Driving across Texas amounts to a Sisyphean feat. The landscape transforms and the mile markers tick by, but somehow your destination remains as far away as ever. From the Texas-Louisiana border to Austin to Big Bend National Park and then back up to Guadalupe Mountain National Park, the drive took close to 20 hours. Some 900 miles from East to West, the Lone Star State is carved out of land that used to belong to Mexico, and was home to indigenous people like the Apache and Anasazi.
Before this trip, I spent the entirety of my prior experience in Texas stranded in Terminal B at the Dallas Fort Worth airport. My narrow understanding of Texas was blown to smithereens by the cultural hubs of metropolitan areas like Austin and the devastating realities of life on the border. Looking back, I felt extremely prepared for our trip in terms of camping gear, sunscreen, trekking poles, and ramen noodles. I was, however, wildly unprepared for the emotional reckoning brought on by staring across the border into sameness.
We pulled up to the last indoor accommodations we would have until reaching Tucson, where carefully maintained vintage cars lined the driveway and spilled out into the street. A teenager who didn’t look old enough for a license tinkered away on a hubcap, pausing to wave but quickly returning to his passion project. Little hens greeted us as we made our way along a stone path to a small house in the backyard. A big cat lounged in the window of the main house, observing as we hauled our luggage and camp groceries into our room.
Exhausted from the drive and apprehensive about eating three meals a day off a propane stove for the next week, we solicited dinner recommendations from a friend and long-time Austin resident. Cranky and hungry, I slid into a booth at Ramen Tatsu-Ya, and proceeded to have some of the best ramen of my young life. Hatch chiles and karaage chicken sizzled in a delicious bowl that seemed designed to lift my spirits.
We woke up early the next day and hit the ground running. Our campsite took reservations, but tent sites were first come first serve, so we wanted to get to the campground ASAP in order to set up our tent. After several hours on the road, we finally crawled to a stop at a gas station in Terlingua. For much of the 19th century this town was home to many mining families and the discovery of terlinguaite, a mineral found in the area. Now at less than a hundred residents, Terlingua is considered a ghost town.
Our campground was a concrete pad situated under a tan triangular sun shade, down a dirt road and up a short rocky path. We began setting up our tent and within a few minutes, our camp host came to greet us. We thought he would have some helpful advice on where to get more propane for our camp stove or recommendations for hikes in the park. Instead, he chewed on my sleeping bag and climbed onto the roof of Isaac’s car.
Clyde eventually climbed down and lost interest in our arrival, so we sought out the information centers in Big Bend National Park. The park has three of these, and we elected to visit the one located in the basin of the Chisos Mountains, smack dab in the middle of the park. The Chisos Mountains are beautiful and extremely unique, making up the only mountain range to be entirely contained within a United States national park.
The Chisos’ forested peaks contrast starkly with the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert, and the mountains offer an extremely different habitat for the wide variety of plants and animals that call them home. Mountain lions, javelinas, black bears, rabbits, and deer all seek refuge from the hot, dry desert within the cooler climate of the Chisos Mountain Range. Unfortunately for me, both the mountains and desert are home to an abundance of tarantulas and within ten minutes of being in the park, I almost stepped on one. After recovering from heart palpitations only oversized spiders can induce, I watched the sunset as it peeked through the mountains before dipping below the far off horizon.
With a print-out temperature and condition report from the ranger station in hand, we planned our hikes for the next several days and went to sleep. We woke up and said good morning to Clyde, whose manners had seemed to improve somewhat as he got used to our presence. He attempted to chew on my hair while I sipped my coffee, but everyone was a little hungry that morning, so I let it slide.
After a few miles of hiking in the midmorning heat, we called it quits and made our way to the Rio Grande crossing to Mexico. Big Bend National Park sits on the Mexican-American border, and border patrol is evident throughout any area within 100 miles. The park rangers in Big Bend carry firearms, which was startling, as park rangers in almost every other national park do not. Arming park rangers stands out to me as an alarming reality of militarization in the region. Typically tasked with visitor safety, grounds maintenance and wildlife protection, the park rangers at Big Bend are also now forced to be complicit in the United States’ war on immigration.
There are all kinds of laws about what does or does not constitute a legal crossing of the border, but here it is marked only by a rapidly flowing and changing river. You can imagine that the waters, both metaphorical and literal, get pretty murky. On one side sits Big Bend National Park, and on the other, the Maderas del Carmen Natural Protected Area in Mexico. The climate is the same, as are the plants and animals. Cows and horses cross the river to graze, unaware of the lines designated by human beings.
