The Big Bend

I think of Texas and I think of desert -- hot and scantily vegetated. Texas did not disappoint me on that score, nor did the Chihuahuan Desert of Big Bend National Park. Ninety eight percent of Big Bend Park is desert. If I thought I had been hot in Florida, Texas showed me what real heat is. I had left moist tropical foliage behind me, but not the heat. I hadn’t done my homework on this national park, since I hadn’t planned to visit. I assumed I would be beating the heat of mid summer. Ha ha silly gringa. May and June are the hottest months! At the end of May, the daytime temps in the desert areas of Big Bend were reaching 110 degrees.

Looking over my park map, I had decided to stay at the campground on the eastern edge of the park, Rio Grande Village. The ranger told me it was OK to go to the more spacious tent area, instead of the cramped RV area. I drove through the almost empty 100-site tent area, choosing the shadiest spot I could find. After having spent a few hours driving the park roads, stopping often to photograph vistas or plants, I had sweated enough. I set up my camp chair in a shady nook by a large fallen tree, stripped off everything except my swimming suit, and alternated sitting and spraying myself with water from my solar shower, that I had conveniently hung in a tree. I sprayed The Dude from time to time as well, but he didn’t appreciate it as much as I did. Too much like a bath I suppose. Still I think he felt cooler for a while. We both drank great quantities of water. Every once in a while a brief breeze passed by. It felt sooooo nice and chased away the flies, but never lingered.

I enjoyed watching a roadrunner check out our campsite. He hung around for a while, sometimes perching in low branches of the shrubs and trees, sometimes dashing across the open space. My only knowledge of roadrunners came from the cartoon. I almost expected to hear him say beep beep. He did speak in his native tongue though I can’t replicate it for you. I got out my bird book and determined that it was indeed a roadrunner. My Audubon book says he is in the Cuckoo family. This was surely the open arid country with plenty of thickets for cover that he is said to inhabit. His call is described as clucks, crows, coos, dog-like whines and hoarse guttural notes. I mostly heard clucks and guttural sounds. The Dude must have been too hot to care because he barely raised his head to look at the guy much less chase him.

Having read the warning posted on the picnic table, I hoped it was not late enough in the day for javalinas to be browsing. “Beware of Javalina!” the sign announced. With little javalina footprints for bullet points, the list included the worrisome warning that javalinas have been known to injure and kill dogs. Yikes! The warnings were similar to bear warnings I am familiar with like “keep food stored in a vehicle or the provided food safe, don’t keep food in tents, don’t feed them, etc.”

I never did see any except in photos at the visitor center. Javalinas look something like pigs, but are actually in a different animal family. They are sleeker and cuter than any adult pigs I’ve seen at the state fair, and they have fur, unlike Babe or Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web. They feed at daylight and dusk; usually spending the heat of the day in whatever cool spot they have around a cave or an area of dense shrubs. In herds of five to 15 they spread out while chowing down on lechuguilla, roots, prickly pear, seeds, fruits and forbs. (I turned to my dictionary to find out that a forb is “an herbaceous plant other than a grass.”) Though protected in the national park, javalinas are a game animal in Texas. Hunting them may be tricky, as the entire group will attack the offender if one javalina is injured. As one might suspect, their name comes from the word “javelin,” a reference to their tusks. A less interesting name for them is collared peccary. They can weigh up to 70 pounds. I don’t want to annoy a dozen 70-pound tusked animals who can run at speeds of 21 miles per hour!

Here and there among the empty campsites were shallow puddles in the grass. It was like spring after a really heavy rain, except there had been no rain recently. The park service was flooding the area to keep the grass and trees alive. The water felt cool on my sandaled feet and I’m sure The Dude liked it, because he always takes advantage of a place to wade, including Lake Superior when the air temperature is hovering around 10 degrees above zero Fahrenheit. We were more used to such cold temps, so the hot sunny afternoon we had was not the time for a serious hike. We saved that for dusk.

