Big Skeptic Meets Big Bend

Everyone at camp wanted desperately to see a mountain lion. Mike couldn’t care less. Yet who saw the rare cat, just sauntering across the road in broad daylight? Mike did, of course.

My buddy Mike, a brilliant journalist, is well-versed in hard truths. He’s the friend to remind me that my plans are idealistic and that the writer’s path is an arduous one (while, over eggs and biscuits, I insist that my ideas are far-fetched but possible). On this trip, Mike was the resident skeptic in a crowd of crystal-wielding, universe-thanking liberal arts college alums. Yet when we came together for dinner on Saturday night, Mike had the most exciting news to report.

“How was your day?” someone asked.

“Pretty good,” he said. “I saw a mountain lion.”

After months of planning (read: email harassment), about twenty friends had committed to the day-long drive from Austin to Big Bend. Lynn, an amazing chef, had offered to cook family-style dinners; when I arrived at her house, I was glad to have a truck, because she came toting multi-burner camp stoves, a ten-gallon stock pot, and an honest-to-goodness dutch oven. You haven’t glamped until you’ve brought this woman along.

I was a stranger to group trips. I’m a solo backpacker by habit; going car camping with a lot of people made me uneasy. But many of these friends, who’d called Texas their home for years, had never been to Big Bend, the jewel of the Lone Star state. They had to see it. You’ll fall in love, I insisted. Just wait. Meanwhile, I figured a group would be a pain in the ass I’d simply tolerate.           

We flew down I-10. The miles rolled out before us, green hill country giving way to yellow fields. The rolling rises yielded to prairie, then to broad flat-topped buttes dotted with windmills and oil derricks. Finally the drama of upthrust rock fell away into a plain of sand, sotol grasses, and agave: the desert.

“So,” I asked Lynn. “What the story with Olive’s dad? Were you two married, or…?”

“Oh my god,” she said. “Good thing we have seven hours!”

We traded stories of doomed first marriages, crazy families, and life dreams still in the offing. Lynn’s dad was even wilder than my own.

“After school I’d take the bus to the prison,” she said. “And sit with him for a couple hours. One time I stayed there for a week.”

“You stayed in the prison?”

“Yeah. Prison’s different in Mexico. People are just, like, hanging out.”

The hours and miles flew by, and before we knew it we’d pulled through the entrance station, flashing a National Parks pass and taping a permit to the inside of the windshield.

We rolled the windows down and inhaled. I thought the air smelled of desert sage, though I don’t know shit about plants—but I know the desert’s mellow incense, like the smell of the resin we rubbed on our ballet slippers when I was a child. The afternoon was clear and fine. A blue sky streaked with the faintest whiff of white cirrus stretched in an infinite canopy over the desert. In the distance, the Chisos range rose up like a green promise. My heart always seizes and jumps at the first sight of the mountains.

We entered the mountains on a winding road, its shoulders secured by stone walls the Civilian Conservation Corps built almost a century ago. As we neared the top of the pass, a dark form appeared in front of us. I hit the brakes. Lynn gasped.

“Is that a—

“Yes!”

A large black bear casually crossed the road. I stuck my hand out the window and waved, hoping the girls in the car behind us were seeing this. The way a bear moves is remarkable. So floppy. So slow.

“Wow.”

The bear passed into the woods, disappearing among the trees. I drove on, more cautiously than before.

We pulled into the group campground and found our site. It was a huge dirt area with many (albeit sloping) tent spots, a concrete platform with a roof, and three long aluminum picnic tables. It was perfect. Two others had beaten us there: Caroline, who’d already been out in West Texas for a few days painting, and Scott, who was joining us on his way back to Los Angeles.

“We saw a bear!” we cried, jumping from the truck.

“You did? Hi dear,” Caroline said, folding me in one of her warm hugs.

“Did you see that bear?” Lindsey and Jaime called, pulling in behind us.

Camped in the Chisos Basin. Photo courtesy of Jaime deBlanc-Knowles.

After setting up tents, we five headed out for a sunset hike. The trailhead for the Window Trail, an out-and-back four-miler, was fifty feet from the campsite. As we made our way downhill, the sun sank, and a nearly-full moon rose behind us.

“Look at that,” Lindsey said. “How magical!”

Back at camp, the rest of our crew had materialized from the dark. A tent city sprang up, someone hung lanterns from the rafters, and Lynn coaxed water to boil. A dozen people bustled around in down jackets and winter hats. Beer, wine, bread, and cheese emerged from coolers.

“You made it!”

“Nina, have you met Andy?”           

“We saw a bear!”

“Us too!”

“Who wants to try this new brand of bourbon?”

