One of the best things that West Texas has is the sky.
See, many people complain about the scenery out on the Texas plains.
But the scenery out here is not in the land.
You have to look up to see the beauty.
And when you get accustom to it, it changes you.
I love this quote because I have experienced this myself.
My shoulders get tight when I go back east, and I can’t see more than a few hundred yards ahead.
Then when I cross the state-line back into Texas, the sky opens up, and I finally feel like I can breathe again.
“It wasn’t until I moved to Virginia, to a pleasant valley near the Blue Ridge, that I first experienced sky deprivation, or forest claustrophobia. In Virginia I felt gloomy without knowing why—it was only after many drives home to Texas that the reason finally became clear. I began to notice that once I crossed the Mississippi at Memphis and began to proceed across the delta, the Arkansas flats, my spirits would suddenly lift. The sky had quickly opened up, become a Western sky, with Western horizons beneath it. Coming into that openness, time after time, brought relief and indeed a kind of exhilaration. This lifting (and a corresponding lowering as I drove back east) occurred many times; I began to understand that it bespoke a kind of sky longing which many Westerners have.”
-Larry McMurtry, Walter Benjamin At The Dairy Queen (Amazon)