Tag: Photo Friday

Smooth

Water for Horses No1
Water for Horses No1
The terrain of the Edwards Plateau is anything but smooth. The early morning ground fog turns rugged landscape into fiction. It is impossible to see the ground falling away just beyond the edge of the water tank into a gully fifty feet below. A quarter mile beyond is another arid hill top. The geography goes on mile after mile broken occasionally by a fence or a gate. It is big country that trains the eye to see wide angle vistas. Those who live there see near or far but not middle distance.

Landscape 2016

Ocotillo Before Dawn
Ocotillo Before Dawn – Big Bend National Park
Most people don’t think of Chihuahuan Desert as an interesting place. The intense daytime heat and nighttime cold are far from hospitable. Most of the plants and animals adapted to the environment don’t attract much attention. You really have to spend time out in the desert at the edges of the day to see the beauty that exists there. Hunters and prey are active when the light is low and temperatures moderate.

People driving through Big Bend will probably not even notice Ocotillo in the landscape. Except in extreme rainy conditions they look like tall dead sticks blowing in the wind. Chances are the dead looking sticks are very much alive just waiting for a little moisture to bloom. Lots of desert plants are like that. The landscape is mostly barren until a rainstorm sweeps through. A few days later there are flowers but only where the rain fell. The desert is full of surprises.

Golden

Hill Country General Store and Post Office
Hill Country General Store and Post Office
The climate of the Southwest preserves remnants of our past long enough for them to become alien to our modern selves. Less than a hundred years ago there was a thriving community of farmers and ranchers who depended on this general store and post office. They knew one another in ways that are uncommon in the modern urban world we live in. They were connected through generations of family ties.

Today the land is mostly empty. Sold and resold into larger parcels for factory farming or simply left fallow. A new generation of weekend gentleman ranchers has also returned to use the land for recreation. Unfortunately not in time to meet their neighbors at the general store.

It is tempting to romanticize the old Southwest. We should remember that people were not forced off the land. Instead they chose a better life for themselves with more opportunities for their children. These are simply the bleached bones left behind by progress.