PRESIDIO, TEXAS.   Some say the West begins in Fort Worth. That may be so in the world of conversational visions. But the visceral West, the one that brings out an involuntary cry of "Yeeh-haah", the one we dream about--- the West of independence, freedom, and strength--- that West begins elsewhere.

I  felt hints of it riding through small towns just west of McAllen, towns that don't seem to have changed since the 1930's. The feeling grew stronger as I rode into Langtry to see if I could visit a readers' mother who lived "just two houses down from the Hanging Tree." That's the tree, legend has it, that Judge Roy Bean used to exact justice.

The feeling became an overwhelming rush just east of Marathon as the horizon widened, the road straightened, and the landscape changed to a luminous mixture of yellow grasses, brush, and dark mountains.

Wide open spaces. You are on your own out here.

Not wanting to spoil the experience for others, I left as much empty road behind me as I could, slowing down only when I reached Marathon. There, Barbara Novovitch told me how she and her husband had visited once and came back as quickly as they could for another three or four visits. Then they packed up and left Washington, D.C. to live in Marathon, a tiny town in a gigantic county with a population of only 10,000 people. The county is large enough to hold the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut with room to spare, not to mention being large enough to hold all of Big Bend National Park.

Pictures and words can't convey the vast beauty of Big Bend, a place of prodigal landforms, immense stones, and space that can only be described as magnificent. In fact, stirring beauty isn't limited to the park. The entire 65-mile road from Marathon to the park entrance is a beautiful ride, surpassed only by the 50-mile road from Study Butte to Presidio--- what many call "the river road." The road out of the area, from Presidio to Marfa and Fort Davis, is strikingly different, amazingly beautiful, and almost eerie for its vast spaces.

Perhaps that is what makes the experience of Presidio so strange. Described by journalist John Reed in 1913 as "a straggling and indescribably desolate village," Presidio in the year 2000 is neither straggling nor desolate. It is just oddly vacuous, a large village with wide and dusty dirt roads, a multitude of manufactured homes, and a broad boulevard-like highway that leads to and from the bridge to Ojinaga (pronounced Oh-hee-na-ga) and Mexico.

Known to odd fact seekers as the town with the highest daytime temperatures in America and to the Texas Workforce Commission as the highest unemployment area in the state, 26.2 percent, Presidio can legitimately moan that it is lost, forgotten, and abandoned. It is an isolated outpost.

Crossing the bridge on my motorcycle, I quickly learn that there is a lot more going on in Ojinaga than there is in Presidio.

All of which makes the bridge more interesting.

Why do people from Mexico cross it? Where are they going? What do they want to do? While people can cross from Mexico to McAllen or El Paso to shop, there is little shopping in Presidio. So why are people crossing the bridge?

This is not an idle question. According to one source, some 888,857 people crossed this bridge in 1986. The guards at the bridge don't know how many crossed in 1999, but I will be daring and guess that the number is higher today with a new bridge and better roads.

I will also venture a reason for all that traffic.

There is no bridge to America that is so small, so humble, or so remote that a multitude won't cross it.

  

Sidebar:

Herds of Tomatoes as Far as the Eye Can See

MARFA, TEXAS. Remember "Giant"--- one of the early wide screen movies starring Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Elizabeth Taylor? Well, it was filmed here in Marfa and is immortalized at the Paisano Hotel where the cast stayed long enough that the hotel has been declared a historic treasure.

Whether you approach this town from the north, south, east, or west it is clear why Marfa was chosen as the best site for filming Edna Ferbers' grand novel of Texas cattle and Texas oil--- the range land begins just outside of town and extends as far as the eye can see. It is a stirring landscape.

So imagine that you are riding a motorcycle, that you left Study Butte in the morning after deciding that you would not visit Joe Black Spring because you want to meet Joe Black later, not sooner. Imagine that you have been surrounded, for the last two days, by gigantic RVs and a dusty culture of disconnection.   Imagine also a landscape, in Terlingua, that is as close to the original Mel Gibson Road Warrior movie as you can get and not be radioactive.

Even with that, you will not be prepared for the vision at the side of the road just north of Marfa: crystalline white buildings--- greenhouses--- that fill the horizon.

I am not kidding. This is not hyperbole.   Fill the horizon. You must imagine the largest greenhouse you have ever seen and then multiply by a kaleidoscopically large number. We are not talking so much about a greenhouse as a vision from the X-Files or some unregistered Federal presence that was meant to be in Roswell to house reproducing aliens and their fleet of flying saucers.

I stop the motorcycle, turn around, and enter the facility. It is a series of linked greenhouses and what appears to be a shipping facility. I clock one of the greenhouses and it measures about 2/10ths of a mile on my odometer. This greenhouse, one next to it, and another are completely filled with tall tomato plants. Hundreds of thousands of tomato plants.

Entering the office area, I ask if there is someone who can tell me about the buildings. No, I am told, but you can go up the road toward Fort Davis and look for Paul Selina. He'll tell you all about it.

I ride up the road and find a virtually identical facility. Herds of tomatoes, as far as the eye can see.

Mr. Selina isn't there, either.

Later, by phone, Mr. Selina tells me that Village Farms is a wholly owned subsidiary of Eco-Sciences, a publicly traded company (ticker ECSC) that grows and markets vegetables and flowers. When their operations in Holland are added, the company has thousands of acres of greenhouses, of which 106 acres are in Marfa and Fort Davis.

"The reason they are here is we can grow premium greenhouse tomatoes. The locations in Fort Davis and Marfa were selected to optimize production in the winter months. We're growing hydroponically, drip feeding in a computer controlled environment," he told me.

" We follow a 'little but often' strategy for watering, giving the plants small amounts of water frequently. It's about a half gallon of water per plant per day, but it can be as high as a gallon a day in July."

How much do the greenhouses produce?

"Last year we grew 45 million pounds of tomatoes here. That's about 220 tons per acre. We have about 10,000 plants per acre so we've got about a million plants."

Next time I make a tomato salad I know what I will say.

"Git along there, little doggies!"