Labels: Big Bend, photography, Poetry

My last Christmas (2012) was probably the worst one I remember. For several personal reasons, which will remain silent. As the season grows nearer, I find myself lapsing into a subtle state of "No, please. Not again." Little Voice under the covers wants to poke the bad memories and I try to keep it in a box with the cover pressed tightly down.

Then I happened upon an old post I wrote from a good year; 2009. I think a few readers might even remember that week and the festivities. Including a fortuitous stranger we met that week, who, with his family in Indiana, have become good friends through the years.

As I reread this post, I smiled. And the Little Voice is stuffed back in a box, buried in a hole and quieted.

Christmas Eve Day

Time is a human construction. Although two arrows revolving around a center point are used to measure it, as we humans seem obsessed with measuring everything down to its smallest denominator, time is relative. Einstein offered a theory for Denominatorists to understand and accept, but it really is very simple. Time, speed and the observer are integral to the equation. Nor are there any real rules. Because they change as well. In time and speed. And the observer.

In Big Bend speed and time constantly change. From the perspective of an urbanite, they both slow way down. Almost seeming to crawl or stop. To someone living here, they are merely fluid; they change all the time from very slow to flashing fast. How we see time and speed is related to what the human lenses are used to. Just remember the lenses are attached to a brain, one chock full of past experiences and expectations. It's all relative.

Here days prescribed with special meanings in the bigger world take on new meanings or none at all. Unlike the clock hung on the wall, a wrist or on a cell phone, our societies attach additional significance to certain days of the year. Along with this are specific rituals, ceremonies, and conventions. These, too, are used to measure time, speed, and each other. But in remote and isolated areas like parts of Big Bend, all those can fall away, be reconstructed with new meanings, or renewed with the origins of old meanings.

Over the decades this prescribed Holiday lost its meaning for me. To the point where I dreaded it and fled from it. The only meaning left for me was my daughter. Possibly because she represented the innocence and the goodness in the original meanings of the Holiday. It was a reason to rejoice and share.

Now that she is an adult with her own world, I find remnants of that in Big Bend and sharing it with a small group of people. Between us and for a small period of time, they become my family. All the modern trappings driven by consumerism fall away, the stress driven by work and family expectations, the harried traffic and impatient race are left behind. Even though I abandoned all that many years ago, to watch others be beaten down by it always disturbed me. Here, it is absent. Here, we share peace and good-will toward each other.

For me, the ideal of the Christmas holiday spirit is revived. I know it is completely contrived, but that adds to the enjoyment: we choose to make it this way.


Original source is a blog site from 2009: Desert Rats 2009. By yours truly.

Labels: Big Bend, musings, Traveling

It did not warm up much today, especially with the wind, although I am more than happy that we did not get all the foul wet white stuff that north Texas did today. Still, I bundled up with three shirts, a windproof jacket, topped off with the Shift jacket; two neck warmers, a balaclava that tends to make people down here laugh (has a sabertooth tiger skull on it); long johns under flannel pants and my new Forester wind/water proof, hi-vis yelow with reflector stripes (can y'all see me now?) pants and suspenders. It takes me more time to gear up than it does to put gas in the bikes.

The DR has proven incorrigible to start in cold weather, no matter how much I pet it, praise it, and call it sweet names. After 15 minutes of trying this morning, I resorted to cursing. So I took the covers off the Whee-strom and woke it up. Like a good boy, it responded immediately with a purr and we went on our merry way to the Post Office, where I lent my ear to Lisa, the post mistress, as she recounted her tale of daily woe. But she hands me my mail without me going to the PO box and I always be sure to wish her a nice day with a smile.

I was not the only rider out there today. At the post office, I ran into..... Honda Man? He rides a 1960's 100cc (maybe even less; I forgot) Honda scrambler with knobbies and gets 100 mpg. Like me, he was also bundled up; in a German military one piece snow suit, with a white bearded face sticking out under a hood, most noticeable are his mischievous blue-green eyes and laugh. We keep running into each other on our respective little knobby-clad bikes, dressed in gaudy gear. Today, he greeted me with several bodybuilder poses, and a loud 'We bad, we bad!!". And I curtsied with my Hi-Vis pants and sabertooth tiger head.

