There is much to fall in love with in Marfa, and much of it has been written about ad nauseum - the unique, charmingly offbeat vibe of a remote little speck of a town with a lone stoplight, peopled (sparsely) with the friendliest folk, where tumbleweeds dance merrily across desert plains; the air of supernatural mystery surrounding the Marfa Lights; its history as a backdrop for John Wayne westerns; and of course, Donald Judd, the man whose artistic legacy has been intrinsically fused with the town since his arrival in the 1970s.
Eager to immerse myself in all of this, I traveled to Marfa with my friends Sylvia and Jen in September of 2014. After flying into El Paso from our respective home cities - New York, Seattle, New Orleans - we crashed with Sylvia and Jen's parents (who happened to live there at the time) for the night. The next morning, we borrowed their car, filled up the gas tank, and embarked on a three hour drive through the flat expanse of West Texas. We were mostly alone on the road, save for the occasional truck rumbling past, or the odd train snaking along in the distance, kicking up dust trails in its wake. We found ourselves enjoying an uninterrupted vista that was mostly sky, across which enormous white clouds gathered and rolled before our eyes, joining and separating in their own fluffy drama. Thoroughly mesmerized by the cloud theater, the solitude of the open road, and the warmth of excellent company, my mind was suddenly light years from New York.