The only town for 100 miles in Mexico, Boquillas occupies the liminal space of economic reliance on American tourism while suffering immensely from American border policies. During the Trump administration and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourism in the area was forced to a standstill. To give more context to the importance of this exchange, Boquillas is all but cut off from the rest of Mexico and can be reached only by long roads winding through challenging topography. The abrupt cutoff of American supplies and money caused the population to plummet, and it is just now showing signs of recovery.
To get to Boquillas from the United States, travelers can often cross the Rio Grande on foot without assistance. But after the rainy season, the river becomes swift and treacherous. Even the path from the border checkpoint down to the river was entirely soaked, and we waded up to our knees in stinking mud. At the river, men from Boquillas row passengers through the current and provide burro rides through the half mile from the Rio Grande into town. The fee per person is currently $5 to cross and $8 for the burro ride.
After checking in with Mexican border agents, a swift process by which you pay for entry into Maderas del Carmen and receive a wristband, we realized how hungry we had become. We walked down the main street in Boquillas, lined with souvenir stalls outside brightly colored homes and storefronts. Two restaurants were open, and we chose one at random. Our enchiladas were phenomenal and Fresca with real sugar launched itself to the top of my mental list of the best sodas ever made.
From the border patrol checkpoint, through the mud, across the river, up to town, eating lunch, back down to the river and through the mud again, there was one thought stuck in my head: What have we done?
The next section contains discussion of American imperialism and white settler colonization. While black or indigenous folks and other people of color may want to skip this section (it’s upsetting and I likely won’t say anything you don’t already know), it’s important for white people to read on and sit with discomfort.
If you have more information or want to offer corrections or resources, please reach out via comment or email! I write from my perspective, which is rooted in my white privilege and ignorance, so I am always open to learning how to better aid in dismantling systems of oppression. In that spirit, I’ve linked a few sources about indigenous people, slavery, and colonization at the end of this post that are largely from nonwhite perspectives.
Historical markers in Big Bend refer to the first wave of white settlers there, who were helped immensely by both Mexican and indigenous Apache people living in the area. Often, people intermingled and lived in community with one another on ranches and in small outpost towns. That tenuous spirit of camaraderie was lost as white settlers began to take over large swaths of land, pressing further south into Mexico and displacing more and more people. White settlers increased hostilities by ignoring Mexican laws which prohibited slavery, prompting the Mexican government to restrict Texan immigration. In response, Texan settlers declared independence from Mexico and fought for their ability to force Black people into bondage. After years of battling, white settlers established the Republic of Texas in 1836. They hoisted the Lone Star Flag to commemorate their new country and thus began Texas’ nickname the “Lone Star State.” Texas gained statehood nine years later.
All of this is to say, the history of this border line is long, and its physical dimensions have changed drastically over the past 200 years. And while Mexico banned Texan immigration in the 1830s, the US has sought to ban immigration through Mexico throughout the past few decades. In making racist claims about the dubious morality of immigrants, many Americans (including a certain America president) ignore that the shoe used to be on the other foot. Of course, this also ignores that most people seeking asylum at Mexican-American border are not from Mexico, but rather from Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other countries.
It’s hard to look at the border without thinking about all the people trying to cross from the other side. My skin tone marked me as immune from suspicion, while others’ skin tones made them a target. While I stood in line to scan my passport at the border patrol and customs checkpoint waiting to cross into the USA, someone else was being detained and separated from their family for trying to do the same. In an effort to avoid detection and the resulting detention, many risk their lives slipping through gaps in the border wall, traversing steep mountain ridges, and hiking through vast expanses of parched desert. People die of heat exhaustion, dehydration, and starvation while navigating these unforgiving landscapes, trying to cross the imaginary line into a better life.
It bothers me to think about the park rangers with their guns, working alongside border patrol to maintain territory that was never ours. It feels wrong and contrary to the foundational intentions of our national parks. While these thoughts are an uncomfortable weight on my mind, I cannot begin to imagine the pain felt by the people whose land was taken from them over these centuries, or whose families were taken from them even this week. Both the vicious creation of this border and its continual cruel enforcement are a human rights violation.
Of course, this is the story of the United States. Reservation schools, contemporary reservation systems, discrimination, displacement, murder, and genocide just begin to describe the horrors that have been inflicted on millions of indigenous people. The injustices in migrant detention facilities and at the hands of a trigger-happy border police force now aided by far-right militia groups number greater by the day. But these issues expand far beyond the borders of Texas. These accounts are at the basis of every state’s foundation, and white colonization is the bedrock of our country.
I want to emphasize that while Big Bend offers some of the most breathtaking vistas I have seen in my life, it’s also a deeply disturbing place. It wasn’t our last stop in Texas either, so I took these thoughts with me as we left the border zone.
