day 5: Big Bend National Park
The Rio Grande smells like salt. Matthew says it might be from sulfates, maybe from agricultural runoff. The most polluted river in the country to separate us from Mexico. The macro is scenic—desert mountains, hills stretching for miles. It’s in the details that I start to see a story.
Across the river feels immediately different—it’s hotter, more humid and smells like horse poop. There’s trash strewn everywhere and dozens of trails leading everywhere, leading nowhere in particular. This is not the federally protected wild land that exists across the river. This is somewhere people live and work, out of necessity.
I cross back, stopping the middle to let the polluted waters rush past my legs. It’s not a ritual, not an absolution. It’s just water, mixed with past mistakes, with ambition and regret.
* * *
We hiked Emory Peak today—5.1 miles more or less straight towards heaven, then back down to Earth again. I saw three deer, stopped, watched, tried my best to talk to them. I stared one down, tried to tell it I meant no harm. It looked back at me, seemed a bit puzzled, on edge, on guard. Sometimes I wonder if it’s ok to tell them not to fear me. What if they make that mistake with another human? What if they trust me, keep trusting once I’ve learned to take care of myself, to hunt? Where will my allegiances lie then?
Deer have so much to teach me. I could barely make out the tracks. If I’d stayed for longer, I might have seen the bite marks on the shrub it was chewing on, the shrub I still don’t know the name of. If I’d been raised to see properly, I would have been able to see its tracks, to follow it, to talk to it.
How can I defend my landbase without knowing it intimately? I don’t want to be the biologist, the chemist, the naturalist, the geologist. I want to know the plants because I depend on them for food. I want the knowledge that is my birthright, the knowledge to take care of myself and give back to the land as it feeds me.
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