Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Rumi
This second summer issue of the Desert Candle explores regional history and visions for the coming century as well as contemporary life in Far West Texas. We glimpse social history not often accessible outside of family story-telling. Through it, we gain an immediacy of experience with people sharing our land in a very different time, a sense of community with those we have no opportunity to meet in person. We can, for instance, come to understand the strength and reality of a woman whose life ended before many of us were born.
We may intuit how a childhood in the Big Bend Park might be different from those we have lived. We may begin to understand what bonds ranchers to their lands. We each have stories dear to our families and neighborhoods. Through the Candle, we share these stories and recognize the larger, more diverse community.
Tourism is a certain part of our future in Far West Texas: eco-tourism, adventure tourism, cultural tourism, historical tourism. Perhaps more important than developing the necessary infrastructure to sustain that tourism is the development of a community vision to inform the goal of tourism: the establishment of a regional identity with historical themes, values, and stories. The Candle reflects this development and celebrates its inclusiveness.
The community’s basis resides in story-telling and visions, poetry and history – the visceral part of our humanity, in Far West Texas or anywhere. They are what the Candle is about.
Eve Trook
Guest Editor
Download the entire Summer 2005 issue in PDF format.