We did find exceptions- our hotel had a staff at the front desk, though there was no one at the hotel bar. There was a restaurant in town that seemed to be up and running- it was or of the more high end places, and we didn’t have a reservation, but we had a nice meal at the bar there. I got from the bartender that Sul Ross, the university in town, was out on spring break, too. Seems like everyone out this way shuts off their businesses when we have an opportunity to visit. No matter, there are more places open today than yesterday, and we have a pretty good plan for our activities.
What we did after dinner last night, though was we went to the Marfa Lights viewing area. I am not sure what I really expected, but to my untrained eye, it looked like a few people far out on the horizon were playing with halogen lamps. It was also really, really cold out there. It felt 20 degrees cooler at the viewing area than it felt when we returned to our hotel 15 minutes away and got back out of the car. All I know is that the great and mysterious lights in Marfa were a pretty big disappointment. I expected something more beautiful with more diffuse light maybe some color. I guess I should have Google searched it before we left.
Cas said that he had been out to see the lights in the past, and they moved when he was here. I theorized that the people with the halogen lamps out on the horizon were on motorcycles or bicycles when he last came this way.
I watched the entire X Files series a few summers ago on Netflix. I was kind of a late adopter of science fiction in my life. I always dismissed the shows as having goofy plots and bad acting, based on a few poor representations of the genre I saw in my early teen years. What turned the page for me was a very cute show on the Sci-Fi network (before they changed the spelling to that horrible SyFy) called Eureka. They had a pretty handsome guy playing a sheriff. He tried to keep order in a town where everyone was a super-genius working on some seriously next-level science. So many mishaps. I was hooked. So I watched all the Star Trek series after that. Every one of them. I got into a few other pieces of science fiction, eventually leading to the show most likely to have an episode about the Marfa Lights- The X Files. David Duchovny spends the whole series, it seems, convincing Gillian Anderson that there are supernatural things, alien things and inexplicable things worthy of our attention, our study and our blind faith. I could have used a little Duchovny blind faith last night. It was cold, and as far as I could tell, there were a pair of people off in the distance holding some flashlights. Occasionally, they had a friend turn on a third flashlight. An X Files premise, it was not.
But we move on. Today, Cas and I head to the McDonald Observatory. It’s 3/14, or as some call it, Pi Day. I woke this morning to discover in my news feed that Stephen Hawking passed away early this morning, so it will be an especially bittersweet Pi Day upon which to go look at the stars. Perhaps later, if anyone has a restaurant or a bar open, we can order a cocktail and raise a glass to Stephen Hawking and Pi Day. I’d rather drink to him than David Duchovny anyhow.
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