Awake at the Big Bend
It was about 3 AM when I woke up, unzipped the tent and looked up, forever changing my relationship with the cosmos…
The first day of our long awaited trip to Big Bend National Park was a long one. The drive west, then south across that great swath of Texas and into the Chiso Mountains took our breath away with each wind and turn. The gear unpacked, the trusty tent set up and ready, we headed for a quick hike to window rock. The first vista attained, we made our way back for a great meal and some rest. It was a bit hazy and overcast, but the weather the next day was forecast to be clear, so we turned in just after dark to rest up for a planned 12 mile hike.
It was about 3 AM when I woke up, unzipped the tent and looked up, forever changing my relationship with the cosmos. I’d been way out on the water, had camped deep in to the Appalachian woods, had seen some magnificent nighttime star displays, but this sky was just, so big that it made me dizzy. The Milky Way was a sharp streak of light across the whole sky and those stars were so deep that you could swim in them, almost forcing the awareness that we are these small little things adrift in a huge ocean of turmoil, of movement.
I am not possessed of enough adjectives to describe that sky, that night. As it all moved above me, there was nothing but the movement. It was all connected in a seamless way, different than the day to day awareness of this and then, that.
The sound of the ocotillo next to the tent rustling in the bits of breeze passing through the mountains surrounding the campground, the cries of something calling down from the rocks above, the dead silence between those and the grand movement above were part of my thoughts and I of them. All of it, every tiniest part of each moment, a voice in the grand symphony of movement.
Too soon, the sun started to creep into view. I woke my son, made breakfast and we went about hiking rock ledges up and out of the Chisos Basin. My mind was still pondering the sky from the night before.
To those who are not familiar with this park, Big Bend offers some of the most diverse habitats in the continental United States. With more than 150 species of birds, and biomes ranging through mountains, desert flats, areas carved by millenia of volcanic episodes, to the river plains along the Rio Grande. The place is a geologist’s dream, where the sparse vegetation allows instant access to the 500 million years of history recorded in the rock that inhabits the place.
Nearly 150 miles of trails offer amazing views, and an immersion in the various biomes. Back country camping and hiking is a chance to see one of the last pristine areas of the American southwest, almost as it looked to the first humans to arrive here.
The effects of accelerated climate change are noticeable in the higher areas. High altitude trees are brown and bare in visible bands in both the Chisos and Davis Mountains. with new ocotillo and other less cold-hardy vegetation taking their places. The website for the park has a collection of photos from the 1940's. Compare these to current shots and the difference is pretty dramatic.
Our remaining days at the park were overcast at night, so we were unable to see the full star-view as presented on the first night. Our hikes and travels throughout the park served to expand that new awareness gained from that first night’s light show.
Do to the approach of some pretty violent weather, we cut our trip short by a couple of days, but the trip back to Austin via Terlingua, Marfa, Fort Davis, and Balmorhea was a feast for the senses, and we discussed our new sense of connectedness to this planet most of the way home.
In the few years that have passed, a new consciousness has continued to develop in me, one that attempts to understand that what I am, what we are, in the context of the movement of all of this.
I plan on returning, this spring, to the Big Bend.
http://www.nps.gov/bibe/index.htm
http://www.nps.gov/bibe/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm
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