Chisos: Ghosts or Forest People? Road Trip Part IV

Chisos Mountains, which either means ghosts/spirits (Catalan/Spanish) or people of the trees (Apache). Both are very fitting.

We trucked it through Texas with as few stops as possible. Remember, it was June, so it was hot and my little truck doesn't have air conditioning, so we rolled along Interstate 10 with the windows down. The sweltering rush of air from the speed of the truck did little to cool our skin. We needed to get as high as possible (elevation-wise, dude) to get out of the burnanation, so we were headed for Big Bend National Park. We got up above 5,000 feet in the early evening and let the magic of nature wash over us, the clear night sky filled with pinprick stars whispered away the stress from the clanging and whooshing little metal pods that had hurtled around us at breakneck speeds all day.

On June 6th, in the Chisos Basin Campground, I wrote the following in my long-neglected journal:
"It's a warm, blustery night below the stars and I am free once again. I will not recount the trivial yet monumental misery of the past few months [at school] because it is over and done with--right now I am appreciating right now, here. This place is stunning and the heat adds to its essence--when I was here last in January 2011 (wow, 3.5 years just scoots by, doesn't it) it was cool enough to not feel particularly like a desert but now, in the heat of June, it is full-fledged HOT and it feels so real. The Texas desert...Being here, at 5,000+ feet, could not be more perfect for my soul. Sleeping outside with a breeze to keep the bugs away and a clear shy with stars--YES. Tomorrow we will hike up to Boot Springs to find a Colima Warbler--a 9-mile round trip hike into spectacular country, mountain lion country, to search for a tiny bird (my kind of adventure!). For now I am going to turn out my light and enjoy the wind and the [relatively] cool air while it lasts."

Cactus Wren, Campylorhynchus brunneicapillus, on our trail sign.

We met many facemelting birds the next day and one very exciting face-tingling herp. First, the warbler--Colima Warbler, Oreothlypis crissalis--is only found in this mountain range in the US. The rest of their population is in Mexico. They are also a part of one of my favorite groups of warblers (I say group rather than genus because, well, I liked it better when they were Vermivora) so I was excited about finally seeing this one and completing my vermivora/oreothlypis species list (SOOO NERDY. "Completing" taxonomic groups [which you can break down into varying sizes depending on how specific you get] is really fun. I've completed all the North American nuthatches, for example [that's an easy one], but I still need Brown Jay to complete my N.A. Jays). Anyway, we had only been hiking for a short while, maybe 2 or 3 miles, and I heard an unfamiliar yet familiar song. It sounded like a Vermivora song, which I guess really is an Oreothlypis song, but whatever. My first instinct was right and we immediately spotted him singing from the very tip of a tiny snag. Adrenaline rush, then relaxing afterglow while we basked in the glory of this tiny puff of feathers for well over 20 minutes before he popped down into the brush and then up the canyon.

Colima Warbler, singing as loud as birdly possible.

Insolence or yoga?

Later in the hike, just plugging mindlessly down the trail, heat setting in, Ben yelled and jumped back. On the steep hillside next to us, about shoulder level, was a Rock Rattlesnake (either Banded or Mottled, hard to tell the subspecies' apart), Crotalus lepidus. EPIC.

We didn't see any mountain lions, but the journey really solidified how much I love Big Bend NP. Our last night camping there, we sat through an incredible and very intense lightning storm that surrounded the bowl of mountains we were in the basin of. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, and it was a crazy way to spend a night--completely unprotected from the elements, electric current coursing through the warm night, cold drops the size of Gobstoppers cracking open on the dusty ground. The cacti drank well that night.