On October 30th we drove into Big Bend National Park for the first time in our six years of service on roads wet with rain. We have enjoyed late winter or early spring rain showers in the desert, but have never seen it like it is this season. When we left in early February 2013, we drove through vast areas of West Texas with even the cacti and creosote bush dead or dying from the several years of drought.
This visit, though, introduces us to a very different desert. With the rains that have been frequent this fall, beginning in September, the parched landscape has turned, if not lush, at least lovely. Mesquite and creosote bush are green shrubs. Grasses along the roadside, most the invasive Buffle Grass once encouraged to graze cattle that the desert's natural grasses would not support, have grown to fruitful seed-heads. Even the ocotillo, a thorny plant that usually looks like clumps of six-feet tall dead sticks, is verdant with its thick covering of tiny leaves. The guayacan is decorated as though for an early Christmas with its holly-like berries. Cenizo, sometimes known as 'purple sage' is living up to its name with an array of lavender bouquets.
Yesterday the sky was robin-egg blue with but a few puffs of clouds on the horizon, but we've awakened this morning to a foggy, dreary day with puddles in the parking lot from the rain that lasted the entire night. Next spring the Park will be a veritable greenhouse when the yucca, agave, lechugilla, send up their central flower stalks and the cacti compete in exploding blooms.
For the time being, campers are being drenched in their tents and hikers are hunched under hoodies, taking shelter next to huge boulders. Coyotes look like wet dogs and the male tarantulas appear to be staying in until their courting can resume in the sun. We'll probably be bored in the Visitor Center today, as few will choose to explore the Park with their windshield wipers beating a dull rhythm.
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