Essays

Wild On The Prairie: Plants

Big Bend Plants
March 11, 2001

“This is the best wildflower year in 25 years! No, fifty years!” Inhabitants of Big Bend are acting berserk excitedly calling everyone they know. “Get your hiney down here!” Terlingua residents live in a no-man’s land. It is not the United States, nor is it Mexico. The Border Patrol have inspection stations up near Alpine and Marfa. After a traveler heading north enjoys watching the drug dogs work then, and only then, is he or she actually back in the U.S.

Or so say the river-runners, musicians, and other assorted reactionary dropouts. They love to put on airs of being outlaws, full of Luddite anti-technology hubris. It is tough, scrambling to make a living on the border, and many live in houses without running water, rented for less than a hundred dollars a month. Many tourists are attracted to the “Hanging out on the Porch” Terlingua attitude. Enough about them, however. The flowers – oh the flowers! My Gosh, the flowers!!! Twenty inches of rain have fallen since last September. They have reason to brag.

How many people of the Southern Llano Estacado have moved here since the last great wildflower year? Thirty percent of the population? More? Less? Every one of them should go to Big Bend in the next two weeks. “This is the year in which the Good Lord rewards those of us who tough it out during the long droughts.” The folks who live in the cyclically droughted lands of the Southwest learn lessons not easily understood by folks in gentler climes. The five largest religions all originated in hot and usually dry climates.

“Mine eyes have seen the glory... Amen, brother.” One must sing songs of thankfulness and wonder and awe in years of the grandest wildflower shows. Billions of blossoms, carpets of colors for square mile after square mile after square mile after square mile. On and on and on, oh my – oh my! Have you seen Big Bend bluebonnets? We aren’t talking scrawny little Hill Country wannabes, no sir!

Dagger Flat, Boquillas, Castolon, Mule Ears, South Rim, the Window, Cattail Falls, Johnson Ranch – the names resound. Some ex-Terlingua residents were recently telling search and rescue stories one afternoon at Sibley. They survive the 120-degree summer days by lounging in “cool pools” (stock tanks shaded beneath the ocotillo roofs of their jacales.) Once in a while, residents are called to help find an overdue tourist lost on the nearly impassable roads of the backcountry. They tell horror stories of death by heat exhaustion and dehydration – people stripping off their clothes in the final hallucinations before death. They have had to pick up the pieces, stringing together the story of another human’s dying.

In the desert, mistakes can be deadly. Experience and knowledge are necessities. A person can wander blithely and unknowingly only so long before the ultimate price is paid. People can die unseen, just a few hundred yards off of the road. Nobody is looking after the fools. That may seem harsh to most modern Americans, but it is one of the reasons I like Big Bend.

The contrast between beauty and danger is heightened by the intertwined relationship. The duality can be symbolized by the stark beauty of a juniper, its bark stripped and its growth contorted by the ravages of drought, swooping low over the most exquisite cactus flower. Strange as it may seem, a person can find renewal by seeking places of implacable rules.

A number of years ago, I went to Big Bend and wrote the following essay:

To recover from job burn-out (when a job is just a job and not a joy), I spent a week wandering in the Trans-Pecos. I headed for the Big Bend, and in rote fashion performed all the routines I use to escape. I drove twenty-five miles an hour the whole way, with numerous stops to photograph, to check out road kills, to identify plants, and to watch birds be birds. From 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. I coasted along, unable to escape the exhausted, mind-numbed feeling of burn out.

Early the first morning in Big Bend, I walked to the Window in pre-sunrise grayness. At the first glimmer of reflected sunlight, White Winged Doves called in the canyon just to hear their own echoes. Several performed solo, taking turns. Then they all called at once, their soft cries coming from every direction, from every rock face, from every tree. Then all fell silent.

An hour later, with the first rays of sunlight, one dove sat above the best echo chamber: a cliff which faced another cliff that broadcast the echoes in every direction within the canyon. This particular dove did not do the usual "Que lastima" four-note call. There was no rhythm, no pattern, but a melody began issuing from the echoes. The dove became the voice of the cliffs. Its disembodied voice became a blues jazz soprano saxophone, electrified and amplified (judging by the "white noise" that separated the real bird's voice from its echo.)

At various times of the day, White Winged Doves play the echoes. The morning tune is questioning and exploratory. The afternoon symphony is soporific, in heavy cadences and long pauses. Evening presentations are at times as querulous as tired children, but usually are peaceful bedtime tales.

For two days their music calmed me, working better than any tranquilizer. On the third day, at a desert water hole, they projected their voices into the hot, brassy dome of the summer sky. Using the cicadas for rhythm, two doves sang sad ballads of drought. When the wind stopped, the windmill stopped, which scared the cicadas. When the cicadas stopped, the doves' voices became fearful and nervous and the birds suddenly exploded out of the cottonwoods into the heat, out of their invisibility, and were revealed as silly, frantic little fools instead of master musicians.

At that point, the burnout broke. Vim and vigor flooded my veins as I hurrahed the birds, laughing at them, chasing them when they tried to return to the shade. We all take ourselves too seriously sometimes, including birds.