For decades, Big Bend National Park lived in my imagination, one of those alluring but remote places that always felt just out of reach. It is situated in a vast corner of west Texas where distances stretch endlessly. Getting here requires intention. And patience. And a willingness to go far beyond “on the way.”
Now, exploring it, I wonder why I waited so long.
In my younger days I would have selected trails and hiked. This time, with temperatures climbing past 100 degrees and humidity hovering around five percent, we opted for a car. Even then, the heat feels serious, dehydration is not theoretical here.
We began our explorations along the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, a ribbon of road that cuts through a landscape so stark and expansive it feels almost otherworldly. Mountains rise out of the desert floor, layers of rock folding into one another in colors that shift with the light, from dusty white to rust to gold to deep purple shadows. The scale is hard to grasp, everything is bigger, farther, more elemental than expected.
Some of the rock formations have names, like the Mule Ears. Others became a kind of Rorschach test for Liz and me. We’d see lions, people, a rhino, even a cowboy with a tipped hat, his elbow resting on his knee.
At the pullouts, the views alternated between sweeping and intimate. Vast horizons gave way to tiny details, flowering cacti so small I only noticed them when I looked carefully.
For much of the drive we were very close to Mexico, with the Rio Grande separating the two nations. Near the river there was a sudden shock of lush green, a startling contrast to the dusty, parched earth of most of the park. There were cottonwood trees, willows, bamboo like grasses, and others I couldn’t identify.
The photos will hopefully entice you to visit, but I assure you they don’t do justice to this spectacular scenery. They cannot capture the scale, the heat, or the way the landscape shifts with every turn of the road.
Late afternoon we returned to Terlingua. A friend of Liz, Dale, had built the stone building that houses the Earth and Fire Gallery. The structure is amazing with hand-laid stones fitted together so tightly no cement was used. Inside, Lori Griffin, the artist on duty, is as engaging as the building itself, a natural storyteller who makes you want to linger.
Then a drink and dinner on the terrace of the Starlight Theater, watching the colors change on the mountains as the sun set.