It was way to early to go to the Starlight for $1 tacos, so I went home and dropped off my mail. Looking at the DR, I wondered, wondered, will it? Should I? Let's try. Turn the petcock, pull the choke out, mutter 'Come on, baby', and hit the starter. Nope. Okay; gently twist the throttle and return slooooowly closed. Try it again. "Please...." Whooooom!!!!!!!! Blah, blah, cough, gag....... sigh. 'Stay running, please?'

I let it rev up with choke out for a bit while puttering and returning the blanket over the Whee. Then pushed the choke in, sloooowly, 1/4 of the way. Let it run again. Then pushed the choke in to 1/2 position; 'Don't you die!!!' Pulled choke out again, let it warm up some more. "Boy, you have a cold heart!"

Back on with all the head, facial and hand stuff and we're gone. Rode into Study Butte, checked in with Bob and Gloria. Nope, they're cold; not going for tacos. Heck, I'm getting cold. And Starlight doesn't open for and hour and 1/2. 'Let's go down the road'.

It's getting colder with the sun getting closer to the horizon. I'm thinking that heating some soup, making a cheese and tomato quesidilla, then getting under a warm blanket is becoming more appealing.

Done.
It was tasty, too.

Labels: Big Bend, bikes

It has been seven years since publishing anything in the lay media: A long curse of writer's block, very little free time, and lack of motivating inspiration. Now, with time to do many things I have put aside for nearly a decades (knitting, hiking, riding with no particular place to go, reading, and, yes, writing), I am now a contributing columnist  for a Big Bend area online newspaper/magazine, the Alpine Daily Planet, edited by Mike and Cindy Perry, a couple extraordinaire. I thank them for the opportunity to regain momentum.

Even included two photos. :)

My Desert Smells Like Rain.

Labels: Big Bend, writing

Somewhere, at some time, you might find a glimpse of a fleeting reality where every triviality, all the daily complexities and demands dissipate into the air. The old rocks welcome you and remind you that you are small. Trees and plants of all sizes and colors invite you to look closely, touch and share their space. You can't see the animals who call this place their home, but their tracks and sign let you know they play hide and seek. The child inside that we have too often discarded, or buried in our own personal dungeons, surfaces and is delighted. And like a mother wrapping all her children in her big comforting arms, the wild outside us merges with the innocence of our inner child and the cautious adult armor we sometimes bear like a cross. We become whole.



It was my birthday. I don't often celebrate or even acknowledge the day, often forgetting it myself. I sometimes go off on my own and reflect on the year, my life, the future; then shrug it off and carry on like any other day. November seems like a month of contradictions for me every year. So I was born on this day in this month. So were thousands of other people. It's no big deal. I'm not special.

I'm not big on presents. I don't like the attention because it's not special and I don't subscribe to obligations of buying and giving presents dictated by tradition. Presents should be given based on genuine caring. I only want to do something special: go camping, go to a movie, go for a long bike ride, do something different. So I did.

I suggested to Ed that we invite Bob and Gloria to go on a day's hike in the Chisos Basin, something I have not yet done. I chose the Window Trail because it was relatively short, ~5 mile round trip, with a drop of 980 feet, and top it off with cobbler and ice cream at the Basin Lodge restaurant. So we did.

Packing hiking boots, camera, snacks and water on the bikes, we rode up to the campground in the Basin and struck out on the trail. We were joined by a new addition to the Trickster family, a large coyote puppet, compliments of Ed. Indeed, the two of them make a really good team, as you will see.


