Everything at Big Bend seemed to be destined to go wrong, then be put right. I broke a tent pole, but fixed it with duct tape. My camera started eating batteries, but I brought 28. I forgot to change the ISO from 320, but this gave my pictures a grainy, 50’s-National-Geographic-Park-Feature vibe. I didn’t have the password to Paul’s computer, but called him from the top of Emory Peak to get it.
My plan was to camp out in the basin in the center of the Chisos Mountains, in the center of the park, do some day hikes from the central basin to some of the sights, and also to check out the Rio Grande.
I got to the park about 5p on Friday, and after a discouraging hike where I learned my camera was only taking twenty pictures on a set of batteries, I broke a tent pole and slept in my car the first night there. I don’t want to talk any more about that day.
Friday night was clear and cold, but I stayed pretty warm in my bag. From the window of my car I could see more stars in the sky than I’d ever seen before. I was awakened early in the morning by a light on my face, and opened my eyes to see a moon so bright it was hard to look directly at. I tried to go back to sleep, but ended up playing Tokobot in my bag until it was time to get up. It wasn’t exactly a back-to-nature trip, at least not while it was dark.
The next morning I woke up early and learned you can buy a damned good buffet breakfast from the restaurant at the lodge for seven bucks. I decided to make for Emory peak, and take it easy the first day. It wasn’t as easy as it should have been, but I got there–the highest point in the park, and the second-highest in Texas, at 7825 feet. The lodge was at 5400 feet, so the trail, about four and half miles long, climbed about 2400 feet. The view from the top was peace-inducing. I stayed as long as I could, and then headed back for the bottom.
I hurt all over by the time I got back to the lodge, so I washed down a Big Bend Burger with a Dos Equis at the lodge. It cost four dollars, same as the other Mexican and Texan (Shiner and Lone Star) beers there, while “American” beers, mostly Anheuser-Busch crap plus Fat Tire, were three. I thought this was funny. Of course, most of the people there weren’t from Texas, so it made a certain kind of sense.
I pitched my tent, then spent the next few hours in my car watching Gantz. It seemed a little lame to sit around in the park watching DVDs on a lap top, but if I went to bed when it got dark (8p), then I’d just wake up at four with nothing to do for hours on end. It got cold that night. Really cold. I don’t know how cold, but cold enough I always took the smallest possible sip of water, because anything more would give me chills. My bag was still pretty comfy, as long as I bundled up inside it.
The next morning I hit up the buffet again (fuck backpacking stoves when there’s a restaurant right up the hill), then went down to the hot springs on the Rio Grande. This is a crazy, magical place. There’s a little sand trail that winds between a cliff and sea of river cane on the bank of the Rio Grande until it comes to a building foundation with about two feet of wall left on each side. A hole in the bottom of the foundation lets in 105F spring water, which fills up the foundation until it spills over the lowest corner into the Rio Grande, which runs agains the outside of the foundation and was, when I was there, a few inches below the top of the wall, 12 feet deep and about 67F. It felt like Barton Springs. I’d spent a day and a half sweating my ass off in the Chisos, and this was about my idea of paradise. I stayed there for hours, finally going for a short hike in the desert to the east, then heading out to Boquillas canyon at the southeast corner of the park, where Mexicans from Boquillas set their goods on the American shore, with cups to hold payment and price lists held down with rocks, then wade across at night to collect the money. They hang out in lean-tos on the Mexican bank, I guess so that anybody who’d be cheap enough to cheat them will have to look at the people they’re fucking over while they do it.
That night in mountains was a lot warmer than the one before. I watched Suicide Club before I went to sleep. I understood it less then than I understand it now, but it’s still a very strange movie. I got up the next morning and hiked out to the Window, a large canyon that drains most of the basin and ends in a high pour-off that looks into the Mexican desert. By the time I got back up to the lodge parking lot, I was ready to get out of there. On the way out I stopped by a gas station, and a Schwan’s truck pulled up. Those bastards deliver everywhere.
I really didn’t like the pictures too much when I first got them, and I’m still not real happy, but for the purposes of telling a story, rather than as art for its own sake, they’ll do. They’re all pretty heavily edited to make them less harsh on the eyes.
