Dazzling big bend

Author: By Ralph Jimenez, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, June 23, 1996

Page: B1

Section: Travel

``It takes a little while to get over the hugeness of this place and to see the little things, which are its real treasure,'' Angie Dean said of the region defined by the U-shaped border with Mexico carved in stone by the Rio Grande River and the national park that occupies much of it.

Dean is the proprietor of the Starlight Theatre, a former movie house built to entertain the miners who wrested mercury-bearing cinnabar from the hillsides of the town of Terlingua, Texas. The last mine closed in 1952 when the mercury played out and the town was abandoned.

Some of the miners, poisoned by the liquid metal, remained behind in the hillside cemetery where bodies lie under rock piles or within vaulted adobe shrines topped with weathered wooden crosses.

The graveyard lies just outside Big Bend, one of the nation's most remote and least-visited national parks. It occupies 1,250 square miles of mountains, desert and grasslands grazed into desert by a century of ranching. With cattle, goats and sheep gone, the grass has begun to come back, as have peregrine falcons, black bear and mountain lions.

Many of the 350,000 visitors who make the six-hour drive to Big Bend from the closest place a decent-sized plane can land -- Odessa or El Paso, 350 miles away -- come to see the wildlife. Big Bend in spring is a birder's paradise. Others come for the surreal Martian scenery, the warm dry winter weather and the hiking, rafting, peace, beauty and quiet.

Two roads lead to the park. The eastern, Texas Route 385, is the old Commanche War Trail used to conduct raids into Mexico. The western crosses a broad flat frying pan whose rim is formed by the Chalk, Santiago, Christmas and Rattlesnake mountains.

My brother Richard and I traversed the pan in mid-May during a heat wave and what some say was the fourth year of a drought. Not far from the Woodward Agate Ranch where campers can roam 4,000 acres of the Davis Mountains in search of gems, we came upon a drought scene captured in countless cartoons. Just inside the barbed-wire range fences that line Texas highways, three patient vultures stared at us from their perch atop a bloated but as yet unexploded steer.

May and June are Big Bend's hottest months, although, depending on the rains, May can also result in spectacular cactus blooms in the Chihuahuan Desert. We had come to hike and to float through the Rio Grande's sheer canyons. But as we soon heard, drought had left too little water in the river to float a raft.

We arrived hungry and too late to camp. A readers' poll in a local paper -- local meaning Alpine, Texas, 86 miles away -- had given the Starlight the nod for serving the best dinner in the Big Bend. So from nearby Study Butte -- named for a rancher who pronounced his name ``Stoody'' -- we followed the glittering lights in the distance to the marquee of the Starlight Theatre and a delicious platter of picadillo, a stir-fry of beef tips with onions, tomatoes and jalapeno peppers.

Locals were watching a Western movie on a big screen behind the mesquite-wood bar hung with bleached longhorn skulls. The population of Terlingua, 120, increases a hundredfold for one brief week in February when two rival camps of chefs hold the annual International Chili Cook-off before a crowd of 10,000. But visitors are few in May because of the heat, which topped 100 degrees every day of our stay.

Dale Jennsen, our waitress, came to Big Bend from Massachusetts to work as a raft guide, but was left jobless when the river dried up. ``I guess I just had my fill of humid green,'' she said of life in the verdant East. ``I've become a desert rat now, and the hills and trees almost feel claustrophobic to me when I go home.''

A ceiling of stars thick as clouds overhangs the desert on clear nights when the smoke from Mexican power plants and Lousiana refineries blows the other way. The landscape's unforgiving beauty, mercurial weather and vast spaces dominate life. ``We clear the restaurant frequently for moon rises and rainbows'' Dean said.

The word ``Texas'' comes from the Spanish word ``tejas'' meaning ``friendly,'' and the people we met were. Dean sketched out a rough itinerary of ``musts'' and advised that if we were only going to sack out anyway, we could save the price of dinner by staying at the Easter Egg Motel, a line of double-wide trailers strung together to create a gift shop, general store and motel catering to truckers.

