Finding Happiness in Big Bend
“The sun has riz, the sun has set,
And here we is in Texas yet.”
I looked at the map. 620 miles. Each way. And we wouldn’t even be crossing state lines. But I’m not the sort to shy away from a long road trip. I’d rather drive across the country than take a plane anyway, so I’ll find any excuse to answer the call of the open road. Big Bend? Far West Texas? Bring it on!
I just realized that it’s been over two years since my last blog post. A lot has happened since then, as you can well imagine. For starters, the world was turned upside down by the events of early 2020. One could be forgiven for having thought that it would all blow over in a couple of months, that by summertime things would be ‘normal’ again, whatever that means. I was in India for the first year of the pandemic, and in Texas for the second. During the first few months of lockdowns, I wasn’t exactly lacking in photographic inspiration. I tried to find little photography projects to do at home, I baked (and photographed and ate) dozens of loaves of sourdough bread, devoured photography books, took online workshops, reprocessed old pictures, watched hundreds of hours of YouTube videos on street and landscape photography, and generally did my very best to keep those creative fires burning. But it wasn’t enough. And the challenges of a transcontinental move and settling into a new home during the second half of the pandemic didn’t make it any easier to stay inspired and creatively motivated.
We flirted with the border for most of the drive thereafter, as the landscape, flora and weather gradually changed from the oaks and coastal humidity of the Bayou City to the agaves, sotols, prickly pears, ocotillos and dry brilliance of the Chihuahuan Desert.
I really needed to travel. To the sort of places that could satiate my appetite for landscape photography. Not since Rajasthan just before the start of the pandemic had I really been to any of the more photogenic locations around the world, and it was beginning to tell. It had even begun to affect my writing, and I have to confess that the trip that is the subject of this post actually preceded this account of it by a few months. I had come close to visiting Big Bend National Park many years ago, but it was to be with a group of other people, and plans fell through at the last moment. “It’s not on the way to anywhere else”, “It’s too much of a drive”… and we went to New Orleans instead. I moved to India a while later, and Big Bend stayed for several more years on my list of elusive destinations. So, when we moved to Houston in 2021, we realized that we are as near to Big Bend as we’ll probably ever be, we decided we would just go, and that was that.
This, by no means, is meant to be a guide to Big Bend National Park. Far from it. You’ll find plenty of that on the internet, from how to get there to where to stay and what to see. This is simply a photographer’s account of what it FEELS like to be in Big Bend and Far West Texas, a place with a terrain and personality all its own, so far removed from the rest of the state it calls home that it might as well be a different country.
I never cease to be amazed by really how beautiful Texas is when you leave the big cities behind and head west. After a forgettable drive on the I-10 from Houston to San Antonio, we changed direction and headed south towards the Mexican border. We flirted with the border for most of the drive thereafter, as the landscape, flora and weather gradually changed from the oaks and coastal humidity of the Bayou City to the agaves, sotols, prickly pears, ocotillos and dry brilliance of the Chihuahuan Desert.
A cabin and mesa near the Rio Grande, north of the Mexican border
After a stop in Marathon for lunch and fuel, we headed down Hwy 385 into the great Park itself. With every passing mile, the landscape became more and more spectacular, and it was hard to just keep driving and not stop to take in and photograph the scenery around us. Still, we had to make it all the way into the Chisos Basin, the heart of the Park, before sundown, so I kept my foot on the pedal. And as we got closer to our destination, our car a tiny, lonely, insignificant little speck in this impossibly beautiful and expansive corner of Texas, that ‘splendid isolation’ as the National Parks Service describes it, became more and more tangible. It took us 10 hours to get there, bringing to mind the jingle at the beginning of this post, but I’d drive all the way there again in a heartbeat.
Big Bend really isn’t on the way to anywhere else. And that’s the best part about it.