After a short but quite steep beginning, the trail began to reveal cliffs tinged with orange, brown and muted green where lichens form large patches indicating moisture and shade from the sun. Tall rough grasses and other interesting plant life begin to dot the typical low shrubby desert growth of mesquite, prickly pear and creosote. Soon we see unusually tall yuccas, some with flowering stalks, interspersed with giant clumps of agave. And I'm constantly distracted by unknown tiny wildflowers that blast with color and gray-green foliage, or branches of shrubs I've never seen before.


The trail gradually becomes a winding gravelly path with a moderate descent. It's easy to keep a comfortable pace in the wide open space. Soon my attention is directed up and ahead as giant upright boulders appear, like monstrous flakes of skin shed by the inside of a great mountain. Grasses hugging the ground begin to give way to shrubs with gnarled branches and small evergreen leaves. Some small trees have yellowing leaves stubbornly hanging on and it reminds us that the temperatures here in this microclimate are very different from those that we are used to on the warm desert floor. At times we all just stop and absorb the views around us.


I am attracted to the Chisos Mountains like a food magnet pulls a starving person. This group of mountains defies the desert stereotype of drifting sand dunes and absence of life (topic of an essay in progress). Like the surrounding rugged and angular valleys and dry arroyos, these mountains were created by a changing landscape: landmass collisions, continental distentions, and an ancient river basin whose origins began with mountains that rose far to the northwest.

Unlike in the east and north, the landscapes of mountain ranges in the Chihuahuan desert are relatively new. Earlier land mass collisions far to the west caused deposited sediments of an ancient sea to rise and form the Sierra Madre mountain range along the eastern edge of the desert in Mexico. More tectonic collisions initiated volcanic activity for thousands of years, during which the western Sierra Madra mountain range was formed. This was following by periods of several millions of years during which the North American continental plate stretched and distended. The last known period of tectonic loosening (called the Rio Grande distension) began over five million years ago, and which we are currently experiencing. The isolated groups of mountains that we know today, as well as the features associated with the Rio Bravo, were created during this period. And will continue long after we are gone.

Anyone visiting the southern Big Bend region of Texas associates it with the Chisos Mountains, an isolated group of stark rock sharply thrusting upwards out of the northern Chihuahuan desert. This group, and others like it, are known as 'sky islands', isolated oases surrounded by an entirely different environment. Because of their often perceived abrupt change in terrain, they are considered 'islands in a sea of desert'. Yet even though they are often widely separated by several to hundreds of miles of hot and dry desert, these islands are cooler, wetter and create their own ecology, even weather.

The steep slopes of these mountains transform from low elevation desert to high mountain tops. Along these transitions are overlapping ecosystems that favor a changing myriad of vegetation. From the typical hot- and dry-adapted cacti and low scrub brush, vegetation zones transition to lush zones containing many species of oak and junipers, then soaring cliffs of pines, finally to clumps of fir and spruce trees at the top. And, because each sky island is ecologically isolated, some species of plants and small animals cannot move easily from one island to the next.

The complex and changing nature of diverse life and its surrounding geomorphology is what captivates me. Like a child in a new world, I can spend hours, even days, exploring the small and large rocks, diversity and richness of wildlife -from lichens and moss to the big predators and tiny birds. It's a playground for the inquisitive child inside and the largest field lab for the scientist that was the successor of that child. This is what I try to do on my birthdays; celebrate that child and adult because they are connected. And I loved every minute of that hike, sharing it with people I cared about.


During our hike, our companion coyote demonstrated his trickster self with the help of Ed's child inside. Coyote traveled most of the hike cradled on Ed's hand, and often in his folded arms. Because of its size and surreal resemblance to a small live coyote, most fellow hikers of all ages reacted to its presence; from surprise, amusement, entertainment, and, with one adult woman, fear.


Reactions ranged from identification as a small dog, a raccoon, a cat, a cougar cub, to plain perplexity. Some of the younger children (and an occasional adult) stopped to stroke its 'fur' as Coyote's mouth 'panted' and his muzzle 'smiled'. Ed actually became very adept at imitating an adolescent canine through his arms and hand, down to a wagging tail. And, of course, we derived immense amusement from the mini puppet shows.