Big Bend National Park sits in the cradle of the Rio Grande formed where its flow changes from southeasterly to the northeast. Forming the park’s entire boundary between Texas and Mexico, the river soon works its way back to the southeast and the Gulf of Mexico. The campground was near the banks of the Rio Grande, but I didn’t realize it was that famous river, until I read the map closer. The river was at a low point apparently, and it was definitely not Grande. When I visited a river-rafting take out spot the next day near the Santa Elena Canyon Overlook, I was puzzled and then stunned by the mere trickle of water a few inches deep and about ten feet wide. I kept thinking that this must be a tributary and I would find the Rio Grande farther on, but not according to the sign or the map. How could this be the Rio Grande? Wasn’t the Rio Grande an enormous river?

Once upon a time it was. In this time, however, waters are diverted from the river after its beginning in Colorado. All along, the Rio Grande loses water to power generation, irrigation, municipal drinking water and flood control just to name a few uses. Even the park uses water diverted from the river, as I had seen at the campground. In fact, for the almost 200 miles between El Paso and Presidio, the riverbed is often dry! Then the Rio Grande’s empty trench meets the Rio Conchos for a refill, depending on rainfall.

For millions of years the Rio Grande ground out the canyons that now contain it. The park service puts it well: “In an otherwise dry and seemingly barren desert, the Rio Grande has produced a sparkling ribbon of water and lush, green vegetation teeming with fish, birds and other forms of wildlife.” At least it used to. Although Congress designated a 196-mile portion of the Rio Grande as a Wild and Scenic River in 1978, saying so doesn’t truly make it so. The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act purports to preserve these chosen rivers “in free-flowing condition” and “be protected for the benefit and enjoyment of present and future generations.” I’m glad someone tried to preserve it, and I hope the Act is working for other rivers.

For the first time in fifty years, in May 2003, the stretch of the Rio Grande in the national park ceased flowing for a few weeks. A few pools of sitting water were all that remained of the mighty river that once flowed so strongly and widely that it formed a natural barrier to human crossing. Consider that in 1905 the highest daily flow recorded was 13,700 cubic feet per second near Presidio. Persistent drought in the southwest has worsened the dearth of water.

Though the flow is not always so severely impaired, it no longer floods its banks seasonally, a trait that many plants and animals are adapted to for survival. Already seven species of fish and mussels have disappeared, and the Big Bend slider turtle is severely endangered. Due to pollution and bacteria from all the usual culprits, (farming and sewage for example) the water is often not safe to wade in much less drink. I didn’t know that at the time we were splashing in the shallows. I am glad to report that neither The Dude nor I became sick from wading in it. These conditions have however, affected creatures and plants in the area with high levels of mercury and selenium, killing some, leaving the rest too toxic for human consumption.

The national park system, along with other agencies, is monitoring water quality in the river. They have created a National Stream Quality Accounting Network (NASQAN) to determine the sources of the pollution. I hope it is more than a way to look good on paper. It’s obvious that the pollution is coming from all the known human uses of the water on both sides of the border. The US park’s jurisdiction extends to the middle of the deepest channel, so all attempts to heal the river require the cooperation of the Mexican government. International disputes on the matter, and even the issue of illegal immigration, add to the difficulty of actually cleaning up the Rio Grande. One would think that if the government worked with the people of the United States to clean up its side of the border and its length of the river, that it would go a long way towards solving the problem.

I was blithely unaware of most of these problems as I sweated while dusk approached, and we drove to the end of the road at the Boquillas Canyon Overlook, about five miles from Rio Grande Village. I had been advised that the sunset was fabulous there over the mountains. I passed within viewing distance of the little town of Boquillas del Carmen across the river in Mexico. Given current uproar over illegal immigration, I wondered how bad the problem was within the park boundaries.

Along the way, I found a half dozen mules browsing by the side of the road. They didn’t flee when I approached within 30 feet to get a picture. The youngest seemed inclined to approach me when a bigger one (mom?) nosed it and quietly turned away, continuing to munch the desert grasses. The next day I asked a ranger if they were invasive. She laughed and told me they were illegal immigrants from Boquillas del Carmen. Mainly, they were a nuisance. Occasionally the rangers try to shoo them back across the river, but they always returned. In the scheme of things, the mules were not doing any harm to the natural environment of the park, nothing like the problem pigs in the Smokies. Humans can be invasive too, and not just tourists. According to the park web site in 2007, the number of undocumented aliens discovered in the park has risen from 120 to 1200.