From Big Bend, we set our sights on Guadalupe Mountain National Park with the intention of climbing Texas’s tallest peak. About two hours into our journey, we came across infamous Marfa, TX. Donald Judd founded the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary art museum, in Marfa. Many other artists have also thrived there, so the town’s art scene continues to impress despite its small population.
In 2005, Elmgreen and Dragset were commissioned by Ballroom Marfa to produce the public contemporary art display titled Prada Marfa, which still stands as a solitary Prada storefront that has never opened for business. Inside are bottomless Prada handbags and right-only shoes from Prada’s 2005 collection, changes made to the permanent art installation after it was vandalized within hours of its construction. Now mostly worthless, the contents within the semi-permanent structural art installation have been left alone in the years since.
Lesley Villareal, a photographer who lives in Marfa, and her husband Junie have a Halloween tradition: Junie dresses up as Michael Meyers and Lesley photographs him around Marfa. This year’s photo op took place right in front of Prada Marfa.
The desert surrounding Marfa and its little Prada is desolate, and the Big Bend Sentinel, a newspaper which covers happenings in Far West Texas, is one of very few publications in the region. The Big Bend Sentinel is housed in and partially funded by a coffee shop and cocktail destination, which dishes out fresh pastries and drinks, as well as stocks goods of all kinds from both Texan and Mexican artists.
What put Marfa on the map for many people, however, was neither its fine arts nor its innovative newspaper + coffee shop pairing. It was the lights. The Marfa Lights, otherwise known as the Marfa Mystery Lights, have been reported since 1883. These lights are said to zoom along the horizon, parallel with ranchers on horseback and riders in their cars. Some people say the lights seem harmless, others that the lights have a vaguely threatening aura. Regardless, they have visited so many people passing through Marfa that the town now has a designated viewing location and a yearly festival. Explanations for these lights include campfires, headlights, atmospheric abnormalities, military aircraft, and more. Whatever their source, we didn’t see any.
Guadalupe Mountains National Park, situated deep in the arid Southwest, was experiencing a thunderstorm. Unlike our hot days spent desperately trying to cool off and hydrate under the ever beating sun in Big Bend, our time in Guadalupe was cold and rainy. Neither of us expected this at all, and my raincoat was not meant to withstand that much downpour, so we went to the visitor center and picked up a rain poncho and some prickly pear snacks. We also learned from a ranger there that the hike we had intended to do was impassable due to heavy rains, and ill-advised during lightning storms.
Disappointed but determined to make the best of our last few days in Texas, we set up camp again and crossed into New Mexico, where the Carlsbad Caverns National Park awaited us.
A perfect hike for a rainy day, the 2.5 mile Carlsbad loop takes you down switchback after switchback into darkness. Living among the stalactites and stalagmites, the Brazilian free-tailed bat makes a nightly show, swarming out of the cave at dusk to hunt their dinner in the surface world. Of course, the bats don’t often do this in inclement weather, so we didn’t get to see them. We did see some of the most fantastic underground structures that geology has to offer: rocks that look like curtains draped across the walls, pools of water that carried rock formations like lily pads, active stalagmites, and remnants of climbing expeditions.
I was awed by the slow, methodical drip of water, depositing minerals over millions of years to form even the smallest of rocks. If ever you want to experience ego death among strangers on a dimly lit trail 750 feet below ground, I can recommend nothing better than the Carlsbad Caverns. With our America the Beautiful national parks pass, it was only a dollar per person to reserve a spot for a self guided tour. There is an elevator shaft that extends down into the “Big Room” of the cave, and much of the trail therein is wheelchair accessible. I think the park should change its name to “Humbling fun for the whole family.”
We did end up hiking in the Guadalupe Mountains, but at lower elevations and during light showers to avoid being struck by lightning on the side of a mountain. Even with our Wilderness First Responder Certifications, neither Isaac nor myself felt like getting blasted off a cliff face. The McKittrick Canyon hike was just what we were looking for, and we scrambled across five miles of creek beds and washes to immerse ourselves in the distinct ecosystem of the canyon. Hikers can venture to a former rancher’s home the Pratt Cabin, rock formations like the Grotto, and even up to the McKittrick Ridge. The hike does get steeper and much more challenging the closer you get to the McKittrick Ridge Campground, so for day use hiking to the Grotto and back is more than fine. Visitors who try to leave later than 4:30pm will be locked in by the closing park gates, so keeping an eye on the time change is crucial when in the park.
We packed up camp rounded home to Tucson, where of course, everything fell to shit.
Additional Reading
Space, Position, and Imperialism in South Texas by Margo Tamez
Love in the Time of Texas Slavery by María Esther Hammack
Colonized Labor: Apaches and Pawnees as Army Workers by Janne Lahti
Those Who Stayed Behind: Lipan Apache Enclaved Communities by Oscar Rodriguez and Deni J. Seymour