At Santa Elena Canyon, I am the only one – for a moment at least. It has become a difficult thing to find in this park, solitude, unless one goes off map of course. Something I am prone to do often, but not today. Today I sit, in the middle of the resting Rio Grande. Today I sit, between the ever present yet-to-be and the ever present what was. Today I sit, just out of reach of walls so hardened by the past it takes a torrential river to bring them home, back into the earth o

A maze of washes and draws and mountains and ridges and hills and swales and low points and canyons. A crescendo of building pressure, descending then rising again, punctuated by staccato notes. A score only Beethoven could play. There is always another corner to be turned, another hill to be crested, another view to feast upon. It is a capture possible in real time only, in the sights, the sounds, the caress of a warm breeze, the fading sun, the twilight of jagged clouds acr

Everybody out here is escaping something, I said. Or running toward something, she replied. I am reminded of a poem from three years back. “I shall be an old woman in the desert, sitting under the moon and stars. Listening, looking: a symphony of crickets, a warm breeze, a light across the mountain - ranchers and rangers making their rounds - coyotes singing, horses on hay - a satisfied groan in the distance - the easy settling of structures as night falls. Wine glass to my l

Death has been on my mind lately. This land is full of it, marked, unmarked. Animals, humans, plants. A land that once thrived – or as close as you can get to it along the scorching border. Terlingua Abaja. Castolon. Hannold. Mariscal. Johnson's Ranch. Glenn Springs. To live here, often meant to die here. La Coyote Cemetery, Big Bend National Park La Coyote: Twenty-one unnamed but not forgotten graves. Some surrounded and covered by river rock, others with a meticulously craf

I followed a bear this morning, along a lush desert trail, past prickly pear in bloom, down a gravel wash with over-reaching roots, into a densely shaded spring - a hole in the desert, a life source. Bent, dry ocotillo and cane cholla flanked me on the uphill side, lush and green desert on the low. A good reminder of how little nature cares, how quickly life can change, how sometimes just being in the right place at the right time can be so important. I set out early today, p

In the morning, trying to catch the springs in solitude, I am the only one on this rocky, caliche road and as such can move freely – adapting to her contours, her corduroy ridges, shifting from side to side then leaning in close. This is not a road to be sped down; she makes you take your time, look around, pay attention. Along the Rio Bravo, the sun is just now welcoming the world, tidying up from the night before, rippling along with the river current. I hear the hot spring

Weather in Big Bend is a work of art. The light-play on velvet, mountains stretched across a powder blue sky, only a thin rake of clouds to curtail the day and then nothing. The sun’s wake is splashed unhindered in every possible direction. Water - translucent, opaque, murky, stagnant, trickling, flooding. The lifeblood of the desert, sculptor of rock and earth, mover of stone and brush. The dictator of survival. Her calling card a vocal perfume of musk and dust and petrichor