A Battle for the Soul of Marfa⁠↗

The sky by day is limitless, at night a feast of stars. The sun’s movement across the land makes for a parade of shadows and hues unlike in any other place on the planet. The Chisos Mountains form a majestic blue boundary off in the distance. It’s country as inhospitable as it is spectacular, for eons a place that attracted folks as irascible as the porcupines that nestle in the rocks around these parts.

The people responsible for and also torn about this part of Marfa may not be particularly prosperous, but they are well educated and worldly. They are transplants who love not just the beauty and the isolation of the place but the freedom to create without the hypercompetitiveness of the big cities most of them have abandoned. Here they find a relatively status-free safe space where they can work on something intellectually or artistically challenging and also be part of a community. They join the volunteer fire department or teach art at the local elementary. They can be connected to the outside world via the internet but also play horseshoes with the few surviving blue-haired heiresses to some of Texas’s oldest ranches. Solitude and intimacy in equal parts.