Fueled by bourbon and the giddiness of mountain air, the gathering became a party. Lynn produced a mammoth bowl of garlic pasta with wilted arugula. There was laughter and an outrageous story about the time Ashleigh almost lost a teenager on an Outward Bound-type trip. People sang. Voices shouted over one another.

Walking away from the group, I stood in the road. The Chisos Basin is a little clutch of low-lying land encircled by peaks; I could see the shadows of mountains on all sides. Stars appeared, sharp pinpricks in the velvet sky. The Milky Way was visible along with every star in the Pleiades. That night or the next, three people lay on the ground as Jules and Audrey pointed out constellations.

“That’s Cassiopeia. And that, there, that’s the Orion Nebula. See it?”

I crawled into my tent and lay listening to Jules leading a game in which you had to sing about current circumstances to the melody of a Christmas song.

“Big Bend, Big Bend, we’ll hike in Big Bend,” someone sang to the tune of “The First Noel.”

I fell asleep to the comforting sound of my friends’ laughter.

Saturday dawned clear and cold, but it would reach the mid-60’s by afternoon. After breakfast, the group split into sub-factions: those hiking to the South Rim, those who’d tackle the Lost Mine Trail, and those who wanted to chill.

I was with the South Rim group. The hike is no joke: it climbs 2,000 vertical feet in seven miles. Reaching a saddle at the base of Emory Peak, the trail jogs along a flat stretch in a valley called Boot Canyon before making the final climb. All told, it’s a full day of hard hiking, but it’s doable for anyone moderately fit—and well worth the effort.

Backpacker magazine lists the South Rim as among the top 100 miles of trail in the National Park system; I couldn’t agree more. What’s better, the remote nature of West Texas makes this one of the least attended National Parks. The view from the South Rim is jaw-dropping. Epic. Stunning. Unreal. And if you’re lucky, you’ll only have to share it with a handful of people, because you’ve added “tough hike” to “long drive” in the list of barriers to reaching this heavenly perch.

The South Rim is a cliff’s edge that falls away to a rippling, undulating valley. In the distance, if it’s clear, you can see the Rio Grande River and the cliffs on the Mexico side of the border. It’s so quiet, when a bird flies over, you can hear the zing of air beneath its wings.

View from the South Rim, Big Bend National Park. Photo courtesy of Caroline Wright.

We sat on the rim for an hour. It was a difference worth noting; when I came alone, I had a hard time sitting still. With friends, one must chill. And when I discovered that my peanut butter and honey sandwich had been crushed to sticky oblivion, Lynn said,

“That’s pathetic. Are you serious? You can’t eat that.”

She and Kelley Janes shared their classy lunches: cheese, pears, salami, and naan. We rested in the sun, gazing over the wrinkled earth below, almost dozing.

Rousing ourselves, we meandered west along the rim, finding breathtaking views at every turn. Then we followed the trail downhill through forests of Cottonwood and Juniper, past meadows bleached white by the winter sun, through a valley with moonlike drifts of dark ash, and finally down familiar slopes of scrub and prickly pear. Hiking—and talking.

“My middle sister is actually most like me,” Becca said. “But she’s always lived far away.”

“She’s the one in Boulder?”

 “Yeah.”

“Diego’s moving in with me next week,” Caroline said.

“Oh my god, that’s so exciting!”

“California is a superior state,” Kelley said.

“Yeah, no duh,” Scott agreed.

“Oh look! A Mexican Jay,” Audrey said, pointing.

“Long friendships,” Lynn said. “Are like marriages.”

Finally we reached the little store in the Chisos Basin, where we dropped our bags, bought some beers, and stood drinking them watching the late sun turn the peaks a brilliant shade of orange.

“What a hike,” someone said.

“I’m so glad I did that.”

High on beauty and exercise, we sauntered back into camp, where we found that everyone else had had an equally special day.

“The Lost Mine trail was beautiful,” Jaime said.

“Then we hit up those hot springs,” Lindsey added.

“We saw two bears in the campground!” Stacia and Eric reported.

“What about you, Mike? Did you have a good day?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I saw a mountain lion.”

Mike was distracted. Nina, his fiancée, had just seen a large bear while hiking alone. He was worried; he wanted to talk about the bear. Yet all anyone cared about was the mountain lion.

“Shut up! You didn’t.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure. It was huge. I mean, yeah. It was a mountain lion.”

“No fucking way!”           

“You guys hear that? Mike saw a mountain lion!”

“Shut the fuck up!”

“Where was it?”

Mike told the story. He was driving to Santa Elena canyon, in the southern part of the park, when he saw a large animal leave the road and climb a ridge to his right. He stopped and watched it go. That was all.

“Wow, that’s gotta be a good omen,” someone (maybe me) said. “It’s an auspicious sign.”

“I guess,” said Mike.

