Big Bend National Park isn't for everyone. I suspect the majority of visitors oooh and ahhh and snap tons of pictures, then never return—especially those who vacationed there during the sweltering summer months. Summer in Big Bend lasts eight months. The rest of the year, it's just miserably hot in the afternoon. Unless it's windy and frozen.

Thirty-some years ago, we planned our first Big Bend adventure to last two weeks. We left after ten days. We would've left sooner, but we were visiting friends who worked in the Chisos Basin and we didn't want to look like wilderness wimps. Admittedly, it was a mistake to tour Big Bend on the heels of a Maui vacation. Hawaii is soft. Green. Easy. Wet. Big Bend country is harsh. Brown.  Potentially deadly. Arid. People are the only things that hurt you in Maui. Everything in the Chihuahuan Desert either pricks, sticks, stings or bites, and there, even a tiny lapse in caution can prove fatal.

We didn't really leave early—we fled toward the comforts of home.

I can't remember the stream of conversations that prompted us to return to Big Bend the following year, but we agreed we needed to give the desert another go. Our friends were still there, but that wasn't the only reason we returned. This second trip, we made it the entire two weeks. I remember driving away slowly, savoring our last moments in the desert. On this second trip, we camped in the same site up in the Basin. But we no longer felt the need to spend most of our time perched on camp stools precariously balanced atop our picnic table. (This first seating option had offered protection from the packs of javelinas that cruised the campground at dusk. We felt sitting on top of our table also kept us farther from the fangs of those rattlesnakes we believed to be hiding under every rock..) We returned year after year. We still do.

What changed for us? Why did we return to a place we'd fled from with a sense of fear laced with aversion?

Knowledge helps insecurities. Thanks to friends Beth and George, we'd learned a lot about the Big Bend, despite our initial temerity. Nothing killed us that first trip, and that was encouraging. But I think we returned because the Chihuahuan Desert, the Chisos Mountains, the Sierra del Carmens had quietly pierced  their way into our souls, the way a cactus spine impales a hiker's calf right through his jeans. It starts with just a prick, something you ignore. It burrows into your flesh while you're busy being thirsty. It hides deep in your muscle, eventually festering up to remind you of that splendid hike, of the perseverance that got you over rocks... through catclaw...past tarantulas, scorpions, giant lizards. It feels good when you pull the needle-like spine out. That doesn't mean it wasn't worth a little discomfort along the way, because cactus is part of the package Big Bend offers. The older I get, the more miraculous nature seems. Exploring a landscape that can kill me makes each breath a little sweeter. Respecting it isn't the same as fighting the desert. It is what it is, and when we travel there now, Jim and I become part of Big Bend's unchanging while ever-changing persona.

 I often get so involved in a place, I'll paint several landscapes in a row from there. For example, Jim calls this winter my Big Bend phase. We spent three weeks down there over the holidays, and I've done as many paintings since returning to the studio. So it's ironic that a painting that sold yesterday, while of Big Bend, isn't one I produced during this "phase".  I did it last spring after a day trip there—we were hunting bluebonnets rumored to be in bloom near the river. We saw one spindly bluebonnet. A view toward Mexico enchanted, though, and I painted it because it seems to represent spirit of the Big Bend, a land of harsh contrasts laced in rugged beauty. The pastel shows the woven blues and pinks and mauves of the Sierra del Carmens behind starkly white akaline rock from which spindly ocotillo stretch spiny trunks and red blossoms toward a blue sky. Hard and soft. Nothing matches, nothing blends. Each piece of the Big Bend is on its own, struggling. Surviving. Inviting us in.

I love this painting, loved painting it. I held it out of the gallery, entered it in a couple of national shows, hung onto it longer than I usually keep a painting without offering it for sale. But after selling several pieces right before Alpine's ArtWalk/Gallery Night, Kiowa Gallery suddenly needed it on the wall for that show. I understand it found a good home yesterday, and I'm glad someone else appreciates the Big Bend enough to live with this image I created.

There is a saying around here that after God created the heavens and the earth, He tossed whatever materials he had left across the far west of Texas. That's how He made the Big Bend. That's why it's so special.

I'm so glad He didn't use a standard template. Anyone can appreciate Hawaii. I think He offers Big Bend country to those of us who feel the need to stretch the boundaries of our souls a little farther.


WITH LEFTOVERS FROM CREATION       Big Bend National Park, Texas
 10" x 20" pastel on archival paper    $1750    (SOLD)   Lindy C Severns 2008

If you feel safer on top of your picnic table, pile those lawn chairs up there and enjoy the view. No one will laugh at you.
Not to your face, anyway.
Okay. I lied. The javelinas will laugh. It gives them something to do. Stretches their boundaries...