Consider the Windmill
Along with its descendant, the towering wind turbine, this spindly mechanism turns fast and slow, measuring out our days.
Writer-at-large Sterry Butcher pens feature stories and Country Notes, a Texas Monthly column of meditations on rural living. She was a finalist for the 2020 National Magazine Award for column writing and won the City and Regional Magazine Awards’ Herb Lipson Award for Column Excellence in 2015 and 2021. Before joining Texas Monthly, she had a long career as a journalist at the Big Bend Sentinel, where her reporting earned multiple awards from the Texas Press Association and a statewide honor from the Sierra Club. She was named a Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 2004. A native Texan, Butcher lives with her husband in Marfa.
Along with its descendant, the towering wind turbine, this spindly mechanism turns fast and slow, measuring out our days.
The humble material has long been used to build homes in the desert. But working with adobe isn’t so simple anymore.
Small-town locker plants, lifelines for rural Texans for generations, have vanished from parts of the state. Christy Miller’s company is an exception.
A small group fights to save a cemetery and what remains of a Lipan Apache existence in the Big Bend.
During the past few years, a small group of girls in Marfa has used the simple wooden stool to create a business that has, well, legs.
The Hill, located in the West Texas desert, stirs visitors to confront what they cannot comprehend.
Some were written long ago. Some appeared this year. But whether it’s a sign about snakes or a sign about diesel fried chicken, a simple message seems to mean the most.
Some forty years ago, a desk was dragged to the top of a hill in Alpine that overlooks the Big Bend. The notebooks stashed inside continue to capture big thoughts from the people who travel there.
Lelton Morse races homing pigeons in Central Texas. He sends his birds hundreds of miles away, waits and watches, and knows they’re flying home.
Not many people will drive the mail to places the U.S. Postal Service won’t. Seventy-one-year-old Gilbert Lujan is one of them.
Small-town papers often serve as bearers of civic pride. But the former owners of Marfa’s Big Bend Sentinel and Presidio’s International learned long ago that writing the news meant looking out for their neighbors.
Healing a spooked horse takes time, patience, and skill. And maybe a little help from beyond.
The railway and Marfa are forever intertwined.
A segregated school for Mexican American children until 1965, the building now serves as a community center and celebration of Hispanic life.
Without a good shoeing, a horse can indeed be lost. Enter the farrier.
Nothing comes easy when you’re dividing up the countryside.
Ninety-three-year-old Armando Vasquez tells of a place that used to be.
My cat was a fearless hunter who stalked the countryside—until she squared off with a rattlesnake.
The West Texan has sold more art than Picasso.
Outsiders remain fascinated with unraveling the secrets of this place. But locals can explain, one story at a time.
For these young boxers in West Texas, learning to fight means more than throwing a punch.
Pronghorn were almost perfectly fitted to the West Texas landscape. And then people started building fences.
Twenty years ago, a brown-skinned boy was shot to death near the Rio Grande. What fate awaits my own son?
In West Texas, we've learned to live with our slithery neighbors. Not that we have a choice.
The skies of West Texas are so grand that it’s easy to forget how much is going on under our feet.
When the chute opens and the steer charges, there’s no place Jimmy Steve Martinez would rather be than on his horse, with a rope in his hand.
In Marfa, there’s one place where everybody knows your name.
The risks a West Texan will take for a quick dip.
A day in the life of a mobile large-animal veterinarian.
For a few months every year, life in West Texas is defined by the wind.
The only thing that’s smaller about six-man football is the field.
A taxonomy of West Texas waves.
This year’s heavy rains have brought countless blessings to West Texas—and one very nasty weed.
In Marfa, a big night out means one thing above all: the cumbia.
The competition at the Big Bend Livestock Show is fierce. But treat your animal right and you might get to be number four with a pullet.
Why we will always worship the ground we walk on.
The year we gave thanks—at least at first—for the turkeys in our town.
When you live in the desert, waiting for rain requires almost irrational optimism. And maybe a curse word or two.
How one feline (and then a couple more, and then another) conquered both our hearts and our mice.
Plan a summer weekend in enchanted enchilada land using this guide with tips on what to do, where to eat, and where to stay.
One family’s journey into enchanted enchilada land.
The lonely, calloused, plaster-caked ballad of the do-it-yourself renovator.
My life with horses.
In search of the authentic spirit of Fort Worth.
On 50,000 acres that they have mostly to themselves (not including their hounds, mules, horses, cattle, chickens, piglets, and parents), Jasper, Trevor, and Tanner Klein live a life almost untouched by the modern world.
What does it take to break a wild mustang? Patience, horse sense, experience, and if you’re Teryn Lee Muench, no more than one hundred days.
Leaving Valentine for the first big trip.