Teresa Cowan

One happy work crew! National Public Lands Day 2009

With a little help from our Friends!   National Public Lands Day 2009

by Natasha Moore

Every park needs a helping hand sometimes and we always love spending time with our friends. On Saturday, Sept 26^th 2009 our National Public Lands Day event was a perfect combination of helping hands, friendship, and fun. This year’s National Public Lands Day Event was a partnership between the staff at Big Bend National Park and The Friends of Big Bend hosting not only the friends group but also Sul Ross University and Terlingua High School students for a total of 42 volunteers! With the assistance of the Friends of Big Bend we kicked off the events for National Public Lands Day a little early enjoying a Root Beer Float Registration party on Friday evening with donations of root beer and ice cream from Saint Arnold’s and Forever Resorts. Fully fortified we divided up into three groups early Saturday morning. One group gathered their clippers and shovels and cleared vegetation from the Chisos Basin group campground. The second brigade headed down the Window Trail and clipped encroaching vegetation on the return hike for a total of five miles. A small party of hardy souls took off for the mountains on the Laguna Meadows trail hiking seven miles, clearing brush as they went. All three of these popular areas got a much needed vegetation hair cut. The group campground project alone produced one large trailer full of brush! This brush will be hauled to the northern area of the park to serve as erosion control and then in January will become part of another ongoing volunteer/seasonal project, “Reclaiming the Rosillos” as it is re-seed with native grasses to help establish vegetation. A big thank you to all of our volunteers, for this National Public Lands Day and for all of the volunteers to help out here at Big Bend.   

Jane Brown - NPS

Volunteer training in the field at Big Bend.

October 12, 2009

Volunteer Training

It is time to kick off the new session! Orientation for new volunteers began on Monday, October 12th,  We have several new volunteers and many new park employees that will be attending. Please welcome everyone to the park as you see them making the rounds, learning so many things that will be helpful in the upcoming four months of their duty session. Approximately 25 more returning volunteers will be appearing on the scene within the next 2-3 weeks. I know everyone will be glad to welcome both new and familiar faces to the Big Bend community for the Fall ’09 season!

Planting grasses for National Public Lands Day.

September 27, 2008

National Public Lands Day is a Tale of Two Grasses 

Students from Terlingua High School and members of the Society for Biology Conservation at Sul Ross University celebrated National Public Lands Day on September 27^th at Big Bend National Park with a two part work day. The group first planted native grasses in a disturbed area at Rio Grande Village. Historically the affected area was a wetland that had been drained for farmland prior to park establishment. Establishing native grasses is the final step, following earlier removal of drainage ditches and a mesquite thicket that had invaded the area. 

Jane Brown

Students from Sul Ross University and Terlingua High School help Big Bend National Park.

After lunch, the group relocated to Boquillas Canyon parking lot where they pulled Bufflegrass, an invasive species from Africa that is crowding out the native vegetation and creating a fire hazard. 

National Public Lands Day is dedicated to improving the public lands that are part of our local communities.  Fifteen people contributed a total of 75 hours of work to complete these projects.  Big Bend National Park appreciates of the willingness of local students to come out and offer their services for this day of park improvement.

Songs of Parting

By Bud Frankenberger

Like many other older volunteers, I have already lived a relatively long and satisfying life. I have raised my children, completed my career, and departed from fulltime work. “So what are you doing at Big Bend anyway?” I’m often asked, especially by those who know that I spent many years camping and hiking here when I lived and worked South Texas.

Usually, people expect practical answers: it’s a fairly warm winter retreat; it’s a way to cut expenses for winter travel; it’s a means of giving something back to a park that has influenced my life; or it’s an annual rendezvous with park friends I’ve known for years. There is, of course, some truth in each of these answers, but no combination of such practical reasons adequately accounts for my returning here. There are also many “intrinsic values” in living at Big Bend, reasons for being here that have no practical value such as being warm, cutting costs, making a contribution, or even visiting friends.

I’m also here for reasons that are whole and complete in and of themselves: the crimson skies at dawn over the Sierra del Carmen; the pink clouds and hillsides at sunrise and sunset; the evening shadows illuminating the tortured collapse of desert terrain; the heart pounding views of desert mountains and river flood plain from the South Rim or Emory Peak; the quiet murmur of a desert spring dripping over maiden hair fern; the startling flash of a cactus flower. Each of these is a “song of parting,” for each is fleeting and ephemeral, gone almost as soon as it begins.

