5:26 a.m. - 2022-07-12
Chisos
When I was in college I used to cut out of town on holidays and head west across South Texas to Big Bend National Park, where I'd camp by my eponymous Tinaja (deep, cold, and full of bones, its vertical walls eon-banded and claw-scarred by drowning animals). Sometimes I'd take my girlfriend--we once discovered a massive cave together off-trail high in the Chisos. Other times I'd head out with buddies--three of us once survived a poorly planned trip through Boquillas Canyon on a homemade raft with one oar. And sometimes I'd drive out by myself, where the isolation would heighten my perception of the landscape's vast, inhospitable grandeur. Where I'd stand alone on the desert-floor pondering the cairn-graves and weathered foundations of some short-lived, long-gone settlement and ask “Why did you stop here...why did you stay?”.
I wasn't alone when the real event happened. Yet, as is often the case in dreams, the face of my companion is unclear... I do have a short list of suspects, but have long since lost touch with both. Whoever it was, I wonder if this memory still haunts him as it does me, on the threshold of sleep? But even if I could somehow contact him I doubt I'd ask. We didn't talk about it on the long drive home. Maybe because “event” is the wrong term here. Unlike an ill-fated raft trip or an expedition into a mountain-lion's den, there's no real narrative to articulate, and it's never become part of my (otherwise-exhaustive) raconteur’s catalog. “Circumstance” might be more apt.
“Miscalculation” could certainly apply re: expository context.
We'd spent a few days in the park adventuring, as young men will, and were due to return home that afternoon but not before (lured by the promise of adobe ruins, and wanting to give the legs a good stretch before the long drive ahead) we'd squeezed in “one last hike”. I've alluded to the vastness of Big Bend--800,000 acres of the Chihuahua Desert with a mountain range contained wholly within its borders. There are at most 3 or 4 paved roads, but when we arrived at a primitive trail-head in a remote region of the park we were far from any of them. I don't remember the trail name or even how I'd heard of it, but it promised a relatively brief ramble on a loop across the desert floor. An easy two hours to complete so we packed light. Some water I'd assume. A few hard candies in our pockets, maybe. I believe this occurred in early March, when even under a cloudless desert sky the temperature wouldn't have climbed above the 70s. So we were probably wearing trousers as opposed to shorts. This would prove to be fortunate... Anyway, we embarked at a rigorous pace and were making good time when the trail disappeared into a dry wash.
This is a common feature of desert topography and the hiking protocol is to determine whether the trail crosses the wash or incorporates it en route to destination. If it's a small wash a crossing can be self-evident--this was not. And as there was no reason to expect the Park Service to expend its scant resources maintaining trail markers in such a rarely frequented area, we began looking for “blazes” left by other hikers. These could be stacks of rocks, plastic ribbons tied to trees maybe...of course if the trail did follow the wash, then the rock stacks would be undone by seasonal flood waters. We saw none. And if there ever had been ribbons they'd since crumbled in the desert sun (Or maybe they were stolen by a crafty raven with an eye for home décor?) So we just headed up the wash, crunching through quartz sand and scanning the banks for trail signs. This was made difficult by the thick vegetation. Creosote grew tall and prolific here, as did the annoying and aptly named Catclaw Acacia. Visibility was limited. Promising routes would devolve into animal trails leading to...another arm of the wash. Which, after a few such detours, became alarmingly maze-like. And it was massive. And of course it was. We were on an empty desert incline directly between a mountain range and the Rio Grande...runoff was free to run amok here. So yeah, by the time we hit the mountain we were “lost”.
Not hopelessly, of course. The branches of the wash emerged-from/converged-towards a deep arroyo cut in the side of a mountain that, viewed from the trail-head hours earlier, had been but a distant landmark. I knew that if the mountains were in front of us then the Rio was behind us and that the truck was parked somewhere to the west. And I knew that somewhere in both of those directions, however distant, lay a back-country road. But we'd burned too much daylight kicking sand and cursing Catclaw--and any attempt to retrace our steps through the labyrinthine sameness of the wash risked overshooting the trail. So we decided to ascend the mountain to a vantage from which (we hoped) a return route might be evident.
There's a sort of reverse-treeline phenomenon in Big Bend. The climate difference at high altitude here permits forested “oasis” to thrive in lofty isolation while areas below remain parched and treeless. We were in the latter so, after scaling a crease in the arroyo wall, the slope we climbed was rocky and barren save for a stippling of desert grasses. The sun was well on the other side of the range at this point, and the entire mountainside was cast in shadow. Also it was steep. There were no switchbacks obviously, and with every labored step forward we gained elevation. By the time we stopped to survey our options, we were high above them...and the view was remarkable. We could see all the way to the Rio Grande, where the horizon was defined by a wall of towering cliff-faces on the Mexico side. What we couldn't see was a trail. Or a road. More alarmingly, the shadow of the mountains had stretched far across the desert floor, making it harder to discern detail...deepening and growing longer as we watched. The sun was setting behind us.
We wouldn't be driving home this evening.
Resigned, we found a few patches of Chino grass and lay down to wait it out 'til morning. (Lying parallel with the pitch of the slope...lying crosswise would have rolled us right off the mountain.) I was staring out across the desert as twilight encroached, and this is where a deeper memory begins. One that stands out from the others like a spot of blood on gauze. On thirty years worth of gauze that still, in the quiet hours, seeps to the surface. Maybe it's this vivid temporal incongruity that makes me wonder sometimes if it really happened.
As the desert floor deepened in hue from russet to brick to charcoal-violet, the gloam gathered. First in the chasms and ravines around us, then in the arroyos, draws and washes below. The twilight shadow of the Chisos had enveloped everything between us and the Rio Grande--but the sun would not go gently. I know this because, though it was occurring behind us and out of direct view, the sunset was projected cross-horizon onto those monumental limestone cliffs bordering the river. Like God's own drive-in movie theater. On fire. Below these radiant cliffs the desert went dark, behind them the thin and cloudless sky was on the verge of transparency and the first evening stars shone through. There wasn't a breath of wind. Nor was there any birdsong. Me and my companion lay silent and still, engulfed in silence and stillness.
But memory is forged in the heat of context, and it isn't just an image that returns to me. It's a palpable sense of complete isolation and of that helpless, beautiful, quietude. I was an engineering student at the time, and probably unfamiliar with Edmund Burke's theory of the Sublime, but in retrospect...yeah. We were ticking off all his boxes. Anyway, as if I couldn't feel any smaller and less significant, lost on the side of that remote mountain, the sky abruptly gave up and made way for a flood of stars.
I pulled my arms inside my shirt sleeves and tucked my hands under the waistband of my dungarees. It was going to be a cold night.