Sunset at the canyon was as advertised. The lowering sun lit up the golden-red cliffs on the Mexican side of the border. The Sierra del Carmen Range stretched off in the distance behind rolling desert hills to the northeast. To the west, sunlight brightened a few clouds above the darkening Chisos Mountains. The blue sky turned to purple, pink and gold. In the southeast, the desert stretched off until it met the pale sky. As we headed back to the car after a short hike, the air was cooling to an almost bearable temperature.

It was still over a hundred in the camper, despite the exhaust fan having run all day. It was the only time during the trip that I wished for air conditioning in the house part of the camper. AC in the cab was good when driving but it didn’t do anything for the bulk of the space. And then too, I didn’t always have the power to run an air conditioner. (Side note: I think air conditioners are tools of the devil, contributing to global warming and dooming my unborn grandchildren to a life of destitution. When I was young I had nothing but distain for people who could not live without air conditioning. But now I am old and feeble, past caring about any old bones but mine.) I slept with a little 12 volt fan blowing across me and managed to get a good night’s sleep.

The next day, a ranger informed me that the temperature was as much as 30 to 40 degrees cooler up at the Chisos Basin campground. At 5401 feet up in the Chisos Mountains, the elevation makes a huge difference in comfort. Knowing this kind of thing doesn’t come naturally to a flatlander -- that, DUH – it’s cooler in the mountains. Visiting the Chisos Basin pinyon-juniper forest, I found a very different climate from the desert world of the Rio Grande Village area at 1850 feet. The park literature calls Chisos a biological island in a desert sea.

Many of the same smaller plants live in both areas, but the mountains can support Big Tooth Maple, Quaking Aspen, Douglas Fir, Pinyon Pine, and even Oaks. The Basin gets twice as much rain as the desert below. Up here you might see a Colima Warbler, glimpse a mountain lion or spot a Carmen Mountains white-tailed deer found nowhere else in the US. I was OK with not running into a lion on any of my hikes. The rest of the park, except a slice along the edges of the Rio Grand, where some trees still thrive, is extremely arid. Only plants adapted to the dry conditions in the Chihuahua Desert live there -- ones “with spines, needles, thorns, claws, waxy leaves, wax-sealed stems, leaf-shedding during drought, or some other device,” according to an excellent brochure for the botanical walk at Panther Junction Visitor Center. Thirty-four specimen plants line the path, from the common creosote bush to the beautiful strawberry pitaya cactus. Some of the plant species in Big Bend are found nowhere else in the world.

Even though the road up there was not open to vehicles over 24 feet long, at Chisos Basin campground about three quarters of the 65 sites were full. The Escaper came in just under the requirement at 21 feet, and we had no trouble with the steepness or the sharp curves. I chose a site that faced west, where I could watch the sunset over the surrounding peaks. My picnic table was up a rocky stairway on a rocky mound that held several tent sites. A pinyon pine and some shrubs shaded a spot for my camp chair. I settled there several hours before the sun was due to sink below the mountains. From my seat, I took photos of the peaks that surrounded the Basin on all sides.

The Chisos Basin is a plateau surrounded by a group of fabulous rocky peaks stretching above the basin. I was stunned by the beauty of the reddish crags rising into the pale blue sky of the afternoon. What an honor and what luck, to be there to take it in. With various vantage points and various slants of sunlight illuminating them, I photographed Casa Grande Peak (7325 ft.) and Emory Peak (7825 ft.). I particularly liked taking photos of the mountains with a Century Plant in the foreground.

