Life on the High Plains

We moved out to the panhandle this past summer so I could teach at WTAMU, my first real job in 29 years. Any move is always fraught with lifestyle changes, large expenditures, and the pervasive smell of cardboard, dust, and tape. We have all adjusted quite well to our new surroundings, new schools, new apartment, well maybe not the little apartment, but hopefully we can find a place to call HOME in the next few months. One of the biggest changes I’ve experienced in our move out west is the lifestyle, the people, the minute differences that many people might not always notice. Being in a crossroads of sorts between five states (New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado), there are an abundance of non-Texans around. Growing up in central Texas, we didn’t see too many people from out of state…it would have taken them 8 hours to get to San Antonio from just about any of the surrounding states. Up here in the panhandle, folks are driving through all the time on their way east or west on I40, what used to be Route 66, the great highway to the West. We also see a lot of “cowboys”. Just the other day, Marie and I were in a store when a guy wearing a cowboy hat, grape smugglers, and vest passed us. Morgan yelled out, “He’s a cowboy!” This morning, while pumping gas, I heard a strange jangling noise behind me that I wouldn’t have been able to place without knowing that a “cowboy” had just pulled up in the stall next to me, towing a gooseneck stock trailer behind his heavy duty Chevy diesel, a tumbleweed stuck to the undercarriage. In the back of the trailer were two horses, one gray and one sorrel, in the truck bed, a blue heeler with one white eye. The noise I heard came from the guy’s spurs as he walked around his truck to top off the oil. That is a sound I don’t believe I have ever heard in San Antonio, College Station, or Waco, unless I was at the stock show and rodeo. These little differences in the people make Amarillo a very different city than those of central Texas that I am more familiar with. Perhaps the most amazing thing about living in Amarillo, besides being a short drive from Palo Duro Canyon, is the sunsets out on the plains. Our apartment sits on the very western edge of town and faces west overlooking a vast swath of open prairie, the only obstruction being a 6 foot wooden fence. As our first day here began to wind to a close, I was finishing up the unloading of the U-haul when I looked out west over the plains and saw the gorgeous sunset. For the next several evenings, I made sure to look out the window or go outside to view the amazing sunsets of west Texas, unhindered by trees, or houses, or hills. I don’t know what it is about that light being radiated from our Sun, refracted by our atmosphere, and then reflected off of the clouds that never ceases to fill me with awe. Last night found us rushing outside once again to view another sunset. Even after four months of seeing the things, we can’t get enough. Amarillo still doesn’t feel like home, perhaps it never will. We will likely move from here in the next several years. Although this city will probably never be home, who can tell for sure though, I will always have a special remembrance of the people and the amazing view to the west as the Earth completes one more revolution.