Big Bend is a temple to the sun
I recently returned from a week-long backpacking trip through Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. The region is known as the Big Bend because the Rio Grande, which forms the park’s southern boundary, makes a big leisurely turn on its way to the Gulf of Mexico.
This trip had been scheduled two years ago, long before I had ever heard of U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposal to build a 2,000-mile wall along the southern American border. But for a news junkie like myself the timing was great. I would get a chance to see some of the land through which this wall will be built. This wall will be an engineering marvel because it will have to traverse some of the most remote and challenging terrain in America. Imagine building a wall through the Grand Canyon for a comparison. It will also have to deal with a unique border, the Rio Grande. The only river that crosses the continental divide, the Rio Grande is a mischievous river known to radically shift course changing the nationality of ranches and farms overnight. That would not bode well for a static border wall.
On first impressions the land is underwhelming. As far as national parks in Canada and America I’ve seen better. Zion is immediately arresting. The Rockies grandeur is obvious. Pacific Rim National Park is staggeringly green. The Fundy’s rugged beauty is unmatched. In contrast Big Bend is a huge and vast landscape that is drab and featureless. Walter Prescott Webb, writing in 1937, perhaps best described the Big Bend calling it an “earth-wreck”. A jumble of crumbling mountains, canyons and broken earth it resembles a giant construction site. A working gravel pit in the park would likely go unnoticed for years.
It is a hard land. The volcanic rock is sharp and ragged. Deserts are notorious for their extreme temperatures and the heat and cold seem to have shattered every rock. The flora and fauna are similarly hard. Any vegetation is armed with sharp thorns each growing in bizarre ways. Ocotillo cactus dominates the mesas growing like a mass of snakes reaching for the sky. Clumps of the Texas false agave cactus reach out like claws. Even javelinas, basically small cute pigs, roam armed with three-inch tusks. Nothing goes down without a fight.
Hiking through an empty desolate landscape I congratulated myself on being a badass backpacker venturing where few travellers tread when I stepped on a rock that gave way. My ankle rolled and my fully loaded pack, including 25 lbs of water, drove me down the slope and knees first onto the sharp volcanic rock. I examined my bloodied knees. Thankful to escape serious injury I also looked at my bloodied palm and swung my arm back down. Right into a cactus. This place humbles you and reminds you who’s in charge.
Then dusk came. With the fading rays of the day the entire landscape is transformed. The once featureless desert is now awash is colour — pink, orange and every shade in between. Even the clouds catch fire. The late rays of the sun highlight every contour with shadow. Nowhere are the effects of water so plainly seen and yet its absence is the defining feature. Now the slow pace of a desert trek is understood. Each plain has been scarred by deep arroyos. Nothing is as flat as it seems.
The hour before sunset and before sunrise are why people come to the Big Bend. In any other landscape there is much to distract your eye, but in Big Bend it is the sun’s light itself that is on display. Big Bend is a temple to the sun.
After three days on the Mesa de Anguila we descended to the Santa Elena Canyon. Here the Rio Grande has carved a 12-mile slot canyon through the mesa and 1,500 feet of rock. We played in the cool river separating America and Mexico. It seemed strange to play in a river so fraught with symbolism. International borders are strange things. People who live along the Rio Grande have more in common with those on either side of the river than other Americans or Mexicans. And yet to be born on one side or the other means a completely different life.
The landscape of Big Bend remains unchanged from before Europeans arrived. Stubbornly timeless in fast changing world. But of course the land is changing, just not on a level of human comprehension. This land was here long before us and will be here long after.
@KrisSamraj is a writer. He's going to favour us with some words from time to time.