As the trail descends deeper into the Basin floor, we are ringed with towering cliffs whose colors overlap with yellow, orange, rose and dark brown. Some of the towering crags are angular rock almost resembling spikes of geological teeth. Others are giant round boulders as big as a house. On closer inspection, some of these reveal themselves as huge amalgamations of different types of rock all fused into one resembling some giant transparent and complex dead organism. Some have waves as if the dead organism spasmed while being melded together and belched from the throat of an angry volcano. Almost a juxtaposition, and an example of endurance and perseverance of opportunity and adaptation, life grows in and/or out of these hard geological remnants, finding any pocket or crevasse to take hold and squeeze out water and food, from moss and lichens, to succulents to small trees. And we are amazed at how they thrive even in glazed and fragmented black rock born of fire.


The trail begins to wind and descend into Oak Creek Canyon. The changes in vegetation are testimony to periods of flowing water and lingering moisture. Grasses and tens of wildflower species grow alongside the trail where light penetrates easily. Off the trail, the canyon thickens with gnarled and intertwining trees and shrubs. As the trail leveled next to the dry creek, we came around a corner to enter a tunnel of vines that do as vines do: seek opportunities to twine themselves around shrub and tree branches, or attach themselves by little vestigial stems, commonly called 'tendrils.'

One look at the leaves and I knew right away I had found the elusive 'canyon grape'. Fewer vines are found in the Chihuahuan desert than in the Sonoran desert, which both share a boundary. That is attributed solely to the evolution of the desert's geomorphology: its mountain ranges and elevation. Because the Sonoran desert has had a historically greater influence of tropical climate, due to the Gulf of California, many of the existing species there are tropical remnants, especially vine plants.

Conversely, the Chihuahuan desert has been isolated from most tropical influences because of the long bordering mountain ranges, and is at a higher elevation. Therefore, it has had a more temperate and cooler climate history and few plants of pan-tropical neo-tropical origins remain.

However, two vines of note, and my favorite, grow here in the Chihuahuan desert: Clematis drummondii (Old Man's Beard), found over a wide range in the Big Bend area; and the canyon grape, Vitis arizonica. The latter has been a rather elusive plant for me to find here in this area. Until now. And here it forms a tunnel under which we walked, and I lingered to relish my discovery. Now if only I can get cuttings, I can root them and establish plants to cultivate (and eat the grapes!)


The Chisos Basin is home to the most diverse wild collection of agave I have ever encountered. Probably my most favorite plant of the region, agaves come in many sizes, shapes and forms, but with similar characteristics. And they are the most photogenic to me because of their color, texture and shapes. In the Basin, they grow as big as a child and even shorter adults. Most of them show the dolphin-like colors and texture that I love to photograph and touch. Even Coyote likes the agave.


Soon the trail began to descend again and the canyon walls narrowed in on us. We were now in the Oak Creek Canyon. As I started the decent on the trail that has been built into the side of the towering orange and tan cliff, I began to feel small. I must have eaten the one pill that makes you smaller. Or entered the land of the Hobbits. I felt the kid inside taking over the rest of me and giving in to wonder and mouth-dropping awe, and tended to drop behind the rest of my fellow hikers to wallow in this majesty. 

I'm a canyon addict and these canyons always leave me feeling wonderfully small and insignificant with a primordial pleasure that I'm sure my caveman ancestors did not share. Or perhaps I share the spiritual connections of the Navajo, who consider many canyons as sacred places. The light was just right on this overcast day; no bright blue sky and light distorting the deep greens of the evergreen oaks and madrones, or blinding my eyes from bounced light off the canyon walls. Indeed, the overcast day and light only deepened the mystery and magnificence of the canyon cliffs towering over the gravel bottom and trees.

If one stopped in their walk to look up at the cliffs, the waves and fissures in the cliff rock, these grandfathers, would evoke a movement inside your body that might be hard to resist. But I realized that others might be waiting for me, so reluctantly I continued on my hike.


