It’s hard to convey how humbling it is to visit this little pocket of the United States-Mexico border, a place the National Park Service calls “one of the last remaining wild corners of the United States.” Boosters market Texas as a “whole other country,” but the land within and without Big Bend National Park really is. One of the least-visited of the federal park system, Big Bend is four hours by car from each of the nearest international airports, in El Paso and Midland. You have to really want to get here (or live here, which makes you a different breed altogether). And those who do, those inclined to make the long trek to the park and its attendant ghost towns (Lajitas, Study Butte, Terlingua), are seekers of a sort, not entirely unlike the homesteaders and fortune hunters drawn to these badlands long ago.

But nowadays the treasures are silence and darkness and undeveloped natural beauty and all those other things that seem to be in short supply of late. If you’re longing for a respite from this era’s relentless beeping and buzzing and yelling and “Dear God, what now?” news alerts, what better place than one with limited cell service and unreliable electricity, where you step outside in the morning and hear nothing but the grumbling of your stomach and the muffled flap of a bird’s wings high above?