Big Bend National Park stands alone in a nation of parks. Its remote desolation makes it one of the least visited parks in the United States. That also makes it one of the rarest experiences you can have in nature – solitude, you, and the Earth.
If you’re lucky, you’ll see a red snake slither by, a roadrunner dash across your path, and a coyote prowl the landscape. Wild horses and free-roaming longhorn cattle might amble past. You’ll find cactus blooms of many varieties bursting with color and other plants you’ve never seen before. Hawks circle overhead.
What you won’t find are many other people, amenities, or the bustle of life that we Americans are so accustomed to. No, in Big Bend, life is as it was many years before any of that existed. It will still be what it is many years after we no longer exist.
Driving to Big Bend on a Lone Desert Highway
The lone desert highway that leads into the park will take you through little except your own mind. Out in the Chihuahuan Desert, the most movement you’ll see is from the dust storms that kick up as you go by. In the distance, within 50 miles of the great park, the mountains begin to reveal themselves. Everything is masked in a thousand shades of brown.
Inside the park, there are 150 miles of trails leading nowhere. On them, you can lose yourself or find yourself. The sun is relentless. Sunny days don’t mean what you used to think they did. A cloud would be a godsend, but you won’t see one. If there is a breeze, it does not touch you. You walk alone. This park will have it no other way.
Hiking Trails in Big Bend
As you make your way through the trails, your skin will shrivel and dry. They say the humidity here averages seven percent. Whatever moisture your body holds, this place wants it. It will have it too. No amount of water will hydrate you as fast as Big Bend takes it. I used tubes of chapstick while staying in the area.
Even the river here is barren and shallow. Many once-flowing tributaries are now streams. This is in the springtime. When summer comes, you can imagine that this park would sooner kill you than let you pass through. They say 115 degrees isn’t uncommon. The sun bakes the Earth until it crumbles like crackers.
On the trails, you can see far into the distance. Nothing except canyon walls and mountain peaks will stop you. You’ll gain and lose elevation, from 1,800 along the riverbank of the Rio Grande to 7,800 atop the Chisos Mountains and Emory Peak.
Landscape
The deeper you explore this vast land, the more confused you will become. Every few miles in either direction seems to find you in a different desert. It does. The ranges of the park are diverse and complex. There are mountains with flora and fauna, unlike the landscape along the river, which has different biodiversity. There are volcanos, fault lines and erosion and the park continues to change. Plants in one area are not in another. As you drive, you go in and out of the landscapes. The temperatures shift up and down 20 degrees. A day that begins at 45 degrees may end at 100. Your mind is perplexed, your body confused, your soul amazed.
The Rio Grande
If you drive deep into the park, you will find the river and another world. It is land traversing two countries. On the right is Mexico, and on the left, the United States.
Here, cattle and horses, both Mexican and American, roam freely, for they do not recognize borders, and they know nothing about land ownership.
The water, untainted by the pollution of the cities to the north, which has dammed its flow, runs a clear blue that mirrors that sky. The contributions from old volcanos and the power of the sun keep it as warm as a spring day.
On the riverbend, there is life and death and a story as old as time. Bones of animals mix with living beasts. A spotted mare walks her colt. A coyote sniffs the rotting flesh of decomposing longhorn calf.
Hot Springs in Big Bend
The river will not let you forget that this land was not so long ago uninhabitable. Rocks and lava flew through the sky at night and covered everything. Those great events are still present in the lava rock above and the hot springs below.
On the Rio Grande, at certain places where there is a break in the Earth, hot fossil water, still steaming from volcanic activity and geothermal processes, pulses up like lifeblood. The Boquillas Hot Springs have a consistent stream of 105-degree mineral water, believed to heal your mind, body and soul. Laying in it, the sun above and ancient canyons around you, there is no reason not to believe that is true.
Canyonlands
You paddle through the Hot Springs Canyon, and massive limestone rock walls rise to 800 feet high on either side of you, the Sierra del Carmen mountains in front. Here, without access to land, an enemy from above would not have to try very hard to win a fight.
In the only shade of the park, below the granite and limestone rockface, you can rest and eat lunch, and you do, right in Mexico.
Shallow Waters in the Rio Grande River
Because man and not nature control the level of the river here, in many places, it has been allowed to nearly dry out. The amount of water depends on whether it rains, which it does not, or if Mexico releases water in the Rio Conchos. The Rio Grande starts in Colorado and travels across New Mexico to El Paso. But, New Mexico has dammed the river and keeps the water in a reservoir. When they do not release it, about 200 miles of river from El Paso to Big Bend dries up.
Cowboys on the Mexico Border
This is how, where once there was water, the land encroaches. On this land, you see Mexican cowboys checking the cattle and, in a tradition as old as people themselves, fighting and roping a stray black bull.
Five barking red dogs surround the cowboys. The black bull screams. Its front legs are tied, and its anger is ignited. The cowboys laugh and swing their lariats, and the black bull charges and snorts. As they taunt the bull, you float by. This is life on the river for hundreds of years.
Looking back, the cowboys, tired of their game, have left the bull staring wearily at their backs as they cross the river on horseback seeking a different sport.
The Rivers End
Along the Rio Grande, you end our trip to the Mexican village of Boquillas del Carmen. It is a short walk into the village where a few hundred people manage to live. Here, at the river, Mexicans and Americans can cross back and forth, the riverbank as a safety zone, small trade overlooked.
You watch families buy and sell small handicrafts and frequent the local shops for American beer or Mexican jewelry. Life is simple. Here, there can be no other way.
Leaving Big Bend
Going away from Big Bend can only be done along the same lone highway. If it is night, the stars will guide you, shining brighter than anywhere else in America. This International Dark Sky Park is the darkest of these countries.
On the highway, you will have 80 miles until you spot a cell tower in the distance. It is during this time that you are alone with your thoughts. Here, you will try to make sense of what you experienced. It is on this road that your mind, like a fault in the Earth, splits open and changes. You know its landscape will never be the same again.
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