Then, rounding the corner of the cliff base revealed another section of the canyon. Here, a chasm is carved from the creek leaving undulating smooth gray slick rock and small pools of water. A hiker can hop from rock to rock, but if wet, it could be dangerously slippery. Sections of steps are tastefully built to aid navigating the descent closer to the window pour-off.


Soon the steps disappeared at the bottom of another drop-off and small tinaja in the chasm. The rock surface alongside the bottom reminded me of gills, whale's gills.


The last quarter of a mile to the window pour-off is slick rock. Here, thousands of years of rainwater rushing down the creek and through this canyon have polished the rock baby smooth. It's impressive to feel how smooth it is. It is also very dangerous to get to close to the Window opening.


There we met a young couple from Russia, and we all took a break to chat and devour a snack.


The pour-off, appropriately named the Window, frames panoramic desert vistas through a V-slice in the cliff walls, 220 feet above any surface below. I hope that some time I will be able to see the water falling through his slice some time.


After resting and marveling at the slickrock canyon, and the views below, we turned around and made the hike back with discipline. aka, I did not stop to take any photographs. We all knew that the return hike was up, up, and a long up. By this time, several hours after we started with bubbling enthusiasm, we were tiring and looking forward to a late lunch at the Basin's restaurant.

I was literally dragging my self up that last steep ascent to the restroom. Where I realized my clothes were drenched with salty sweat despite the relatively mild and overcast day. Luckily, I had packed a spare pair of dry socks and I exchanged those on my feet for the wet sweaty ones and hiking boots. We slowly donned our riding gear and rode to the Basin. Where we had to wait for 35 minutes for the restaurant to reopen for dinner (we missed lunch). Outside on the patio, I took a group photo while we sat and relaxed.


After dinner, I was too full and tired for cobbler. And it was getting dark. Not really relishing riding down the Basin Road on the DR with a little flashlight of a headlight, I rode behind Bob and Gloria on his Motoguzzi, Ed following behind.

It was the best day I have had here thus far, and the best birthday ever. One I will remember and cherish for a long time to come.

"The world crumbles as it turns into distance; countries become abstract, and even absurd notions; one simply comes to feel one's own existence on the planet, in the bosom of what -not without contradiction and a certain dose of pagan spirituality- we still call Nature." - Enrique Servin Herrera

Labels: Adventures, Big Bend

“Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life.” - from 'The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild' by Craig Childs

History, stories, coyotes....... they share a common thread. The wily canine that appears in many movies, cartoons, songs and books is one of the most adaptive and intelligent species on the North American continent. Their key to adaptation is careful observation, mimicry, and experimentation. It is no wonder that the coyote is the most popular animal persona used in storytelling and mythology.

Humans are creatures of stories. Stories teach, convey value, and define us. They are tools that help us understand the world around us, who we are, and what we do. History is storytelling to describe events and actions, interlaced with our interpretations of the past so that it relates with the present and future. History, and storytelling, tell us about ourselves - who we are and how we got here. And where we might be going.

So it was no wonder that a mostly forgotten place called 'La Coyota' tickled my curiosity.


For decades the general policy of the National Park Service was to eradicate evidence of human habitation on land acquired by the agency. They forced native Americans off their homelands or prohibited them from hunting on their traditional hunting grounds. Park staff bulldozed buildings that were homes to settlers that subsisted on the land before they became 'parks'. The root of this was (and still is) a misunderstanding of the relationship between humans and nature that reflects cultural confusion about wilderness.

Wilderness is defined as land that "has not been significantly modified by human activity". Some people take that to extremes to mean no human presence or human footprint. Ever. Which was the basis the American Wilderness Act of 1964, which defines wilderness as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Yet, since at least the mid-1900's, very few acres (if any) on the North American continent have not been set upon by human feet. And no acre left has not been affected by human activities.