Such events remind me that perhaps there are no greater values than those experienced in the present moment, that life is actually wonderful (truly full-of-wonder). And there are reminders everywhere that such intrinsic values have enriched the lives of people for many centuries in the Big Bend country. It is not, I believe, an accident that the campsites and mortar holes of native peoples, some who passed this way ten thousand years or more ago, are located where sunrise and sunset and clear night skies could be enjoyed. 

Ancient peoples whose names we never knew lived here. Seeing their stone hearths or finding their grinding holes in bedrock impart a sense of continuity and continuation. We are taking our place in the long hand of time that has scattered humans in the desert. In the evenings, I notice that even the mountains are melting, their hillsides and long alluvial fans resembling ice cream scoops on a summer day. The very ground on which we stand, the mountains upon which we hike are shape-shifters, no more permanent in geologic time than we are in historic time.

At Big Bend I am reminded that each of us is also a “song of parting,” taking our place among a caravan of travelers who have come before. And so I am here, in these winter days just before another birthday, to celebrate, with laughter like the canyon wren’s, that life is sweet, truly full of wonder, and best enjoyed in the immediate now. If I cannot stop time or recapture youth or unravel the mystery of life, I can at Big Bend embrace the gifts of creation, and express my personal and private gratitude for being part of the amazing phenomenon we call human life.

Linda Richardson - NPS

Jane Brown hiking at Blue Creek.

April 24, 2008

Volunteer Adjusts to Life in Big Bend

It all began on my birthday November 27, 2007….I was sitting at my computer daydreaming about what I would do with the next 6 months while waiting to resume my job at the architectural firm in June of 2008. Six months to do something I really wanted to do….no particular parameters other than I wanted to be somewhere warm and sunny and be able to hike in a new place. Having been a national park junkie since 1972, my first thought was to peruse the national park websites for places that were warm in the winter. Voilà! Big Bend came up on the screen. “Volunteer at Big Bend” …well now, there is a thought. So I did and that’s how I ended up at Big Bend on February 10, 2008, as the Assistant to the Volunteer Coordinator. 

I arrived around mid-morning having spent the night in Alpine and discovered that my intended housing was not ready and would not be ready anytime soon. I started to visualize sleeping in my tent for weeks on end as I went up to the lodge for a delicious lunch and left wondering if they had a meal plan for tenters. Fortunately an apartment was secured temporarily and I proceeded to move in, although since I flew out from North Carolina and bought a car in El Paso, there wasn’t much to move.

That evening the reality of the situation began to sink in….no cell phone, no regular phone, no computer, no television, no pillow, no alarm clock, no radio….where was I anyways? Had I landed on another planet? Good thing that I like to read, play my fiddle and do yoga.

Fortunately, Angelina Yost, the Volunteer Coordinator, had enough work to keep three people busy, so the work week passed quickly. I really enjoy administrative work; organizing things, keeping files straight and writing articles, so I was a shoe-in for the job. Everyone in the Administrative and Interpretive Divisions was very friendly and helpful, and I felt at home quickly. 

When my three days off begin, I couldn’t wait to start hiking. During my three months at Big Bend, I managed to hike the Lost Mine Trail twice, Blue Creek twice, The South Rim, Laguna Meadows, Grapevine Hills, Cattail Falls, Upper Cattail Creek, Pine Canyon, part of Juniper Canyon, Slick Rock Canyon, part of Marufa Vega, Upper Burro Mesa Pouroff, Santa Elena Canyon twice (the water was so low that you could hike the canyon) and the Window Trail. It took a few weeks to figure out who had a work schedule similar to mine and wanted to hike. I was fortunate to find several good hiking partners although I did hike by myself regularly. The best plan is to leave a note on your dashboard saying what time you left and were you are headed, so at least they will know where to start looking! My main objective during my stay at Big Bend was to NOT be the subject of a search and rescue mission, and in that I succeeded, thankfully. 

I thought that the weather was beautiful ….. one sunny day after another. You never needed to ask, “will we be able to hike on Saturday?”. The only thing that would have prevented you from being outside was your lack of initiative. What would I change about the experience? I would come a little better prepared. The alarm on your cell phone probably isn’t going to work. You know those phone cards that you can buy at Walmart for long distance calls? They are a great investment. Should you bring a laptop? Yes, if possible. Can you check your email without a laptop? Yes, but probably not the first few days that you are here. Would I do it again? Absolutely.