Again appetizers emerged—along with cookies, cider, and whiskey. Soon Lynn served up hoppin’ john (black eyed peas with rice) and the most miraculous apple cornbread. Lindsey busted out Angel Cards and offered tarot-style readings, informing each person of her destiny.

“You’re all star seeds!” she proclaimed, her voice rising to a howl. “STAR SEEDS!”

After dinner was cleaned up, some of us went on a night jaunt to the hot springs. By the time we reached the parking lot, a full moon stood directly overhead. Our feet were silent on the sandy path. The Rio Grande was high, on account of recent rains, and cold water rushed past a crumbling stone enclosure that had been built decades ago, corralling the hot springs into a shallow rectangular pool at the river’s edge. We changed into suits and waded in. After a long day’s hike, the hot water felt miraculous.

There was one guy soaking in the steaming waters who wasn’t part of our group. He remained silent until the conversation turned to the moon.

“How far away is the moon?” Audrey asked. “Do you guys know? Closest guess wins.”

“A hundred thousand miles,” the stranger offered.

“A million miles,” I wagered.

“A zill,” Scott said.

“No, it’s a hundred thousand miles,” the stranger insisted. “I’m sure of it.”

“I think it’s, like, three hundo thousand,” Jules said.

“Jules wins!” Audrey said. “It’s about two hundred and forty thousand miles away.”

The stranger kept grumbling that he was right. A little later, he left.

“Isn’t it crazy,” someone said. “That it’s 300 thousand miles away, but we can still see those craters?”

We sat in rapturous silence, watching the moon. Then Ashleigh challenged us to dunk ourselves in the icy river – four times, she said, because it was supposed to have some ritual significance. We obliged, coming up gasping, grabbing for the edge of the pool before the current carried us away.

“Oh fuck that’s cold!”

But Ash was right: the shock made you feel like a new person.

We padded back along the sandy path. The moon turned the sand and nearby cliffs a stark, otherworldly white. A wall of giant reeds, like enormous cattails, gently bumped against one another in the wind.

This is real, I thought. I’m alive right now. We all are.

Several friends piled into my truck bed with blankets and fell asleep. Meanwhile, Becca and I blasted “Despacito,” Taylor Swift, and the Moana soundtrack, scream-singing at the top of our lungs. Dark miles of desert flew by in a blur.

Back at camp, everyone said a dazed goodnight and zipped into their tents. The next morning, Sunday, the group scattered for home in a chaos of coolers and loose camp chairs.

“Thanks for coming, y’all,” I said as we hugged goodbye.

“Oh please,” Caroline said. “This was totally magical.”

Mike seems like a person who wouldn’t believe in magic. Yet appearances are deceiving. He’s got a novel in the works (novel writing, a sign of optimism if ever there were one), and one of his best short stories involves a house that shrinks in on its sole resident. Magical realism much? And Mike is engaged to be married—that alone speaks to a faith in the triumph of romance.

He’ll roll his eyes when he reads this, but there was a reason Mike and Mike alone saw that mountain lion. The rest of us were sold: Big Bend was magical, the mountains were sacred, and we were all star seeds baptized anew in the waters of the Rio Grande. Mike wasn’t so sure.

So maybe he saw what he needed to see. Maybe he needed to be surprised, just as I was surprised to love camping with a big noisy crowd of friends. I came hoping to tolerate it, but instead I have never felt so uplifted and delighted in nature, where I was equally a citizen of the universe and a fitting member in a constellation of friends. It’s a feeling I struggle to keep in hand, but that weekend I held it fast: I belonged.

Maybe Mike, like the rest of us, came looking for one thing and found another. The mountains of West Texas, in their infinite wisdom, gave us just what we needed.

Details

Location:   Big Bend National Park, West Texas

How to get there:  1-10 west from Austin/San Antonio or east from El Paso. You can fly into some tiny West Texas town. But who does that. If you’re that rich, I doubt you need these tips on group camping.

Costs:  $25 entry fee per car (unless you have a parks pass), $15-50/night to camp, depending on group size. Backpacking is very affordable, too, and if you can score a site on the north or south rim you are golden for a mind-blowing one- or two-nighter.

Suggested trails:  So many! The Window. Lost Mine. Santa Elena Canyon. Boquillas Canyon. Pinnacles to South Rim to Laguna Meadows. And don’t forget to visit the hot springs!

When to Go:  Fall or Spring. Early December and Mid-February to Mid-April are my faves.

Bring:  All your usual camping gear, including warm stuff for cold nights in late fall / early spring. Lots of water. No firewood. Some whisky. A dutch oven, ingredients for apple cornbread, and 17 amazing friends.

Ready to hike! Photo courtesy of Nina Vizcarrando. Cover/thumbnail photo, above: Hikers on the South Rim, courtesy of Becca Baughman.