Secrets, Big Bend Nat'l Park

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 left, pistol to my right. Because this is desert. Truth and solitude. A hiding place for many.

Maybe me. Maybe you.”

But really, the best thing about the desert is her little secrets. If you make the effort, if you walk far enough, if you take the time to get to know her, she may share them with you. And trust me, she is worth the effort.

A tinaja: The water has dug a hole, hidden in plain sight. Metates are everywhere. Some so worn by hands and weather they extend all the way through the rocky limestone top plate, like a looking glass down into the spiral below.

There’s something profound about these places, and a sense of introspection, unique from the everyday world. I stand here now among the mortar holes and know that my feet are rooted in the very fabric of this earth.

A spring: I follow a dry arroyo, a smattering of green and brown along its gravel walls, holding the ground to the ground. Narrow, rocky offshoots and secret covers cloaked in deadwood. A breeze wrestles with the plants along the wash, but they are tolerable of its efforts, even welcoming perhaps, and remain rooted.

The adjoining mesa is adorned in a precarious amount of scree, white in places, burnt umber in others - an alternation between melting lava and melting snow caps, at least in my over-active mind.

And there are more bear prints, bigger and deeper, fresh. I follow the tracks up a side canyon to get a good look at a cottonwood tucked deep in its protective embrace and I’m glad I brought my walking stick. I sing, but what kind of music does a black bear like? Or dislike, more importantly?

Two mornings in a row I follow a bear, and two days in a row the mockingbird flies with me. Irony at its best.

Another spring: Grass, tall and green, bending in the wind. A natural spring drips into a fringed pond. A true oasis in the desert. Clearly, I am not the first to think so as evidenced by the remnants of old ranch homes, their stone walls scattered about the landscape, and the weathered posts of an old coral.

I sit on the banks of this pond and the land comes alive around me.

Reeds along the water’s edge whisper gently, a mule shuffles behind me, a dog barks in the distance. A red-tailed hawk screeches. The whine of a cicada rises and slowly fades into the desert heat.

Echoes of this world before I knew it.

The desert only looks empty. There is an energy of past life here, a soul, far away from any of today’s trails or roads. The land remembers.

I don’t know how these people found this place, but I can’t imagine they ever wanted to leave. I don’t. It’s a hard thing to turn and walk back into an asphalt and concrete world.