The Chisos Basin is a beautiful little jewel right in the middle of the Park, a 5400 foot-high plateau surrounded by the Chisos Mountains, and it is here that we stayed for the duration of our trip. The 8000-foot peaks of the Chisos Mountains, the highest points in Texas, seemingly rise up from nowhere, a geological anomaly that looks like they fell off the back of some giant intergalactic truck and plonked themselves down in this corner of the state.
Every morning, I would head out to catch the sunrise from some viewpoint or other, and after breakfast we’d fill our backpacks with food and water (and camera equipment, in my case) and drive out to one of the Park’s other iconic locations, returning well after dark for a late dinner, tired but happy. We couldn’t have enough of the place. The beautiful light, the spectacular sunrises and sunsets, the endless vistas, the gorgeous drives. The only disappointment was that every night that we were there, the famous Big Bend dark skies clouded over, denying me the opportunity for some astrophotography in one of the least light-polluted areas on the planet.
Watching a sunrise unfold over the Chisos Mountains, looking south towards Mexico
Sunset off the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, Big Bend National Park
We hiked the Hot Springs Canyon trail, the Window and the Chimneys. We went up to Sotol Vista and down to the Mule Ears. We saw the bones at the Fossil Discovery exhibit. We drove all the way down the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive and back. Twice. We went out to Terlingua for a meal at the Starlight Theatre. At the Santa Elena and Boquillas Canyons, we dipped our feet into in the chilly waters of the Rio Grande (it was Thanksgiving, and quite cold), the winding river that forms that most unlikely of international borders. A guy in a hat waded across from Mexico on his horse, waved us down and offered us some chicken tamales, which we politely declined. Another lady set out a little stall of trinkets and souvenirs, and we picked out a coffee mug that looked like she had made it herself.
A lone kayak paddles up the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park
Sunset through the Window at Chisos Basin
The Rio Grande flowing through Santa Elena Canyon
At the end of a hike one day, we retired to a park bench for food and drink. Trail mix, jerky, fruit, nuts, chocolate, water. The sort of sensible stuff you take on a hike in the high country, good, nutritious food that lasts for at least a couple of days. A van pulled up into a nearby parking spot and disgorged an entire family of my dear compatriots – 4 adults, 3 children. They took the picnic table next to ours and proceeded to set out lunch. A bucket of biryani, a bucket of daal, a bucket of raita, a jar of mango pickle, a whole stack of crisp pappadums. Plates. Silverware. Indian ingenuity at its best. You may be hundreds of miles from home, in the middle of the desert, but no matter. When you want a home-cooked Indian meal, you want a home-cooked Indian meal.
Where else would you swerve to avoid a tarantula the size of a dinner plate crossing the road?
Big Bend really isn’t on the way to anywhere else. And that’s the best part about it. You have to WANT to visit this place, put in the effort to go to it, and then let its magic come to you. There’s no cellphone reception in much of the Park. It’s just life unplugged. It’s harsh and rugged and achingly beautiful. It can burn you to a crisp on a summer’s day and freeze you to an icicle on a winter’s night, a place where you have sandstorms as well as snowstorms. It’s 800,000 acres of desert, mountains and canyons, where most of the flora is sharp and spiny, and most of the fauna is hairy or scaly, and in many cases, venomous. Where else would you swerve to avoid a tarantula the size of a dinner plate crossing the road?
The endless vistas of Big Bend
The endless vistas of Big Bend
It was with a touch of sadness that we drove out of the Chisos Basin and Big Bend National Park for the last time. The last time on this trip, to be more accurate. Oh, we’re most definitely going back! I can’t wait to do it again. I’ll always remember the hues of the twilight sky at Big Bend. The way the sun paints the top of the Sierra del Carmen. The winding roads through miles and miles of emptiness. The incredible vistas. The silence. And I’ll remember the trip as a breath of fresh air at a time when we needed it most. Against a backdrop of tempestuous global and personal change, against a recalibration of the list of things one can take for granted, against harder challenges, increased uncertainties and lowered expectations, one learns to find joy, beauty, meaning and gratitude in simpler things.
