Big Bend

Well, if I thought I was in the west in the previous post, I think I’ve now been transported to a completely different planet. This place is mind-blowing with its incomprehensible vastness and startling geography.


I only wish my little Nikon “Coolpix” camera was able to convey the enormous distances and the gargantuan size of the mountains and rock formations that meet the eye in all directions. Big Bend is literally at the end of the road here in the lower left corner of Texas where the Rio Grande loops down and swings back north again – the “big bend” in the river. Very few people live in this pocket of Texas, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island. Driving through the Big Bend, you feel as if you’ve landed on a foreign, uninhabited planet. There is a great urge to step from your vehicle and walk to the unusual sights in the distance. But you’d never get there. It’s just too far. Just be glad you can see them.



I’ve joked in the past that someone should open a resort where people can go who wish to get away from all the things that bombard us daily: internet, cell phones, email, TV, etc.
Now I’ve found a place where this happens naturally. No cell phone calls make it in or out of Big Bend. The internet is unreachable. Nothing comes on my television. The dashboard radio endlessly “seeks.” This must be why it is so amazingly peaceful here: nothing is vibrating along much of the electromagnetic spectrum. Your very atoms have ceased to buzz.

Come here to get unbuzzed.

A half mile down the road from where I’m camped is the Rio Grande. I walked there earlier today and later rode my bike over just about sunset. It looks less like a river and more like a large stream. Just across the water is Mexico, looking like more of Big Bend. A very calm and beautiful sight. It’s hard to imagine you're staring across an international border.