All Ranch Roads Lead to Home 
Miles and Miles of Texas
Writer-at-large Suzy Banks, executive editor S.C. Gwynne, senior editor Michael Hall, and new-media director Charlie Llewellin talk about hitting the road for this month’s cover story.
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SB: I saw an armadillo on the road and it was alive! Which reminds me: Why did the chicken cross the road? To show the armadillo how it’s done.
SG: A flight of thousands of sandhill cranes that suddenly appeared in front of my car near Silverton. They wheeled as a group and then landed in a roadside playa. It was quite spectacular. The birds are very large, gray and white, and pretty much all landed in the playa at the same time.
MH: How poor Presidio is—still. It’s one of the fastest growing communities in the country, and I had read about how the town was annexing land, getting a new clinic, and building a new community center. But there are still few outward signs of progress.
CL: The hilliness surprised me; I really thought it would be flat. And there are so many trees. The timber industry, from the point of an outsider, seems to coexist quite well with the forest. Of course, I grew up in Wales surrounded by what we called forestry land, which would be clear-cut now and then, so I am used to that sight.
texasmonthly.com: Some of you made comparisons between the people and the land. By becoming so intimately acquainted with the countryside, do you feel you now have a better understanding of the people who live there?
SB: No. I’ll never understand people.
SG: I have a better understanding of what they do for a living, but I did not spend much time talking to individual people.
MH: I don’t know that one could ever truly understand the residents of Study Butte and Terlingua. Yes, they are craggy individualists, just like the “igneous intrusions” that dot the landscape. The latter came about because of magma boiling upward. Who knows why the former came to be there.
CL: Everyone is the same underneath, but knowing something about where people come from helps enormously in communicating with them. You search for a common piece of knowledge and then widen the connection from there.
texasmonthly.com: You each explored a distinctive piece of Texas. Describe the quintessential character of the area in four words or less.
SB: Earth rumbled to perfection.
Oh, oh, I feel a haiku coming on:
in the Texas hills
earth rumbled to perfection
make sure your brakes work
SG: Flat. Flat. Flat. Flat.
MH: Strange stones grow here.
texasmonthly.com: In Texas it’s easy to think that all roads begin with I—I-35, I-10, I-45. What is the advantage of getting off the interstates and exploring the world of farm-to-market roads, county roads, and other roads not often taken?
SB: It’s safer and less depressing. I don’t spend the entire trip stewing about the problem of overpopulation or yelling at people tailgating me.
SG: On the smaller roads there is a real sense of remoteness. In West Texas you really come to understand just how empty the landscape is. There is almost nothing out there. Encountering a farmhouse is like encountering a ship in the middle of the sea.
MH: The interstates are means to an end: your destination. Taking the smaller roads forces you to pay attention to the journey itself. Farm, county, and creek roads were often laid according to the dictates of nature—hairpin curves around steep hills or bends in a river. Stretches of these roads are sometimes unpaved, so you have to slow down. There aren’t many gas stations or restaurants, so you have to keep sharp. The chances are greater that you’ve never driven this route before. The whole nature of narrower, lesser-traveled roads makes you more aware of the world off the asphalt.
CL: All interstates tend to look the same, though I-45 is a great drive. You don’t see what makes a region different until you get off the main roads.
texasmonthly.com: How does driving for the sake of the drive differ from driving with a set destination? Which kind of trip do you prefer?
SB: Oh, goodie. Now’s my chance to get profound. I think we spend so much time in our lives pursuing the end goal—the promotion, the hunky spouse, the dream house, the trophy for best-trained dog—that we often forget to enjoy the process. Taking a drive without a destination is great practice for rediscovering the joys of the process. Of course, now that I’ve spewed that philosophy I guess I’m forced to say I prefer a “sake of the drive” trip. But arriving at a nice hotel with a big swimming pool and poolside bar service is pretty great, too.
SG: I am very destination-oriented these days. When I was younger I used to like to just drive aimlessly and see what I found. That is one of the reasons I liked this assignment so much. I was forced to go back to the old ways—just driving around and seeing things, with no particular agenda.
MH: It depends what’s at the end of the trip. I love driving just to gaze into the distance and listen to myself think, but I also love that feeling of getting near home and wanting to be there as soon as I can.
CL: If you’re driving for the sake of the drive, I guess you’ll be off the main roads, almost by definition. I like to stop and take pictures, so that’s my goal, even if I don’t have a destination as such. I always like to plan ahead and allow for extra time so that I can stop whenever I want.
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