In those days even the lower elevations blossomed and bloomed with lush profusion. Waist-high tobasa grass used to cover Tornillo Flat homesteaders harvested and baled it for hay. Today Tornillo Flat is one of the ugliest parts of the park, a barren desert of deep arroyos, dried-up springs, and a few creosote bushes. An army expedition in 1860 reported that the grass along Terlingua Creek was stirrup-high and described the creek as a “bold running stream, studded with cottonwood timber and alive with beaver.” These days, the stream is more timid than bold, and repeated browsing of cattle, sheep, and goats on the seedlings and sprouts has resulted in the near-elimination of the cottonwood.
Big Bend National Park in Texas sheds a different light on the international frontier
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Big Bend sheds a different light on the US frontier
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Remote Big Bend sheds a different light on the US frontier
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photo: Derik Hobbs
Ralph Waldo Emerson never met the Slim Duck. He never met Gray Dude or Ginger. And he certainly never crossed the great American West in a ’67 Barracuda convertible. But had RWE experienced anything akin to making a road trip with a bewitching heartthrob like the Slim Duck, he might have tempered his opinion about traveling being a “fool’s paradise.”
If traveling is a fool’s paradise, then hand me those sunglasses and pass the beer. I’ve been a fool for traveling since the last quarter of the twentieth century began, and I made my virgin road trip to Los Angeles with the Slim Duck, her black Lab, Ginger, and her surly African gray parrot, Gray Dude. This was my first adventure born of reckless abandon. The Duck, a ravishing and fearless freedom fighter, threw her compass to the wind and put her barefoot fun locator to the accelerator. Along the way, we experienced everything from breakdowns to break-ins; from sleeping in the car to cantina bar fight