Big Bend National Park is just one of many wonderful and truly scenic sites in Texas. It is located approximately 90 miles south of Fort Davis in southwest Texas. The Indians said that after making the Earth, the Great Spirit simply dumped all the leftover rocks on the Big Bend.

Big Bend National Park can be thought of as having three natural divisions: the river, the desert, and the mountains. River and mountains serve as counterpoints to the desert. The river is a linear oasis. The mountains function - in relation to their arid surroundings - much like an island of temperate life.

Sunset at the Study Butte entrance

We should not be amazed that Big Bend animals are so curious and so well adapted to desert life. Such adaptations are what life is all about.

The popular image of desert-dwelling plants is the cactus, uncommonly adept at getting water and then miserly about hanging onto it. There are other strategies or adaptations. One is waiting. Many desert annuals, unlike their counterparts in temperate climes, simply wait out the rains in their seed stage of life. If the rains don't come one year, the seed simply remains dormant. Some seeds are coated with chemicals that inhibit germination. Unless enough rain falls to remove this inhibitor, the seed ignores the wetting. When the bigger rains come, the almost dormant desert explodes in awesome beauty!

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