Texas, Fast . . .
Sunset at the Marfa Ghost Lights Lookout. After visiting friends in Las Cruces, NM, and El Paso, TX, I drove toward Marfa with excitement about what I'd find there, even though I had no idea what to expect. Artist friends and others talked up Marfa as a quirky and cool artist colony everyone must visit, and it played a semi-prominent role in the best novel I've read in the past year, Ben Lerner's 10:04 . From El Paso, it is only 3 hours to Marfa, which you access by cruising down the I-10, speed limit 80, passing through Sierra Blanca and Van Horn, two spots only notable for their highly-staffed Border Patrol stations. Twenty-four miles northwest of Marfa, on Hwy. 90, I saw people pulled over on the side of the road checking out a small building. I blew by them at 70 mph, then turned around to see what the hype was about. A small box store made to look like a Prada store front in New York––including wall displays of exorbitant high heels––sat alone on th...