People do not live in the desert for good reason. The fact that there is a Phoenix, AZ and Las Vegas, NV is more a testament to human stupidity and greed than anything else. Wait until the water runs out. Everything out here in Big Bend is angry at having to try so hard to cling to life. Our shoes and socks are full of invisible thorns from a rim hike to capture last night’s sunset and the rise of the full moon. Sidestepping each plant, one more dangerous than the next, it survives because we cannot harvest it, eat it, or use it to our advantage. The mountains are made of ancient volcanic rock, so sharp the edges can slice through the sole of a Hoka running shoe.
It has not rained in months, but when it did the waters washed out the scenic highway along the Rio Grande along with every rutted road in the park. While destructive to human access, somehow it was enough water for the rest of flora and fauna to live. Temperatures swing wildly from day to night and an ultra-arid air makes our nostrils burn. We huddle under a tarp to manufacture shade during the heat of the day and shiver in a cold box from sundown to dawn. And this is Fall’s kinder and gentler Big Bend. If we can live in this desert for six days with a truck bed of curated supplies, we will gleefully proclaim victory.
Perched in a glen at the edge of the mountainous Solitario region of Big Bend Ranch, we carefully meter our water and electricity and play pioneer. The real ones were a different breed of humans. As a nation we often lament the loss of the frontier, but in truth, few among us and none that we know could have survived on an actual frontier. History texts tell us that 9 out of 10 settlers gave up and returned to civilization within a year. How that number was not 10 out of 10 is a mystery. The only creatures that seem to be in love with the place are the insects. There is no shortage of hornets, flies, ants, beetles, and other pests. Supposedly there are bear, deer, coyotes and other wildlife in the area, but we mostly only spot their scat.
We met a fellow overlander on his way out of the Solitario driving a jacked up and off road outfitted $200k Mercedes Sprinter Class B RV. He gave us a road report (not favorable) and looked at us at little sideways with our towable T@G on the hitch. This isn’t the kind of place anyone pulls a trailer, not even a tiny one. We got greedy in our shakedown by setting up camp at the last site before Fresno Canyon Road turned to high clearance 4×4 vehicles only. The T@G required some hands-on help to push it into place since there was insufficient space for Boss to turn around. That’s one of the nice things about a 1000 lb trailer, we can do that. Don’t try that with Betty or Roxie.
In the early morning before the sun was fully up and in full broiler mode, we walked into the Solitario along the same Fresno Canyon Road that we had driven down a year ago. How we did it with a 100 pounds of bike on a rack, we will never know. It looked impassable with anything less than a modified Jeep Rubicon but we know from experience it was in fact passable with an F-250, but only if you are dumb enough to try. As we looked out over the rugged terrain towards Rincon 1, not actually visible from this vantage but out there somewhere, we knew why we had passed on the T@G at the Tampa RV show. Back then, we still had to try that trail. Today we are happy to just hike in and overlook it. The journey was a good reminder of the adage that time is the only real constraint. Maybe that was why we are seeking out an existence in dust, sun, cacti, and flies, hours from the nearest conveniences. Because we still can, if just barely. No bets on next year.
At some point, we will turn around and head back into state parks that offer camping – bath houses, power poles, running water and cute camp stores. We would definitely have been in the 90% group of settlers that returned to their cozy town on the east coast. We’d like to think that we could have homesteaded a giant ranch in Texas when it was still a province of Spain, but once you have been softened by the comforts of suburbia for all of your life, the best you can do is fake it for awhile. And fake it we will; happy to unplug from the relentless firehose of so-called breaking news, HOA dramas, and the pre-holiday retail sales crush. For reasons that we do not understand, we will reconnect with the harsh, beautiful, annoyingly indifferent, and deeply touching natural world and it will heal that part of us that gets worn down by civilization.
