CBS Sunday Morning: A pilgrimmage to the desk with the greatest view

It’s become known as The Desk on Hancock Hill. Locals call it simply “the desk” … an unlikely landmark in the city of Alpine that’s been holding court for more than 45 years.

Matt Walter has been making the trek to it almost as long: “The first time I came up was like January 1986,” he said. “It was cold. There was snow on the ground. I didn’t know about the desk then; that was before the signage. And I was just kind of like, Oh my gosh, this is so cool!”

An amateur photographer, Walter has documented the changes over the years. The desk isn’t much to look at. It could have come from any classroom – weathered by the weather, and covered in graffiti.

But when seated at it, and looking out over the desert, you feel changed.

Walter said he has felt introspective when visiting the desk: “I’ve had a couple of moments like that where you reflect on the views, the distance, looking out onto this vastness, and wondering about the amazement of Mother Nature,” he said.

Dani Bell, who was visiting the site, said, “It’s very therapeutic. You can clear your mind and really just get some stuff out if you need to.”

What may be more remarkable than the feeling it inspires is how it came to be.

In the late 1970s, Jim Kitchen was a student at nearby Sul Ross State University. He wanted a place to study with a view, so with a couple of classmates, they hauled up a desk, planting it at the top, like a flag on a new frontier.

Kitchen’s nephew, Tony Curry, said his uncle was someone who would drag a desk to the top of a hill: “He is that kind of guy,” Curry said. “He’s a wild, wild man and he’s got a lot of energy.”

Curry showed us one of the earlier desks. (They’re now swapped out every decade or so, as the elements and visitors take a toll.) And Kitchen left more than a desk up here – also, a notebook and pen, because with vast views come big thoughts.

Curry said he’d written in the book many times. “It’s kind of like a meditative place, you know, where you can go and you can just think about things and kind of sort out your problems,” he said.

Dozens of filled notebooks, dating back decades, are catalogued at the university library, and meticulously preserved by the school’s archivist.

You might call Paula Kitchen Curry, Jim’s sister, the unofficial archivist, having gone up to the desk at least 30 times to rotate out the notebooks. “I’ve copied them one time and sent them to my brother, just so he can see what has happened,” she said.

What she’s comes back with is something akin to a confession booth wrapped in a time capsule … the entries, often heartbreaking.

“To 18 y/o me & everyone who needs to hear it: It does get better. Change can be good. The world is bigger than you think it is.”

Reading the entries, Paula said, “Sometimes it breaks my heart, and sometimes it makes me laugh, sometimes it makes me want to be a better writer!”

Asked what he believes the notebooks, and the solitude at the desk, provide to people, Tony Curry said, “There are times when you find yourself looking for a way to get something out of your head, and going up to the desk gives you time to think about it, and then the notebook gives you a place to put it down, and then the journey back down gives you a place to kind of leave it behind.”