the best Christmas dinner I'd ever had.

On Friday, we piled into the car again, this time headed for Big Bend, a large national park located on that part of west Texas that sticks out to a point. It was a long drive through a lot of nothing to get there. The US is really amazingly giant. The area that all of Vanuatu covers, not just the land, ocean as well, is about the same size as California. The actual land area is about the size of Connecticut, yet Texas is so vast that you can drive through it for hours and still manage not to get anywhere. I don’t know how the crammed so much nothing into one state. Our car devoured miles of scrubby desert at an alarming rate, but always there seemed to be an endless expanse of it ahead. Once we stopped for gas at a filling station in the middle of nowhere. I mean that quite literally: just a gas station (not even an attached convenience store or McDonalds) on a patch of desert surrounded on all sides with nothing but more desert for at least 30 miles. I believe the attendant there probably had one of the loneliest jobs on the planet.

As we exited central Texas and entered west Texas, flat expanses of lonely desert gave way to hilly expanses of lonely desert. Finally, after about eight hours of riving, we arrived in the town of Terlingua, where we would be staying for the next few nights. My parents had arranged for a small condo unit which was situated on a hill amongst other small condo units. The area was a collection of short, knobby hills looking like overly large gopher mounds. Each hill had a solitary structure (presumably a condos) perched on it and they were all connected by a gravel road that ran along the valley between the small hills. It seemed like an excellent setting for some sort of Sci-Fi/horror movie involving the sudden arrival of a small number of otherworldly visitors who, wouldn’t you know it, have nothing better to do than devour the brains of unsuspecting people. The only possible problem would be that, this being Texas, everyone and their mother has a gun and the good sense to shoot anything scary and otherworldly-looking instead of blindly blundering into obviously monster-infested caves/basements/craters like lemmings over a cliff.

Not surprisingly, Terlingua is host to a ghost town. Apparently, some time ago, a valuable resource was discovered in this particular piece of desert wasteland and a number of people, who would otherwise never consider living on such undesirable real estate, were enticed to move to the area and then equally enticed to leave once the resource was depleted. This ghost town, rather than becoming infested with ghosts and demons, instead became infested with hippies (some may argue that this is basically the same thing). Combined with the opening of the nearby national park, Terlingua is now something of a tourist attraction.

The thing that struck me first about Terlingua was how dark it got a night. Although I’d only been away from Vanuatu for a few weeks, I’d already forgotten how dark it can be when you’re not in a city. Ironically, it’s equally surprising how light it can be at night when a good moon is out, but this weekend there was no moon to be seen. I think we’re all secretly afraid of the dark. How else can one explain our obsession with artificial lighting? Our towns and cities positively glitter at night. Street lights, house lights, window lights, porch lights, car lights all kick on around dusk against the impending departure of the sun. Some will shine all night so that someone wishing to go for a stroll at 4am will not be inconvenienced by having to carry a flashlight. Our world becomes bathing in that strange, yellowish not-quite-natural glow. Instinctively, night in a city FEELS dark, but very little is actually dark, rarely are you outside and unable to walk because you can’t see what’s in front of you. As such, it is possible to forget what darkness is really like and be surprised when it is encountered. In Terlingua (and Vanuatu) it gets dark. This is a darkness that’s heavy and sticky and dense. This is a darkness that takes light and swallows it. Flashlights and even car headlights seem as fragile as candles when placed within it. Fires, houses, cars provide reassuring little spheres of light to be sure, but on the edges the darkness is still visible, coiled and waiting to flood back in once the light is extinguished. Buildings are but little glowing dots against an inky black canvas, little oasis of life amongst a vast abyss of nothingness, little islands that we cling to for comfort and leave only reluctantly. It is a feeling both eerie and comforting to be in a house, restaurant, or nakamal at night at have your world shrunk down to a small area of whatever the establishment’s lights can illuminate. While your neighbors may seem so uncomfortably close in the daylight, now the seem part of a different world. I, for one, like the darkness, for all of its ominous-ness and foreboding. The power of it may seem terrifying if you are trying to oppose it, but I find darkness is much the ocean in this respect: fight it, and it will retaliate most violently, but embrace it and it will embrace you in return.

Big Bend National Park required additional driving from Terlingua in order to reach. On top of its being out of the way, the park itself is huge and takes on the order of hours to drive across. The Rio Grande is the principal attraction in the park, along with a number of canyons and interesting rock formations which it is responsible for carving. The Rio Grande also has the dubious distinction of dividing the US from Mexico. In recent years there’s been a push for tighter border control, and Big Bend has been no exception. Unfortunately for the folks at border control, the Rio Grande is not, as the name suggests, a giant, raging river worthy of dividing nations. The part I saw, at least, more resembled something that might run through a subdivision and be frequented by 8-year-olds in the summer to come splash in. IN previous years, it had been acceptable for Americans to cross the river into Mexico to go purchase tacos and maybe some trinkets, but now this is strictly prohibited. Instead, when nobody is looking (which is most of the time as this is the middle of the desert), Mexicans dash across the river and set up little stands with merchandise and donation boxes on the American side. While we got stern instructions from the rangers not to purchase anything, I guess some people still do, as the practice persists.

Desert landscapes are all very stark. The northern woods are rugged and stately, the tropical jungles and bush are wild and unmanageable, but the desert is stark. In a wood, the trees are tall and proud and they hide wide, glistening meadows, babbling brooks and swamps, all of which a hiker might come upon unexpectedly. In the bush, trees (with thin, ill-thought-out trunks that hardly seem capable of supporting themselves) grow every which way and vines and creepers choked out the sunlight. The bush is not hiked, it is slogged through with ax and machete and it hides nothing at all, just more green to be hacked at. In a desert, the scrubby greenery leaves bear the mountains and valleys and gorges and one is struck at once at how big the world is and how small we are who walk upon itt. A desert is trekked across, it spreads out like a map at your feet and you can see all at once where you started, where you are going, and how much distance separates the two. I think the desert is the most honest of landscapes. While a wood tucks its treasures away and a bush is all chest and no treasure, a desert shows everything to you all at once. To some, this makes them seem bleak and forlorn, but I enjoy the effect. I do not mind to be made small by the vastness of the world around me and, after many months hemmed in by the bush of Vanuatu, it was refreshing to be somewhere genuinely big again.