Since incorporating the 801,000 acres of the rugged northern Chihuahuan desert in the 1940's, the federal agency in charge of the national park system followed general policy in trying to obliterate the evidence of habitation by hundreds of people that called the area their home. Most visitors erroneously think that the land of the national park is a true 'wilderness', except for the few roadside displays that provide abbreviated stories about tiny homesteads that once occupied the same ground. These are like little specks of atoms that one is told exist, but people don't see them so the reality of this 'truth' is fleeting and easily forgotten. Just like historical accounts of lives and events long before them.

Sometime between mid-1885 and mid-1885, Severiano and Rita Chevarria moved from Fort Stockton with their four children to a mesa on the banks of the Alamo Creek and the great Rio Grande. At the base of the mesa, the Chevarrias built a modest home. Here they raised sixteen children. It is said that the name La Coyota was bestowed by the sighting of female coyote on the homesite.

Ruperto, the Chevarria's first-born, built a home on top of the mesa after his first house was washed away by a flood. He recruited a number of immigrants to settle there in 1908 and Ruperto became a leader of the settlement. Jose Garcia built his home on top of the mesa near Ruperto, but other members of the community built their homes on the north and eastern slopes of the mesa. Because of close proximity to the creek and the river, they raised corn, beans, wheat, squash, tomatoes and melon by sub-irrigation practices.

As ranching and mining operations cropped up around the southern portion of the Big Bend, some of the men worked as cowboys or in the nearby mines. Around 1903, Cipriano Hernandez built and opened the first store on Blue Creek about a mile or so north of Alamo Creek and named the immediate area Santa Helena. Hernandez farmed the floodplain growing cereal grains and corn, as well as fresh vegetable which he sold to mining camps, and La Coyota residents bought and traded goods and food.


Hernandez built an adobe home further north in 1903, just below where the future military camp would be built. (that adobe home is now called the Alvino adobe). In 1914, he sold the lower farm and store to Clyde Butrill, and ultimately it became the holdings of the La Harmonia Company, the brainchild of Wayne Cartledge and mining tycoon, Howard Perry. The store was renamed the La Hamonia store, opening in 1919. And that area became known as Castelon. Now it is known as 'Old Castelon', after the La Harmonia moved into the building that was built as barracks for the US Cavalry.


On my second day of my Retirement Ride, Ed and I set a goal to find and explore the past of La Coyota. After parking the bikes, we ascended a mesa that we had found location tips as the area of the former community. On top was little evidence of what was once either stone or adobe homes. One part of the mesa had obviously been completely and mechanically leveled. On an adjoining part of the mesa we found a barely visible stone foundation and shards of porcelain plates and glass bottles. This was clearly once a homesite. (see photo above)

Turning our attention to the eastern and northern slopes of the mesa, we found well hidden by tall mesquite remnants of small stone homes. The climb down the slope of loose rock was an invitation to succumb to gravity with unfortunate results. But the careful descent was rewarding. Some of the rock walls of home below were still intact, most of them crumbling with large cactus hanging down from the wall tops like a hanging garden.


One small home was built literally carved out of a tiny upcrop of red and brown angled rock. The back of the home was the bare intact rock. The remnants of a front door lead out to a small circular area built of the same stone as a retaining wall and long-gone steps leading down to what was once a cleared floodplain area.


Around the base of the mesa is the remains of a large homesite built of both rock and adobe. Given the size of the remains, I wonder if this was the original Chevarria home.


We continued exploring, trying to imagine daily life here. Knowing that Rita Chevarria lived here in La Coyota for 53 years before moving back to Fort Stockton in 1938, one has to imagine what life was like here raising 16 children. We can only wonder. And compare it to the lives we live now. They contrast our imaginings with what we see in front of us, for these ruins are very well hidden. Only one who knows what they are looking for would find these ruins and the stories they whisper.

I could almost hear the laughter, the laments, clinking of hoes, brays of donkeys, clangs of stone and slapping of adobe construction. And the wails of the coyotes in the distance.

