Star Crashing

My housemate Romina invited Tracey and I along with her to Fort Davis this weekend while she gave a retreat talk. Fort Davis is about three hours east of El Paso, though its still considered “West Texas.” The town (population 1,050) is located in a small cluster of mountains which just seem to pop up out of nowhere coming from dry, flat El Paso. We drove for 70 miles after getting off the highway, making a single left-hand turn at about the 50-mile marker, over railroad tracks with no crossing markers. The sky and land went on forever in every direction.

A rainstorm somewhere far away. Then...

Welcome to cattle country in the Ft. Davis foothills.

Tracey and I were left on our own for the evening so we decided to take part in local entertainment. First, we went to a Rattlesnake museum. The exhibit claimed to be the largest in the world, though was at best the size of an average living room. Being the only two patrons in sight, Tracey and I received a personal tour of the two dozen or so cages, each hosting a different species of venomous snake. The owner had caught most of the snakes himself, he told us, and also bred them. In more than fifteen years of handling the creatures he had only been bitten twice. That’s not so bad, I guess? An overall interesting exhibit and four dollars not terribly spent. My favorite quote of the day: “The more people I meet, the more I like rattlesnakes.” We support local entrepreneurs.


Next, we lucked out and found a horseback riding tour that was just about to leave and had two horses available. So, we gaddied up and mozied out into the sunset. Okay, maybe not quite that gracefully, but we did manage to get on top of the horses and make them go. We rode for an hour along the base of a small mountain ridge and through a working cattle ranch. Our guide was a real Texas cowboy, complete with large white mustache (bordering on fu manchu), two herd dogs permanently at his heels and the belief that West Texas was the last of the true badlands. And he should know -- he spent nine years working security and equestrian circuits for the Prime Minister of somewhere in the Middle East. He was convinced of the notion that Tracey and I were much too female to be on our own anywhere in Texas, much less dangerous El Paso, and found it incredulous that we would choose to spend any time there voluntarily. “Afterall,” he said with his slow, southern drawl, “this is Western Texas, ladies. You’re not up north anymore.” When we mentioned that we’d heard El Paso was actually a safe place to live in and of itself, he practically spat the words, “That’s horseshit!” right out of his mouth. We shrugged, and replied that horseshit was probably something he knew a lot about.












Our final hurrah for the night was crashing a party of UT astronomers. The McDonald Observatory (one of the largest in the world) is located about fifteen miles from Fort Davis and was a must-see according to Romina. The observatory hosts public Star Parties where you can come and look through telescopes into sky unfettered by city lights. Excited to participate, we drove up, up, up the dark, winding road towards the white domes of the observatory well after the sun had set. As we were already fifteen minutes late for the listed start-time of the Star Party, Tracey and I headed straight towards the first parking guard we saw. “Are you here to attend the viewing?” he asked.

“Yep,” I replied. That sounded about right.

“Okay, park over here and I’ll call the shuttle down.” A white shuttle came and picked us up and we continued another ten minutes up the mountain.

“So, which telescope do you guys want to see first? The 107 or the 36?” he asked us.

“The what?”

“The 107 inch telescope, or the 36 inch?”

“Um,” I said, “Well which one do you recommend?”

“If you want to, I’d do them both of course,” he replied.

“Is it the same price to see two?” I asked. "Someone had told us it was ten dollars."


The driver laughed a little bit. “Oh, there’s no charge,” he said. “This is part of the tour.”

“Great!” I responded. “Well then, we’ll do them both!” He looked at us in the review mirror, slightly skeptical. You could see the wheels start to turn in his head as we neared the base of the dome.

“I’m just curious,” he said. “Are you two with the Board of Visitors?” Tracey and I looked at each other.

“Um…. no…”

The driver really laughed out loud now. “Oh, man,” he said. “Well, we’re already here so just try to blend in. This is a private viewing party, but it’s dark so you should be okay.”

What?? With no time to rethink our plan, and a sneaky desire to see something exclusive we just said, “Well okay, then!” and decided to hope for the best. We'd think of something.

With that, he pulled up to the dome and motioned us out of the van. He told the employee he had two more to go up and handed us off with a wink. After some uncomfortable questioning on the short elevator ride by other board members about who exactly we knew on the board (Tracey just replied, “A friend,” haha….) we were free. We easily blended into the small, dark observatory setting and proceeded to look through one of the largest telescopes in North America at Saturn, clearly in focus – rings, moons and all.

I later found out that viewing through these large telescopes is normally reserved for professional astronomers and private parties of donors. The Star Parties open to the public utilize much smaller scopes at the base of the observatory. We might not have known exactly what we were looking at -- the viewing also included nebula spottings through the 36-inch telescope -- but nonetheless we appreciated that it was something rare.

I guess, as Tracey said, the stars simply lined up for us that night.

McDonald Observatory domes from the road down below.