Wide-Angle Park on the Rio Grande

In the small ranching town of Marathon, where Mary Ellen and I stopped to get gas, I couldn’t quite shake the impression that Dwight Eisenhower might still be president. A layer of Chihuahuan Desert had settled over the place, seemingly holding time and town in stasis. Inside the gas station, I purchased a quart of oil and a six-pack of soda from an elderly Mexican woman who sat behind the counter watching “Seinfeld.” For visitors to Big Bend National Park, located deep in the heart of West Texas, Marathon is a last stop for stocking up on fuel and supplies before the park’s northern border.

The Spanish explorers referred to Big Bend as El Despoblado, “the uninhabited land,” and driving south on U.S. 385 from Marathon it was 68 desolate miles of bunch grass and creosote bush to park headquarters at Panther Junction. Vast, isolated and supremely beautiful, Big Bend sprawls across an area grander than the state of Rhode Island. Yet despite its size, the park has remained something of a mystery to most Americans. At a time when 5 million people per year crowd into the more popular parks such as Grand Canyon, Big Bend has stayed refreshingly elusive, with fewer than 300,000 visitors annually.

The road to Big Bend follows an old Comanche war trail that led across the Rio Grande into Mexico, and as we approached the park’s northern entrance at Persimmon Gap, the washed-out peaks of the Dead Horse Mountains to the east glowed with the captured hues of the dying afternoon. In the orange-and-purple light, the silhouettes of solitary buttes and gnarled rock formations took on monstrous proportions, and the spiny arms of ocotillo and agave plants seemed to reach out to us in a twisted welcome. We’d spent most of the day in the car driving from San Antonio, 400 miles east, and by the time we made the steep, nine-mile climb up Green Gulch into the Chisos Mountains, we were road weary and ready for our sleeping bags.

Below us the road descended into a series of hairpin turns that eventually led into the Chisos Basin and the campground, one of three drive-in camping areas in the park. It’s a few hundred feet below the Chisos Mountains Lodge, the park’s only indoor accommodation, which began as cabins for Civilian Conservation Corps workers in the ‘30s and ‘40s and now includes a motel unit, a lodge and several stone cabins.

But we had planned to camp all along. We found an unoccupied campsite straight away in the 63-site campground, and by headlight set up our tent in just a few minutes. It was the beginning of April, and in the Chisos Basin it was cool and comfortable, in the 70s and 80s during the day, down to the 60s at night.

Mary Ellen grabbed a flashlight and set off for the bathroom, but I soon heard her frantic voice calling from across the campground. I took off to find her pinned into the ladies’ room by a Big Bend welcoming party--two frisky javelinas in search of a free meal. With its grizzled coat, stumpy legs and long, pointy snout, the javelina, or collared peccary, looks like a small wild boar but is actually a curious, nearsighted mammal more closely related to tapirs and horses than to wild pigs. The javelina’s musky smell is worse than its bite, and these two campground renegades slipped away as soon as I appeared.

That night in our tent we listened to the wind howl through the natural amphitheater created by the Chisos Mountains and the basin floor upon which we slept. We turned restlessly to the sounds of javelinas sniffing just outside our tent and to the yips of mournful coyotes whose calls echoed to us in our dreams from across the desert.

Big Bend is a land of three distinct regions: the Chisos Mountains, the Chihuahuan Desert and the Rio Grande. So diverse are the park’s landscapes and life forms that it has been designated an International Biosphere Reserve, giving it elite status even among national parks. To get a better sense of the place, the next day we drove leisurely over the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, a 30-mile route that slopes down the western flank of the Chisos toward Santa Elena Canyon and the Rio Grande. The river traces the park’s southern border for 107 miles. We stopped for a short hike down to the abandoned Homer Wilson Ranch, and later pulled into the overlook at Sotol Vista, where one can see the broad alluvial flood plain of the Rio Grande cut like an incongruous ribbon of green across the Chihuahuan Desert.

I’d seen Santa Elena Canyon in the black and white of an Ansel Adams photograph and, fine as that is, it can’t compare to the real thing. This we discovered from spending the rest of the afternoon hiking a 1.7-mile trail that fords the mud flats of Terlingua Creek before entering Santa Elena Canyon. Pink and yellow blossoms of cholla and prickly pear cactus adorned the canyon’s walls as the trail twined past giant boulders and through shoreline vegetation before ending abruptly where the canyon wall met the Rio Grande.

Park visitation is at its peak in the spring, when the desert explodes with wildflowers. In the lowlands, the Big Bend bluebonnet may start blooming as early as December. It’s also the best time for bird-watching the park’s 425 identified species (Big Bend lies on the migratory flyway between Mexico and Canada). On the other hand, the clear, crisp days and high-water conditions of November through February make that the most popular time for running the Rio Grande.

After a dinner of peanut butter sandwiches and canned soup heated over a propane camp stove back at the campsite, we donned our sweatshirts and walked over to the outdoor theater to meet ranger Bill Bourbon, a larger-than-life figure who, with his Roman jaw and sun-browned skin, looked as if he were straight out of a park service brochure.

