I headed off from Hueco Tanks for the national park situated in west Texas along the U.S./Mexico border, Big Bend. The drive was scenically uneventful at first, but the further south I went the more varied the landscapes became. Soon I was surrounded by small mountains and towering rock faces. I was in disbelief at the beauty of this area. Arriving at the park around 4:00pm, I headed to the west side of the park down the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive. The views were astounding. Directly ahead of me were enormous orange cliff faces that fell into the greenest desert I’d ever seen and fields of yellow and purple wildflowers from the uncommonly vibrant spring bloom were abundant. Driving through the meandering road led me to countless views like this and then as I peeked over the Sotos Viewpoint, a long and towering wall laid before me in such panorama I could do little but shake my head in amazed disbelief. The road ended where the Rio Grande river exited the Santa Elena Canyon and here I continued on foot into the canyon for a mile or so until the canyon walls narrowed and the path could persist no more. I managed to sit for over an hour without so much as a hint of a human presence. My ears grew keen to the multitude of bird calls, the rustling of grass in the soft breeze, and the occasional crack of a rock as it dropped from the shear limestone walls. All these sounds intermingled in reverberation down the canyons reflective walls. As the sun set I exited the canyon and while I could not see the sun itself, the glow of red reflected of the atmosphere and the clouds and lit up the top of the canyon walls, first gold and then red as if it were the precious metal itself being melted to molten temperatures. And as the final light faded to dark, the desert was vibrant in its life as the mating call of the grasshoppers buzzed an alarm that it was soon time for the day folk to find there beds.

I woke early at the sign of first light. I headed back to the Sotos viewpoint to see what the returning sun would do to the landscape. Unfortunately I was stopped en route by a commercial filming and missed the morning glow. I headed instead to the Chisos Basin. As I crested the saddle of the basin I was instantly reminded of hidden valley at Joshua Tree only this was more grandiose in every way. On every side rock walls enclosed me from the rest of the park. The morning activity would be to hike the Pinnacles trail to the highest point in the park, Emory Peak (7832 ft). Two hours to reach the summit with a small bit of 3rd/4th class terrain, I met a young man by the name of Warren who came up just a little after me. Almost immediately we fell into comfortable conversation and reminisced on past adventures and expressed our future hopes and plans. On this particular adventure Warren was on a mission to climb Texas’ most prominent peak, Emory, and its highest in Guadalupe Mountain National Park in twenty-four hours. I love it when in all the world it is on top of a lonely peak that you bump into some soul that you find a connection with. We decided that our paths may cross again on chance and so exchanged emails and blogs and such. I gave my farewell and headed down the mountain.

Back in the car I headed to the eastern side of the park where I would drive down a dirt road and hike a short distance to a hot spring. The spring sat in an old foundation of what was once a resort but was closed due to the Mexican Revolution. Something about Poncho Villa invading scared people from this otherwise relaxing spot. I sat in the spring staring at Mexico a mere thirty feet away just across this thin section of the Rio Grande. I swam through the brown silty waters and sat on the neighboring countries shore for a quick international vacation. Later In the hot spring I listened to a man share his stories of traveling in Peru and partaking in the drug known as ayahuasca. He described, at my request, his accounts of the experience and it sound terrifying and beautiful at the same time. By the end of the story it seemed as if the most profound part of his experience was that he took the hottest bowel movement of his life, an experience he reiterated more than a few times. I found the simplicity of it to be perfect. Abiding to my appetite I bade the soakers farewell and headed off into the desert to find a nice place to camp. I arrived on a bluff staring over the river and as the sun fell behind me, the neighboring country ignited with colors of red and orange and I climbed into my car and watched as the stars slowly emerged in the darkening sky.