Okay, it’s not really my first social outing, but it is the first one at which I’ll have my camera on me and be able to upload photos and write about. I have to set aside the description of towns in WOW Texas for a bit so I can stay current and highlight the upcoming big event in the area — the Marfa Film Festival, May 5 to 9.

This really seems to be a big event drawing people from all over. Marfa is booked, even its campsites, and guests are staying in Marathon, my town, 45 minutes away. Today in the parking lot of Alpine’s supermarket, I saw the “La Poulet” food truck that came all the way from MacDougal Street in NYC to serve crepes and quiches.

What do the locals think about it? Well, let’s put it this way. After the supermarket, I went to City Drugstore to pick up pain pills for Justin’s annoying dog, more on that later, and a tried-and-true cowboy — from hat to boots — was also picking up a prescription and told us waiting in line, “Avoid Marfa like the plague this weekend. It’s that film festival goin’ on, and it’s drawin’ crazies from all over the place.”

I’ve been here a month and starting to get a sense of the racial, social and economic tension existing between “old” and “new” Marfa residents, but I’ll get to that in a bit. For the next three days, I’ll post words and photos of the Film Fest.

I’m still waiting for my camera’s replacement USB cable to arrive in the mail but in the meantime, here’s a good slideshow story of Marfa, Alpine and Marathon that recently ran in Southern Living. Everything is pretty much the same except Marfa’s Yard Dog gallery and Blue Javelina restaurant have shut down.

We left off where The Husband had selected Sanderson, TX — the cactus capital of the world — instead of Marfa, TX as the Border Patrol post to be stationed at. I did the dutiful-wife thing and went down last fall to check it out. As soon as I entered Sanderson, I thought, “No way, I can’t live here.” Let’s just say the town is very small and very remote. The smallest, remote town I’ve seen so far in WOW Texas. It has crumbling ruins of adobe and clapboard houses, and I can see some artist pulling a Donald Judd, appreciating its faded charms and wanting to restore its charm, but it might take a while.

So I could just forget about living in Marfa, 100 miles away from Sanderson. The town where most Marfa Sector Border Patrol agents live in is Alpine, the seat for Brewster County. But it’s about 85 miles from Sanderson — not a great round-trip commute. Marathon is a town located between Sanderson and Alpine. The shackles on my back didn’t rise while driving through that town as they did while in Sanderson. It’s a 55-mile drive from there to Sanderson. That’s better. And with 75 MPH as the speed limit in the area, it takes 45 minutes one way. So The Husband and I compromised — for me to be closer to “culture” and for him to have a reasonable commute, we picked Marathon as our halfway point.

So now let me give you a visual of the area I’m talking about:

You’ll see that Marfa, the art colony, is the town farthest west. Next over is Alpine, the biggest town in Big Bend Country. Head 31 miles east and there’s Marathon where I live. Sanderson is the next town on the left — but no way is it 74 miles from Marathon, maybe more like 54 miles. I’ve never been to Dryden, the town farthest on the right, but I hear it’s smaller even than Sanderson. As you see, all roads south lead to Mexico, but only the two routes from Alpine and Marathon get you to Big Bend N.P. (The southern route from Marfa takes you to Big Bend Ranch State Park).

I’ll go into more detail about each of the notable towns in the area — Marfa, Alpine and Marathon, or MAM — later, but here’s a sampler.

Marfa: Previously known as the town where Giant was filmed in the mid-50s, and where Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean stayed in the still-standing Hotel Paisano while filming, Marfa was put on the map again when Minimalist artist Donald Judd came to town in 1971 to create his mega-behemoth works. His disciples followed, and now artists — as well as “artists” — come to town to stay part- and full-time. Of course, it’s the priciest place to live in WOW Texas.

Alpine: The largest town in the area, with 8,000 residents, Alpine is the place you go for grocery shopping, dentist cleanings, and hardware items you need to fix up the rental house you just moved into that needs fixin’. Most people here are non-artists — the biggest subsector of part- and full-time residents is college students at Sul Ross State University. No movie was filmed here, as far as I know.