The Century Plant is an agave that lives above 3800 feet. (Agave harvardiana -- I guess that means Harvard was involved in naming this one.) They don’t live for one hundred years, but they do bloom only once in their 15-to-55-year life cycle. This plant is the source of the Mescalero Apaches’ ceremonial mescal, as well as tequila and pulque. Given the bloom frequency in their lifecycle, I was amazed to find so many of them in full bloom. Hopefully, this means that the plants are still thriving despite the stresses of human pollution and climate change. The flowering plant’s shape reminds me of a white pine, whose giant branches hold out irregular bouquets of pine boughs, rather than the Christmas tree approach to style that most evergreens affect. The flower stalks, thick as a baseball bat, rose several feet over my head as they ascended from their fat green sword-like leaves below. From the tall main stem, horizontal green branches held out big yellow bouquets. When I saw them, the “petals” of these bouquets were yellow pods with sturdy yellow stamens protruding from the top. Each clump was like a hand with clumps of fingers on top of fingers. Small bees hovered above their targets, then darted among the blossoms. My camera caught several of them in mid flight in a close-up I took of the flower stalk. Anyway, Century Plants look great in front of the red rock of the mountains and the greenery that struggles up between the crags. They are also lovely in front of a blue sky. They would be lovely in front of anything.

Lower on the large stem, things that looked like tiny ears of corn grouped together behind a single leaf or husk that looked like it had peeled itself off the bark of the stem. Black grasshopper-like bugs were climbing about on them. They were darker and flatter than grasshoppers but had similar legs. Sometimes one would fly up from a lower branch to join earlier arrivals. Some looked like they were either copulating or trying to eat one another. Sadly, I have misplaced the photo of them swarmed on the stem. Perhaps it still exists in the bowels of my Mac, misfiled as I shuffled the photos in an attempt to organize them. Finally I have some rhyme and reason to their order, but mistakes were made. Photos were lost.

Speaking of insects, there are more species of scorpions (14) in Big Bend Park than in any other national park, as well as some outrageous amount of snake species. (Yes, I know scorpions are not insects, are they?) Good for them I say, surviving here. I just wasn’t wild about running into any, at least not close enough to tussle with.

As you’d expect in The Biggest State, there are a lot of “lots of” and “more thans” used to describe the area. There are as many species of plants as there are square miles at the park (1200). There are more than 450 species of birds, again, some found only here. The Chihuahuan desert is the only place you can find Lechugilla, an agave. I am not sure why its name is similar to Spanish for lettuce -- lechuga. Probably there are more superlative things to say about Big Bend than about other national parks. I mean, it’s Texas, right? We can add most polluted view to the list. On several days a year the views of Big Bend are distorted by the worst air quality of any western national park. On a good day though, you can see as much as 100 miles in the distance.

Big Bend has air-monitoring systems, but the park service is unable to actually affect the air quality. They can only tell us how bad it is or isn’t on any given day. Pollution travels to this remote area by air from the Texas Gulf Coast, Houston and Galveston, northern Mexico and even Mexico City. What’s in the stew of air pollution? Sulfates, carbon, nitrates, and soil particles to name a few items. Sometimes visibility is reduced up to 60%. There are many parts to the solution of the problem. Enforcing, not weakening the Clean Air Act is one political part. Conservation by us average citizens is essential and much more important than most people realize. Cleaning up the toxic wastes generated by our smokestacks and vehicles is much more difficult technically than keeping them out of our air, land and water in the first place. Anytime we use less energy, we are personally putting fewer toxic wastes in the air from the electric plant or the oil refinery or the tail pipe.

I realize that it’s difficult for us to discontinue using so many resources, but it is the most effective method for our future survival. Put better controls on the smokestacks and drains of industry, but also drive a fuel-efficient vehicle. (I don’t understand why so many people find that to be such a sacrifice.)

So, enough preaching -- let’s take a walk before the sun goes down. I found a nice service road that took us past an interesting sewer treatment plant for the Basin facilities (which included a large hotel, living quarters for park staff, and a complex of buildings for gift shop, museum and maintenance). What I found interesting was a beautiful shade of green algae on the holding tank. The surface was cracked into black lines that set off this oddly beautiful slime. A road behind the plant took us into a forest and down a slope. In one area, both sides of the road rose up in rocky cliffs, engendering visions of mountains lions leaping down to devour one or both of us. No such bad luck. After about a half an hour of downward direction, I decided to head back up to the campground to catch the sunset, if it was not already too late. The sun disappears behind the peaks well before the daylight fades.

