[Part 1 Welcome to Big Bend Country] 4 [Where Rainbows Wait for Rain] 6
[Part 2 From the Rio to the Chisos] 24 Text by Helen Moss [A World of Difference] 27 [Waterholes, Springs, and the Fifth Season] 43 [As the Wild River Runs] 59 [Along the Greenbelt and Among the Grasses] 73 [Where Mountains Float in the Air] 93
[Part 3 Guide and Adviser] 110 [Map of the Park] 112 [Approaching Big Bend] 114 [Facilities and Services] 117 [Walking Trips and Hiking] 119 [Birding] 120 [Floating the River] 122 [Fishing] 123 [Tips for Desert Travelers] 124 [Park Regulations] 125 [Armchair Explorations] 126
[Index] 127
1 Welcome to Big Bend Country
Indians held that after making the Earth the Great Spirit dumped leftover rocks on the Big Bend. “The unknown land,” Spanish explorers labeled it. Its mythic topography inspired quests for lost mines and instant wealth in gold and silver. A rainbow over Cerro Castellan implies its own pot of gold.
Where Rainbows Wait for Rain
Far down on the Mexican border the Rio Grande makes a great U-turn. Inside this mighty curve lies a national park and the special and spectacular section of southwest Texas known as “Big Bend Country.” More than a century ago a Mexican cowboy described Big Bend as “Where the rainbows wait for the rain, and the big river is kept in a stone box, and water runs uphill and mountains float in the air, except at night when they go away to play with other mountains....” This land is so vast and so wild that you can feel your human smallness and frailty. Silence takes on the quality of sound, and isolation can bring you face to face with the interdependence of all life forms.
Paradox abounds. There is killing heat and freezing cold; deadly drought and flash flood; arid lowland and moist mountain woodland; and a living river winding its way across the desert.