Marathon: It claims to be the “Gateway to Big Bend”  — and as it’s the town nearest to Big Bend N.P.’s entrance, it is — but it needs a bigger sign on the highway into town that says so. It’s the smallest town of MAM, at just 500 full-time residents, but some Houstonites, Austinites and Dallas-ites have second homes here. Lots of Big Bend visitors come through here and stay at its posh Gage Hotel. The Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas was filmed here (I can see the RV Motel where Harry Dean Stanton lived from my porch).

Sanderson: You already know it’s the Cactus Capital of the World. It’s also the county seat for Terrell County. Sanderson used to be a big railroad depot for Union Pacific but fell by the wayside. The town was about to shrivel up and die until the Border Patrol decided to build a station there a few years ago — it’s Marfa Sector’s closest town to the border, so agents, my Justin included, just drive 20 miles south to track along the Rio Grande. It’s also a big deer-hunting area, and the motels (there are actually a fair number here) book up in the fall. And Sanderson too had movies filmed here — it was the site of Llewellyn Moss’ trailer park in No Country for Old Men.

So plenty of cinematic history made here.

I’m a freelance journalist and Northern California native who just moved to Marathon, Texas a month ago (on April 1 — fitting, perhaps?). The reason: My husband is a helicopter pilot who just joined the Border Patrol. Helicopter work, just like any other line of work, is hard to find in 2010, but because the Feds are still hiring, he applied for work with them. Personally, the Border Patrol wouldn’t have been my first pick but, well, that’s water under the bridge…

We both crossed our fingers for San Diego (ironically, the Border Patrol had a division in Northern and Central California with stations in San Francisco, San Luis Obispo and my hometown of Sacramento but they sadly closed that down a couple of years ago). Instead, Justin got a choice of two places: Marfa, Texas and Sanderson, Texas. I rushed to the atlas to see where they were — Marfa was a dot by the vast borders of Big Bend National Park, and I couldn’t even find Sanderson. This was bad news indeed for a woman who had grown up in lush, farm-fresh Northern California, went to NYC for college and a magazine-writing career, then  spent the last ten years living/working in the Bay Area, home to Gavin Newsom, Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, Jerry Brown, Tom Ammiano and other notables who would be total outcasts in the Lone Star state.

I Facebook’d friends: “Here are the locations — what am I gonna do?” A few e-mailed back: “Hey, I’ve heard of Marfa. It’s supposed to be a cool art colony!” and they typically e-mailed me this URL about it. Regarding Sanderson, there was silence. I found this URL — apparently it’s the Cactus Capital of Texas.

Well, guess which town The Husband picked?

So that’s the intro to the beginning of our time here in Way Out West Texas (I’ll shorten it to WOW Texas, if you don’t mind. I’m in a Blogathon challenge to post every day in May, so this is a good way to get into blogging and see how I can do it. I don’t expect to get many views, clicks and hits but hopefully my friends on the West and East Coasts (who are probably pitying me) can see what I’m up to (and maybe turn their pity into jealousy?), as well as my relatives.

Also, as a freelance journalist, this could be a good way to learn the audio/video skills that everyone in the “future of journalism” business says I need to learn in order to stay in journalism.

And after I go on blogging about me, me and me, I can also blog about life in WOW Texas and its artists, ranchers, free-thinking spirits, Border Patrol agents, European tourists, archeologists, national park rangers, geologists, oilmen, illegal aliens, legal Mexicans whose families lived here before there was a Texas, and all the other people who populate this place.

At the very least, it will be a great 21st Century-type of photo album/scrapbook  to commemorate my time in this strange-to-me-but-definitely-promises-to-be-interesting place.

More to come tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll have received the USB cable replacement for my camera (lost in the move) so I can upload some photos.