Back at camp, I watched the western sky display pinks, purples and grays. After making supper, I planned to sit under the clear night sky to admire the stars. I thought The Dude should stay in the camper and allow me some alone time on a rock. He thought not, and let me know it by barking from the camper, as I tried to settle and watch the night sky. I tramped back down the rocks to the Escaper and took him with me. This did not satisfy him either. He wanted to bark at the noises from other campers and the rustling in the brush. Knowing he would disturb the other campers if this kept up, I abandoned the sky for the interior of the Escaper, whereupon The Dude settled in his seat and went to sleep. The Dude can be a drag sometimes.

The next day, we followed the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive to the end of the road at Santa Elena Canyon Overlook. The mountains and desert vistas were beautiful so I drove there slowly, trying to drink in all I could see as we rolled along. At the Sotol Vista Overlook, a pull off by a hairpin curve, I found an incredible rock. I got an incredible picture of it anyway. A big tan boulder had a pothole on top, where ages ago when there was lots of water around, a smaller rock or rocks, swirled in a cavity creating a nice basin of about a foot in diameter. Concentric rings of water stains and a shadow placed just right created the illusion of a large cyclopean eye with a deep red iris. There weren’t a lot of other boulders around. Whatever force of nature had placed it there, for company left mainly gravel, sand, agave, and grasses.

The viewpoint’s namesake, Sotol, grows a tall flowering spike somewhat like the Century Plant. Several nice specimens dotted the nearby landscape. Red and yellow stamens and pistils sat in blossoms hanging from branched arms. The thick stem towered several feet above the nest of sharp greenery below. Their brilliant display of life contrasted sharply with the grey desert floor and the seemingly bare rocky hills behind them.

In a long vista from west to south, I could see peaks named Tule, Christmas, Little Christmas, Goat and Kit, some in the US and some in Mexico. I was in luck for there was little haze to disrupt the view that day. Fourteen miles south as the crow flies, is the seemingly tiny Santa Elena Canyon with its 1500-foot walls, framing the view of Mexico beyond. The deep canyon walls just suddenly end, emptying the Rio Grande into the desert. One side of the canyon belongs to Mexico and the other side to us. The end of the road brought me closer to this awesome sight. Standing by the slow moving river, looking toward the canyon mouth, I was disappointed that I couldn’t take the time to get even closer on the Canyon Trail. Sure, I could have. But I was feeling the time pinch to move on and as usual, The Dude was banned from the trail.

Reluctantly I climbed back in the Escaper and traced my way back up Maxwell Drive, stopping to take a few photos of hot spots like the Mule Ears, distinctive twin peaks that must have served as landmarks before roads led the way. We took a left at the western park exit. Highway 118 led us through Terlingua and Study Butte, then north through the desert toward my next goal, Guadalupe Mountains National Park. On the way up highway 118, we stopped at a border crossing guard post, a location that pretty much seemed to fit the definition of “in the middle of nowhere.” A nice young man (does that show my age?), dressed in fatigues, asked me where I was headed and where I’d been. When I told him I was headed to Las Vegas, his eyes lit up and he smilingly asked if he could hop a ride. I laughed saying he probably didn’t want to go to New Mexico’s Las Vegas. The soldier waved us on after I assured him I had no other companion but the dog. It was a very easy border check. I could have had half a dozen people hidden in the back of the Escaper. I figure it was my innocent old-white-lady look again saving me hassle.

I was meeting Tom near New Mexico’s Las Vegas. His friend Amanda was hosting a get together of motorcycle fiends -- ah -- friends, who had gotten to know each other through an Internet bulletin board that they all posted to. Occasionally they meet in the middle of the far-reaching US, gathering for a weekend. Tom had attended some of the other “Meet in the Middle” parties. This year the get together was near Villanueva State Park. I planned to get to the park before Tom reached New Mexico, hook up with him there and go on to meet Amanda and company. I timed it quite well in the end, with Tom arriving the day after I set up camp at the state park.