Wide-open road vs. the pine curtain


The open road = freedom.

Heading west in Texas, the interstate freeway undulates through cedar-studded hills that eventually flatline into high desert. You can see for miles. You suddenly get what people mean about wide-open spaces, because you feel free here, like the world is full of possibility.

A place can grab hold of a person. Think about the awe you feel when you peer over a canyon’s edge or when you see and hear a river falling from a hundred-foot-high precipice. Or whatever feelings arise when you dig your toes into a sandy beach and gaze across the vast, blue emptiness of an ocean.

On the flip side, can a landscape also bring down a person? Educated people from my region of the Piney Woods often lament the “pine curtain” effect. In essence, these sophisticated types argue that the sheltering forest shields East Texans from the modern world. Because our lives are hidden behind the pine curtain, and our frame of reference is so narrow, we are closed to new ideas. We’re suspicious of people who ain’t from around here, we’re a bunch of unwashed bigots, and so on.

I’m not convinced. Maybe the insularity of the forest contributes to our ways of thinking and doing, but I’ve met plenty of narrow-minded idiots in wide-open spaces as well. Like the woman who set up camp next to mine at Balmorhea State Park. More on her later.


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