Under his 10-gallon hat, Bourbon’s eyes gleamed with passion, and his powerful voice resonated through the audience of about 50--mostly families with children from the campsite--as he explained how smog from two coal-burning power plants in Mexico had begun to foul the views in Big Bend, lowering visibility from more than 100 miles on a clear day to less than 20 miles when the wind blew out of the south. Worse yet, said Bourbon, the desert’s delicate ecosystems were being irreparably harmed by acid rain, which is created when sulfur dioxides mix with sunlight and water vapor in the atmosphere. As we filed out, I thought about the irony of how such a harsh place could be so fragile, and for the rest of the evening I wished I had become a park ranger like Bill Bourbon.

The next morning we were up early to hike the mildly strenuous Lost Mine Trail before the midday heat. Less than five miles round trip, the Lost Mine Trail is less exacting than the more glamorous 14-mile loop around the South Rim of the Chisos Mountains and less grueling than a full-day hike up Emory Peak, the park’s highest elevation, at 7,835 feet. But the trail offers rewards all its own as it winds southeast uphill under the shadow of 7,325-foot Casa Grande Mountain.

On the rocky ledges at trail’s end, one can look out across spectacular Pine Canyon to the summit of Lost Mine Peak (7,550 feet), where legend holds that the Spanish once worked a rich vein of ore. According to the story, every Spaniard who knew the location of the mine was murdered by Chisos Apaches who had been forced into slavery in the mines. To prevent further exploration, the Indians sealed the mine for eternity. However, it is claimed that if one stands in the doorway of the ruined chapel in the Mexican village of San Vicente across the Rio Grande on Easter morning, you’ll see the sun’s first rays strike the entrance to Lost Mine.

After lunch, and still a little footsore from the morning hike, we decided to drive down to Rio Grande Village, in the park’s southeast corner, for an ice cream cone and some shade. With its RV park; 100-site campground with flush toilets, running water, tables and grills; general store; gas station; hot showers and coin-operated Laundromat, Rio Grande Village is the closest thing in the park to an actual town. It is also the staging area for most of the river activity in Big Bend. A few miles outside of Rio Grande Village, a short trail leads into scenic Boquillas Canyon. The canyon’s limestone walls are pockmarked with marine fossils from more than 100 million years ago when Big Bend lay under a shallow ocean. Seventy-five million years ago Big Bend was inhabited by dinosaurs, including the pterosaur, a flying reptile with a 50-foot wingspan. The first human inhabitants of Big Bend ground grains in the canyon’s bedrock, creating deep holes that still can be seen today.

Later that afternoon back at the campsite, our neighbor, a middle-age man who was traveling alone with his dog, offered to treat us to dinner at the lodge restaurant. With some regret, we declined. We had one last site that we didn’t want to miss--that no visitor to Big Bend should miss--sunset at the Window.

The Window is a natural water pour-off, the sole drainage for the high Chisos Basin and mountains. From it, facing west and looking out far across the desert, one can witness the end of the day framed through the Window’s granite “V.” It’s a pleasant hike, paved and wheelchair-accessible, on the 2.6-mile Window Trail from Chisos Basin Campground to this overlook. The only problem with hiking out at sunset is that you have to hike back as darkness falls.

At dusk, on the return trip, the desert floor around us was a flurry of activity as kangaroo rats and jack rabbits darted across our path. At one point, we stopped to watch several mule deer as they munched on the sharp-edged stalks of a sotol plant. They kept one eye on us and another on their dinner. Farther along the trail, we entered a deep thicket of creosote bush. The bramble buzzed with hidden movements until a pack of about 20 foraging javelinas emerged from the shadowy bushes. At the sight of her nearsighted friends swarming around her feet like mosquitoes, Mary Ellen took off running, and I never caught up with her again until I got back to the tent.

As the dark, moonless night descended upon me, I suddenly felt very much alone, and I mumbled under my breath that, indeed, the Spaniards were right in dubbing this place the uninhabited land. So clear was the night that I could almost count the planets and stars as they appeared, one by one, east to west across the ocean of sky, and I realized that the trackless sky above was just the celestial version of the vast desert beneath my feet.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK: Around the Bend

Getting there: The closest cities to Big Bend National Park are El Paso, San Antonio and Midland. There’s nonstop service to El Paso on Southwest from LAX; round-trip fares begin at $192. Nonstop service and direct service (one stop) on Southwest and Continental into San Antonio; fares begin at $196. Direct service to Midland on Northwest; fares begin at $248.

From San Antonio to park headquarters at Panther Junction, take U.S. 90 (west) to Marathon and then head south on U.S. 385. From El Paso, take Interstate 10 (east) to Van Horn to U.S. 90 to Alpine, and then drive south on Texas 118.

Where to stay: The Park Service operates three campgrounds, first-come, first-serve ($7 per night), at Chisos Mountain Basin, Rio Grande Village and Castolon.

For reservations at Chisos Mountains Lodge in the park ($74-$79 double), call (915) 477-2291. Among motels and guest ranches outside the park: the restored 1927 Gage Hotel, telephone (800) 884-GAGE, $65-$140 double, in Marathon; and the Holland Hotel in Alpine, tel. (800) 535-8040.

For more information: Big Bend National Park, Texas 79834; tel. (915) 477-2251, or write the Big Bend Area Travel Assn., P.O. Box 401, Alpine, Texas 79831.