Why go to Big Bend?

Not many people go to Big Bend, for which I suppose I should be grateful. It’s too hard to get to – hundreds of miles from anything “interesting.” It’s not on the way to anywhere, and even upon arriving at one of the gateway cities Marfa or Alpine you still have a long drive to the park. And alas, for many who endure that long trek, there is, well, nothing there. We drove two days for this? When do we eat?

 But for some it is a magical place; wondrous, awesome, humbling, with a superabundance of things not seen else in the United States, like ocotillo and lechuguilla, candelilla and cholla, yucca and sotol, Mexican pinyon pine and weeping juniper, desert verbena and the Big Bend bluebonnet. There are mountains from which to peer far into Mexico, deep canyons patrolled by the Colima warbler and free-tail bats, and stars – millions of pulsing jewels set in deep purple. There is the vast emptiness of the Chihuahuan desert floor, stretching in all directions like a sea around the Chisos Mountains.

In Big Bend one is likely to confront, or at least glimpse, one’s smallness. I don’t mean physical stature, though the landscape does dwarf all things human. I mean one's temporal insignificance within the overwhelming scope and time of nature. Look at uncountable stars and consider how far away they are, how incomprehensibly large the universe is. Look at jutting mountains and consider how old they are, forming and folding, thrusting upward over millions of years. Look at canyon walls, cut year upon year by the river below. Stars and mountains and canyons could, if they wished, mock our comings and goings as merely that passing interlude of earth history that included “humans.” But they do not. They shine and stand as though placed just prior to our arrival, and for our infinite pleasure. Edward Abbey wrote:

Why go into the desert? Why go to Starvation Creek, Poverty Knoll, Buzzard Gulch, Wolf Hole, Bitter Springs, Last Chance Canyon, Dungeon Canyon, Whipsaw Flat, Dead Horse Point, Scorpion Flat, Dead Man Draw, Stinking Spring, Camino del Diablo, Hell Hole Canyon, Jornado del Muerto…Death Valley? Why indeed go walking into the desert when you could be strolling along the golden beaches of California or camping by a stream of pure Rocky Mountain spring water in colorful Colorado or loafing through a laurel slick in the high blue misty hills of North Carolina?

A valid question and hard to answer until you’ve been there; until, like Abbey, you’ve had occasion to be silently reminded of the awe and power of the desert. He continues:

"Across this canyon was nothing of any unusual interest that I could see – only more of the familiar sandblasted sandstone, a few scrubby clumps of blackbrush and prickly pear, a few acres of nothing where only a lizard could graze surrounded by a few square miles of more nothingness of interest chiefly to horned toads. I looked away toward the north for 10, 20, 40 miles into the distance. I studied the scene with care, looking for an ancient Indian ruin, a significant cairn, perhaps an abandoned mine, a hidden treasure, the mother of all mother lodes…. But there was nothing out there. Nothing at all. Nothing but the desert. Nothing but the world. That’s why."