In the morning, we awoke to the sound of diesels. We went to check out and found a note taped to the motel door that said, ``We've gone to the night office. Use a dime in the pay phone to call us.''

Business is handled casually in the Big Bend. Shops that don't take credit cards all seemed to accept personal checks, and the national park uses an ``iron ranger'' to collect its $7 per night camping fee.

Our original plan to hike in nearby Big Bend Ranch State Natural Area, Texas's newest state park, shriveled in the heat. ``Not even the real desert rats are going hiking in this,'' Bernadette Kowalik, the state park ranger in charge of the Warnock Environmental Education Center, said. ``The ground temperature out there in places is 150 degrees.''

The center contains an exceedingly well-done museum of the region's natural history and of the 10,000-year habitation by humans -- Jumano Indians were followed by Spanish missionaries and gold seekers, Comanches, Mescalero Apaches, Mexican settlers and finally American ranchers and miners. The museum offers an hour's respite from the relentless heat that sought to turn us quickly to leather and bone.

To stay cool, we drove the El Camino Del Rio (the River Road), which follows the Rio Grande from Study Butte to Presidio, Texas, site of the Army fort used to guard the border and hunt Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary whose raids swept through Big Bend in the early decades of this century.

According to the guidebook, this route was called possibly ``the prettiest drive in all America'' by a National Geographic magazine writer. The road signs list the drive as FM 170. The letters stand for ``Farm Road,'' although these fields of parched volcanic scree have grown mostly dreams.

The route grants stunning views of the steep limestone canyons that separate Mexico from the United States along much of the river's course. Locals refer to the formation as ``The Great Wall of Chihuahua,'' and it remains the same barrier to border crossings that it did for the Apaches and Comanches.

The rule for desert hiking -- drink at least a gallon of water per day -- had been upped to six quarts or more during the heat wave. A short climb from the road up to an overlook so scenic I could only look and laugh left us with thick tongues and heads aching from dehydration.

We were drawn from the car at another stop by an outlandishly picturesque abandoned village where Contrabando Creek joins the Rio Grande. It was a border town village like those seen in countless movies starring the likes of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and with cameras firing steadily, we walked its dusty streets.

When we ducked into the shade of the old mission church, we found that this picture-perfect town had plywood insides. It had been built in 1978 as a stage set for a movie starring Burl Ives.

The drive is beautiful, though eerie, for in shadow the cinder cone mountains and gnarly buttes recalled visions of Tolkein's Mordor. In Lajitas, a historic river crossing that is now a model frontier town with a golf course, we stopped to buy Clay Henry Jr., the town's mayor, a beer. The mayor, who is also the town drunk, is a goat.

It was 105 when we hiked up Closed Canyon, a passage 20 feet wide and 300 or so feet high. We went from sun to shade through the canyon's twists and found a a nest of baby birds sleeping in a small hole in the smooth canyon wall.

Appetites that have been killed by the desert returned with the aid of air conditioning, and we dined in La Kiva, an artfully done underground restaurant and bar in Terlingua justifiably famous for its barbecue. At the bar, talk was of how badly the drought and the government shutdown of the national parks during the spring budget battle had hurt the local economy. A sign over the bar said ``U.S. out of Texas.'

Armed guards at the park's entrance had turned back locals who long used park roads to save hours of driving, a ranch hand said. He went on to suggest that politicians be subjected to the same procedure ranchers use to create steers.

There are five campgrounds in the park, but only one, the Basin, 5,000 feet up in the Chisos Mountains, offers respite in the heat. At 3,000 feet, where as little as 5 inches of rain falls per year, only the hardiest plants survive. Among them are leguchilla, a cactus that looks like a green bouquet of knives and creosote bush. The roots of the creosote bush exude a toxin that kills off rival plants so the shrub dots the desert floor like knots on a chenille bedspread. Hardy cactuses, yellow-blossomed prickly pear and great clumps of hedgehog cactus festooned with bright pink blooms shone against the pastel background.

