Lots of very compelling people seem to make their way through Marfa. Last week, at The Food Shark alone, I met a Californian motorcycling from Nicaragua back to San Francisco, two journalists from two different travel magazines doing stories about Marfa, and a photographer driving his RV all the way around the US border, Australian Sheep Dog  in tow.

The photographer commented to me on how difficult it is to photograph the southwest, particularly the sunset. “Why’s that?” I asked, “It seems like every shot would be a good shot.”

“That’s exactly the problem,” he answered. “It’s so beautiful that everyone photographs it…everyone has photographed it. It’s almost a cliché.”

He couldn’t be more right. How do you photograph something that’s been photographed a thousand times and make it fresh? Different from everyone else’s work? Different from anyone else’s family photo album? It’s like anyone who’s ever photographed Niagara Falls or The Grand Canyon…by, say, the third time someone snaps a picture of it, it ceases to be new anymore.

But to visit those places…it never gets stale. Yesterday as I was out riding around on my bike I found myself trying to take pictures of the vast sky (on my little iPhone no less, which is wholly inadequate) while at the very same moment realizing how inferior each photograph was compared with the real thing. It’s like being in the middle of the ocean and feeling the depth and largeness of it all and then trying to capture it in your little lens…it’s impossible.

When I got home after feeling completely overpowered (in a good way) by the sky, I was putting my stuff away and I heard a knock at the door. It was a local guy who is helping with the 2010 Census for Marfa, and he verified my address and gave me the official Census packet before moving on to the next house. It seemed ironic to me that I had just come from staring at an enormous sky, trying to record one tiny piece of it on my little camera for posterity or art or something, and feeling so small; and now to find out that my presence in Marfa will bring the official population from 2,121 to 2,123 (counting my husband, too, of course)!! Hey, in a place like Marfa, two more people is kind of a big deal. Yes, *I* am number 2,122 and *Glenn* is number 2,123. We’re suddenly kind of important around here. 

This is a little place–a very very little place–inside a big place–a very very big place.