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(photo by MARK GLOVER)
Amish tourists take in the grand view of Big Bend National Park and Mexico from Sotol Vista.
By MARK GLOVER SANTA ELENA CANYON - Like many Big Bend residents, I wear a few hats: ranch hand, adobe man, writer man and about once every three months I get a call to be a tour man. This call came at 6:45am.
I couldn’t make out the accent: Chinese? Romanian? Over the next several months the call came regularly. “It’s Mr. Mullet again,” Lori would say handing me the phone across the bed. Mr. Mullet was reconfirming his tour of the Big Bend National Park.
So when I saw four guys walking down Holland Avenue last Tuesday in matching black hats, matching black vests and cobalt blue shirts I thought – Oh, mariachis. And then I saw their pale white skins, black beards and modified Prince Valiant haircuts. Amish! It’s Mr. Mullet – they’re Amish.
I thought to pull over and introduce myself but I didn’t want to scare’em off. I hadn’t washed the Suburban yet and the shoe string was still securing the mirror, a last minute adjustment I made to pass inspection.
The next morning I pulled in front of the Holland Hotel.
Mr. Mullet introduced himself as Sam and then I met Isaac, Levi and Krist – smiles breaching their black wool hats.
“You don’t have problem with Amish, do you?” Sam asked.
They were young men, boys as they are known in their district of Ohio, unmarried and until that day – boys, without voting rights in their community.
The Amish sect of Christianity began with a schism among Anabaptists in Switzerland in 1693. Jakob Ammann led a splinter group to Pennsylvania where the Amish-Mennonite Church was first formed. Later the Amish and Mennonites split. Today there are over 200,000 Amish living in America.
Approaching the Glass Mountains I began my spiel on the ancient seas that once covered our land.
Sam interrupted me.
“We don’t understand science,” he said. “Tell us about something recent, 18th century.”
“Tell about animals,” Isaac called out from the back seat.
We passed a blackish carcass on the side of the road.
“That’s a javelina.”
“Oh, ya. Javelinas. I heared about them. Pigs,” Sam said.
English is not their first language. At home they speak a form of German, sometimes called Switzer-Deutsch.
“How is it pronounced, Rio Grand or Rio Grandee?” Sam asked as we turned south at Marathon.
“On this side of the border, Rio Grande, in Mexico, Rio Bravo.”
“John Wayne,” Sam said. “We like Louis L’Amour too.”
I mention the Mennonite “Oasis” farm community just south of Ojinaga, Chihuahua.
“Horse and buggy?” Sam asked.
“Chevrolets.”
“We’re not allowed that,” Sam said.
“No driving?”
“That’s why we called you,” Sam said.
On their farm in Ohio they grow corn, wheat, oats, apples, and strawberries and use a horse to pull the plow.
“What about electricity?”
Sam shakes his head.
“Candles?”
“Kerosene torches,” Sam said.
“What about pesticides, herbicides on the crops?”
“Round-Up,” Sam said.
Sam’s father is a district leader and Isaac’s father is a preacher. They hold church inside family homes, alternating weekly. Sam works 60 miles from where he was raised, a two-day buggy ride. Sam and his friends spend most of their time within the Amish community and all hope to marry soon. But for the moment they are single and use their one week annual vacation time to visit national parks. Last year they saw the Grand Canyon.
“Those mountains are in Mexico,” I said pointing to Pica Peak in the distant Sierra del Carmens.
“Old Mexico?” Sam asked.
“Yep.”
“Not New Mexico?” Levi asked.
“Nope. Mexico Mexico.”
Sam stared at the jagged horizon.
“I always wanted to visit old Mexico,” Sam said.
We pass the iron oxidized red browns of the Dead Horse Mountains and into the park. At Santa Elena Canyon, the four of them march toward the skinny part of the river.
I watch them from a high point on the trail. It’s like a rock video or a John Wayne movie: four guys in glimmering cobalt blue shirts with black vests and black hats trudging across the sand along the river against a hazy mountainous back drop.
They stop and gaze at the sheer cliff on the other side.
They’re going to cross, I think to myself. I don’t want to see this. I turn and walk down the trail, deeper into the canyon. I come over a ridge and look back. They’ve changed their minds. They’re not going to do it.
Then, holding hands, the four of them wade into the current.
They are laughing now, clapping each other on the back, standing firmly on foreign ground. Then, as if some iron magnetism kicked in, they grab each other’s hand and wade back.
I head toward them.
Sam produces a rock.
“Mexico,” he says and throws it over the river. He watches the rock bounce on the other side and then says, “I may never be here again.” |