"Histories never conclude; they just pause their prose. Their stories are, if they are truthful, untidy affairs, resistant to windings-up and sortings-out. They beat raggedly on into the future.... "
-Simon Schama

Labels: Adventures, Big Bend, Texas

The overlook for Santa Helena Canyon, Big Bend National Park

After spending nearly a month in New Mexico (stories on that later) and Fort Davis, Ed and I parked and set up the Coyote Turtle at the RV park in Study Butte near Terlingua, TX. Roads to our place were in bad shape from the last rain storm: sections washed out, dried mud ruts at least 6" deep and 8" high. There is no way the truck was safely going to haul our current 'home', a 30' travel trailer (by the name of Coyote Turtle: a brown turtle hauling a coyote) into El Punto Coyote, our spot on the desert ten miles off pavement.

So here we are temporarily. In between dealing with an inefficient, incompetent, and.......... [deleted] personnel at state offices (Texas Retirement System sent my retirement packet to the wrong address twice, then sent an incomplete packet -missing documents- finally to the right address; after UTSWMC lost my last paycheck and sent my vacation pay to the wrong address), I did a Retirement Ride on the DR350 into Big Bend National Park.

Because Old Maverick Rd and access to Santa Helena Canyon were closed due to rain and flash flood damage, I dawdled around elsewhere. With no particular place to go.

I even had a water crossing.... (behind the green mesquite foliage sticking out over the road). Got my butt wet and water in my boots, but it was refreshing.


Lot of water in the river. A beige silty color instead of north Texas reddish-brown.


This seems to be a place I come to almost every ride in the park: the Castalon store. A quiet place for a cold iced tea and ice cream. They know me already.


I then explored around the Castalon area, which I haven't taken the time to do before. The store and outbuildings, including the Ranger's office, were built as a military camp, but never used. Only after Cartledge and Perry bought the compound was it utilized. The original Castalon was down below, where the restored Alvino adobe house stands. The adobe was built by a very enterprising Mexican named Hernandez, who built and opened at least four stores in the Big Bend area (Shafter, Santa Elena, Castalon, and Terlingua Abaja). Back then, people used buildings efficiently: house, store, chapel, social gatherings, funerals, post office, even railroad stations.


The restoration of the adobe in the Park was done well, utilizing natural earthen components and recycled metal parts, such as the gutters. Although the first roof was probably dirt and/or thatch, the new roof may have incorporated into it cement to protect it from water leakage. The adobe blocks and plaster are clay, sand and chopped straw in the traditional vernacular buildings of pre-modern Big Bend. Manure was also used in earlier adobe blocks and plasters to help bind the earthen components. Some of the vigas look old, but they may also be recycled from another building. The stem wall is motared rock upon which the adobe blocks are laid to help reduce erosion of both plaster and blocks from weather.


It was a leisurely ride. No need to hurry. And I made several of these rides in the weeks to follow.

Labels: Big Bend, bikes, Texas

High plains and dirt road north of Cibola National Forest in central NM.

You may wonder about the title 'Occupied New Mexico,' if I am posting about Big Bend, Texas. Simple: The more I experience New Mexico, the more I realize how similar many parts of Big Bend are to New Mexico. Big Bend is more like New Mexico than the rest of Texas: in terrain, people and communities, biodiversity, and even architecture. If you know the rich history of southwest Texas and New Mexico, even the present is parallel.

A well-known expert in adobe construction, an adobero, that lives in New Mexico once referred to SW TX, as 'Occupied New Mexico.' He's right, and he doesn't realize what he started, for I now refer to Big Bend as the same: Occupied New Mexico. Partly because most other people don't have a clue what I am talking about. Partly because I tend to buck convention with place names, and use a name that reflects past history as well as current perspectives. I don't owe blind allegiance to any place on a map; places own me and I give them names that mean something to me.

I'll refer to this off and on both in this series and the one on New Mexico. 

And I do the same things in both states, including getting wet when riding the bike.

 

Labels: Big Bend, New Mexico, Texas