Recent rains had turned what usually would be golden dry grassland into green bushy scrub with small, scraggly mesquite trees peppered in between. The rain had also turned the local clay/dirt known as caliche (ka-lee-chi) into mud, and the road north was covered in the soft, slippery soil. Lance complained that during rainstorms trucks coming from lease roads that lead to the rigs would drag the caliche onto the asphalt, making already treacherous conditions even more dangerous.
The trucks weren't the only problem. In land that is mostly flat desert peppered with strips of asphalt and pump jacks, rain is an unusual and violent occurrence. Logic flows in the confines of city halls and engineering divisions in these areas (i.e. Midland and Odessa) that because rain is so infrequent, proper (and expensive) drainage is unnecessary. This means that during rainstorms, which are a combination of torrential downpours and lightning storms, streets turn into rivers and, frankly, everything floods.
Land of the Pump Jacks.
But the road was flanked by more than just red mud and green grass. Row after row of pump jacks bobbed up and down like a drinking bird caught in an infinite loop, pulling barrel after barrel of Texas Light Sweet crude oil out of the Permian Basin's many reservoirs. Two hundred foot tall oil rigs drill into the soft mud and rock that that flat Basin is made up of, churning thousands of feet down and out in search of new pockets of oil. Some horizontal drilling, which hits shale oil on the side rather than from above, can extend as much as 24,000 feet from the initial drilling hole.
An oil rig by the side of the road.
Heading further north the landscape changed drastically. There was more green grass by the side of the road while the flat plains gave away to soft rolling hills. Somethign else also appeared within the greenery: little tufts of white balls growing on short bushes. I didn't expect to find it this far to the west, but cotton fields abounded to the east, west and north.
I must be in the South.
Since my trip I've been told that cotton is one of the crops that survive well out here in West Texas, being hardy enough for the harsh temperatures. Unfortunately for the farmers, the rainstorm that had come through had delayed their harvest, and the federal government was agitating for them to turnover their crops because of the threat of boll weevils moving into the area.
Continuing on our journey, Lance and I reached the small community of Lamesa (pop. 9,400 and pronounced Luh-MEE-suh in the local vernacular), which sits at the crossroads of the major North-South and East-West roads. But Lamesa is a ghost community, with rundown buildings devoid of life flanking the road. No one stopped in the town; everyone was just passing through. I imagine Lamesa is what the post-apocalyptic world will look like. Or maybe that's what some towns will look like when the boom fades and the bust hits.
The area between Lamesa and Lubbock is more agriculture. Cotton dominates, but there were other greens and some wheat interspersed throughout the white balls of fluff. With the recent rains, waterwheels stood still, thankful that the downpours had lessened their burden to keep the parched and thirsty earth hydrated.
Take a break waterwheel.
Throughout our trip we had been pelted on and off with torrential downpours, but when we got north of Lamesa the rain got even worse, making visibility limited and the roads even worse. At one point we came across a totally flooded part of the road. With Lance's guidance we navigated the road-turned-river, following in the path of much larger and well suited trucks. With the flooding forded by the little Prius, we made our way safely north.
Lubbock is a college town with Texas Tech University at its core. For me, my short foray into Lubbock showed me a few things: the town is very much like Midland, but with (somewhat) better roads; the landscape is more fertile; and they have at least one very good Cajun restaurant (which Lance and I took advantage of).
Otherwise, Lubbock was thankfully uneventful. Lance got his car (a 2003 Lincoln Marauder), I got to see another city, and we had a good lunch.
Heading home allowed me to see the landscape from a different perspective and break out my camera. A few miles outside of Lubbock something tall and graceful caught my eye; the slowly revolving blades of large windmills. Row after row of them lined the cotton fields, spinning in the gentle wind, their blades occasionally cutting through a bank of low-lying clouds. Even in a land where the black barrel of crude oil reigns supreme, alternative energy has grabbed a foothold.
Some complain that they kill birds, but they're a sign of change a-coming.
Seeing the land post-rainstorm reminded me of what Namibia looked like through the eye of my brother when he went to Namibia. The arid desert turned green as life burst forth in a desperate race against time and the sun.
Framed by flowers.
Being surrounded by beauty, I came across some things that were so typically Texan. Signs bearing the words "Don't Mess With Texas" lined the road, but rather than talking about trampling on Texan's rights to bear arms/be religious/do what they want, they proclaimed the cost of... littering. I don't think that was the message Mr. Geroge W. Bush was conveying when he used the phrase at the Republican National Convention in 2000.
Just don't do it.
And then, the normal signs that I am indeed in the Bible Belt.
Self-explanatory.
Coming back into Midland felt like leaving an agricultural heartland and descending into an industrial desert. But there's nothing like cottonfields with pump jacks and oil rigs dotting across their greens rows.
The oil is never far away...
And despite the rain, which at some points left oil rigs surrounded by a deluge of floodwaters, the pump jacks, automatons with a single purpose, keep pumping.
Water? No problem.
And then, poking out through the haze was the so-called Tall City, given the name not because it sits at 2,700 feet of elevation, but because it contains the tallest structures for miles around. I was home.
Reminders of LA.
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