The mountains are 20 degrees cooler and receive four times the desert's rain. Tenting was comfortable in nights that dropped to the mid 60s. Non-campers who plan well in advance can savor the stupendous views in comfort by booking a $65 room at the park's motel, where one of the West's best sunsets can be seen from the windows.

In hot weather -- most of the park's visitors come in winter, when days are in the 70s and nights in the 30s and 40s -- use the Basin as a base to explore hotter regions. Leave early, take plenty of water, wear tough shoes and stick to the trail if you don't have a compass and topo map and know how to use them well.

``Most of the time, the people who get in trouble here are guys between 18 and 26,'' said Gary Carver, a park law enforcement officer. ``The kind who say, `I'm a Marine. I can take it.' Dehydration and the crumbly rock that makes the park unsuitable for climbing account for most accidents, although visitors worry most about poisonous snakes, insects and mountain lions.

The park is now home to two dozen lions who, while they avoid humans, do prefer to use their trails for ease of travel, Carver said. There have only been two recorded lion attacks on humans, and few park visitors ever see a lion, although my brother was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of one crossing the Persimmon Gap road at Mile 7.

Make the easy two-hour climb up the nature trail to Lost Mine Peak and scan the slopes for signs of the gold mine that legend says the Indians hid to keep the Spaniards who enslaved them from returning.

Watch the sun set in the gunsight notch called the Window and then take the Window Trail to the notch itself, a polished water slide through which plummets all the water that falls on the Basin. Even in heat, these hikes are tame for people in at least moderate condition.

So too is the spectacular short hike up Santa Elena Canyon where the Rio Grande emerges to cross flatlands before carving into rock again. Water is all here, and the river, springs, seeps, creeks, limestone potholes called ``tinajas'' that catch and hold the rain and the wells left behind by ranchers are oases for wildlife. At one, a roadrunner ran past me, flew to a branch at eye level an arm's length away and went ``onk.''

A frog croaking in the canyon sounds as if it weighs at least a ton as its hoarse voice reverberates between the walls. At one point I heard a bizarrely familiar sound, a loud slap against the water. Beaver were once thick in the Big Bend before the trees were cut to fuel fine smelters and cattle trampled the banks. They are returning now.

More mines can be seen at Boquillas Canyon on the park's western border near the old town and campground at Castolon. The campground has two showers, the only such public accommodations in the 801,000-acre park.

Drink even when you're no longer thirsty, and if you don't want to hike, drive. The park offers hundreds of miles of scenic roads with turnoffs and exhibits that explain the unique flora, fauna and geology. Short hikes lead to hot springs, Indian petroglyphs and the site of the Sam Nail ranch where, as an Illinois birder said, ``you can double your life list in half an hour.'' In camp, lie on a rock and count shooting stars, then make the short drive to the McDonald Observatory, located here because the skies are among the darkest in America.

Flip over rocks, but use a stick, and hunt for scorpions. There are none in the park whose sting is fatal, according to Richard Henson, an Appalachian State University professor supervising a study of scorpions in the park. ``It's no big deal, more like a bee sting. You say a few ugly words and go on your way,'' Henson said. ``The only really dangerous species in the United States is in western New Mexico and Arizona.''

After a rain, watch how the slender brown stalk of the ocotillo turns green and sprouts leaves overnight. Look up from a desert floor baked hard as a mosaic to the great towering stalks of the century plants that bloom once then die.

Keep an eye on the sky -- in Big Bend, lightning and clouds put on a grand display. The rain falls in huge splattering drops that gather and race over baked earth to cause flash floods. We saw lightning flash next to a setting sun. Another bolt forked just above a solitary mountain and struck on either side. And stare back at the stone sentinels and gargoyles that everywhere seem to be watching you in Big Bend.