The photo is actually in Canyonlands, but it’s probably as close as anything I have that looks like Big Bend National Park. I’m heading down there for three weeks in January and am eagerly awaiting roaming the Chihuahuan Desert and Chisos Mountains. It’s one of the least visited national parks because it’s hundreds of miles from any metropolis. It’ll be a lonely trip, but now with the snow at home I can ski and get fit and be able to hike all day if the solitude becomes oppressive.
As Ed Abbey said, “Someday I shall…become an ancient baldheaded troglodyte with a dirty white beard tucked in my belt, be a shaman, a wizard, a witch doctor crazy with solitude...of course a man would go mad from the beauty and the loneliness, both equally mysterious. But perhaps it would be—who can say?—a kind of blessed insanity, like the bliss of a snake in the winter sun, a buzzard on the summer air.” (Slickrock)
