Big Bend. Big Divide.

When I was a strapping young lad I was once briefly employed at Big Bend National Park. I had been hired as a prep cook, and, based on what I had experienced in Yellowstone, I figured I could move up the ranks quickly until I learned that the guy above me had been flipping fried eggs there for the last fifteen years. The other employees told me to get out of there while I could. They said that the usual pattern was for a person to take a job, for the person's car to break down in the mountains, for the person not to have enough money to get the car repaired, and to be stuck in Big Bend indefinitely. Now don't get me wrong. Big Bend is a beautiful place, a sort of heaven in fact, but being stuck in heaven without the means to leave did not exactly appeal to me. So I blazed.

During my very brief stay, a javelina lived under the bunkhouse, and it could be heard rooting around beneath the floor. This, of course, is not a complaint. It is the sort of novelty I appreciate in life. Speaking of novel experiences, while alone on a hike in the back country one day, I cut through the brush and met a little black bear. The bear's head popped up from the scrub, and we stood looking one another in the face in absolute surprise, and then we both headed off in opposite directions.

Now there is talk of a wall. Regardless of which side of the aisle a person is on, this should be disconcerting. A wall in an age of satellite surveillance sounds a bit antiquated. And even when I was out in Big Bend, people spoke casually about low-flying planes and suspicious desert airstrips. A wall won't stop that. A wall would, however, be a danger to this fragile ecosystem and a blight on one of Texas' greatest treasures. 

Normally, I provide links to Texas publications on this blog, but a recent article on Big Bend in the LA Times is so well-researched and well-written that I decided to include it.  

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-border-wall-big-bend-2017-story.html