Big Bend - PhotoTrice

Sunset on Maxwell Scenic Drive

Big Bend National Park is one of the grand places we have gifted to ourselves as a nation. Maxwell Scenic Drive captures much of the flavor of Big Bend starting in the middle of the park and ending near the sheer vertical cut in the escarpment known as Santa Elena Canyon. Unfortunately watching the sunset on Maxwell Scenic Drive is an experience few people will ever have.

The park is tucked far out of the way in remote West Texas along the international border. Few visitors ever venture here which means you are likely to have the whole place to yourself during most of the year. With about a thousand square miles of hiking, biking, mountains, rivers and desert to explore unique experiences can be found everywhere. What you won’t find are artificial lights at night because the park is a dark sky preserve or lots of tourist amenities. This is quiet and pristine country.

I get to the Bend as often as possible and miss it as soon as I leave. It is just one of those places you never forget.

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Old School

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The Big Bend region of Texas is one of the grand American landscapes. There are only a few ways into the Bend and one runs through the town of Marathon. It has about four hundred residents, some essential services and a rather unique hotel. For travelers it’s a good place to stop for gas and coffee. In fact it is the last place to stop for anything for more than a hundred miles when heading into Big Bend National Park.

Old School

Marathon is where I met Billy Faier, sitting on the patio of my usual coffee shop playing the banjo. He was a veteran folk singer, friend of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, traveling companion of Woodie Guthrie, contemporary of Pete Seeger and practitioner of progressive politics. He was old school in ways that are hard to imagine in the twenty-first century. Now at eighty five years old, transplanted to this faraway spot.

It was clear he was someone special from the moment I heard his music. You don’t find many musicians in those parts playing folk tunes from the forties and fifties. Given where he was in remote West Texas it was like he had beamed in from another place and time.

We talked and I listened for about half an hour as he played and told stories. He fiddled with the banjo constantly as he spoke of his experiences. He had the wry sense of humor of a literate man well met. I bought a couple of CDs and told him I’d see him next time I was out that way. Sadly he died before I got back to Marathon. It was a privilege to meet Billy Faier.

More About Billy Faier

Billy archived some of his writing and music on the website http://billyfaier.com in his later years. It is an interesting view into a nearly forgotten world of itinerant musicians and progressive politics.

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Remembering Basin and Range

It is basin and range, all the way from where I was born in the Wasatch to the Sierras. With a mountain range every fifty to one hundred miles and wide flat valley between. Ecological islands following the route of the great continental subduction. Like wrinkles in a piece of cloth they track thinning crust which produces unique landscape and species. I miss that environment.

Here in Texas there is a place just as special that draws me back over and over again. It is the Big Bend and Chisos Mountains. I’m not a flatlander by inclination so any time I spend in or near mountains is special to me. My senses become a little keener, with eyes unconstrained by the works of men. You can dream primal dreams there.