“A Big Bend Black Bear”
It had been a good and bad day for me. It was Tuesday, March 17, 2009, the last day of a three day visit to Big Bend National Park with Nathaniel Duban, my sixteen year old grandson. Time and again, in my life, events have happened, that at the time appeared to be bad; however, very often, the bad event would be the cause or reason for something good to happen. This has happened to me many times in my life.
On this day, Nathaniel and I had a lot of fun hiking and exploring in the park until near the end of the day when something very disappointing happened that caused something unusually exciting to happen.
For my birthday present to Nathaniel on his sixteenth birthday, I took him, during his spring school break, to Big Bend National Park. We left Houston, Texas, at 5:15 AM, on a Saturday morning and arrived at the Big Bend National Park Visitor’s Center at Persimmon Gap, after 620 miles of hard driving, that afternoon at about 5 PM.
For our first night, we had reservations at the Big Bend Resorts in Study Butte which is just outside the park on the western side. I had trouble getting reservations for us to stay within the park. People reserve for a year ahead the lodges and cottages in The Basin in the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend. So for several weeks before our departure, I called the reservation desk several times a day to see if they had any cancellations. Finally, I got a room in their lodges for Sunday night and in one of their coveted stone cottages for Tuesday, our last night.
Their cottages were built by the CCCs (Civilian Conservation Corp, a stimulus plan for The Great Depression) in the late 1930s and are located back in the woods and up the mountain from the lodges. The stone cottage we had reserved was named The Roosevelt Stone Cottage in honor of President Franklin Roosevelt. Saturday night and Monday night we had to go to Study Butte on the western side of the park to spend the night.
Nathaniel and I visited and explored the park from the west side at the tiny old village of Castolon to where all the RVs park at Rio Grande Village on the east side. We explored many of the gravel side roads and walked a number of the trails. I got hundreds of pictures that I can use for paintings. I taught Nathaniel how to look for the wildlife, as my father had taught me. I taught him how to observe the markings on the birds to identify them. We saw coyotes, mule deer, whitetail deer (the Chisos Mountains species), javalinas, rabbits and lots of birds.
The Chisos Mountains, in the center of the park, are the highest mountains and they are like a big doughnut. In the center of this mountainous doughnut is a beautiful wooded valley called The Basin. This is where they have their lodges, cottages, store and restaurant. The road into The Basin goes through a pass named Panther Pass. In this pass is the parking area for a hiking trail named the Lost Mine Trail. I had never walked this trail before because I knew it was very steep and went up the side of the mountain for several miles. Tuesday at lunch, Nathaniel talked me into walking up that trail. After lunch, since we might be back late, I went by the front desk to check in for the Roosevelt Stone Cottage. We intended to walk another trail from the cottage late that afternoon. The desk clerk checked us in and said to come back after 4 PM to get the key.
So we went up to Panther Pass and parked at the trail head. Officially, The Lost Mine Trail is 2.4 miles long and rises 1,100 feet to the top of Crown Mountain which has a height of 6,850 feet. In places, the rock path is just wide enough for two people to pass. No two rock steps on the trail are the same. According to my altimeter it was closer to or more than 1,200 feet to the top.
To understand better just how much of a climb this is, the observation deck in The Empire State Building, the tallest building in New York City, is 1,250 feet above the lobby floor. To climb the stairs, for the eighty-eight floors, from the lobby up to the observation deck in The Empire State Building is an easy climb, compared to the Lost Mine Trail, because all the stair steps are evenly spaced and there is a handrail. However, I would rather climb the Lost Mine Trail any day for the views are just spectacular. The view in the painting above is based on one of those views.
When we finally got back down from our hike on The Lost Mine Trail at about 5:30 PM, with aching feet and muscles, we went back to the lodges to get the key to the cottage. When I asked for the key, the clerk said the manager wanted to talk to me. A little voice in the back of my tired mind said this isn’t going to be good news. The manager said there was a “little problem” since their present guest in The Roosevelt Cottage had refused to leave. She offered us a smaller cottage with only one bed or one of their motel rooms with two beds. A great amount of protesting followed without success.
Greatly disappointed and angry, we took the motel room. We showered and went to dinner with me grumpy and mumbling. After dinner, I went back to again protest to the manager, however she said by law she cannot ask them to vacate the cottage. Since I was getting grumpier and more unpleasant by the minute, Nathaniel suggested we go for a ride and maybe we will see some wildlife.
We drove out of The Basin and down toward Rio Grande Village until almost dark and turned around. We had not seen anything. Just after dark, as we were going back though Panther Pass and by the Lost Mine Trail parking, I noticed one lone car remaining in the parking area for the trail and was thinking how foolish it was for them to be up on that trail after dark, when suddenly I was jolted out of my thoughts by Nathaniel yelling “There’s a bear, Papa, there’s a bear, there’s a bear!!!!” Stunned, I looked where he was pointing, and sure enough, just to the side of the road, not fifteen feet from the car door as we passed, stood a huge black bear watching us drive by. We stopped and backed up, and watched the big bear turn and walk slowly back up the mountain and into the woods.
So, by not getting The Roosevelt Cottage, we didn’t go on the late afternoon trail hike, but went on the car ride looking for wildlife and we got to see, up close, a big wild black bear. It is a very rare thing to get to see a black bear in Big Bend National Park. It was a breath-taking once-in-a-lifetime experience. As it turned out it was the highlight of our trip. I put a big black bear in this painting, in honor of the bear we saw. I also have him enjoying the view, as I so enjoyed the views, up on the Lost Mine Trail.
So, if someday, you are also having a “bad-hair day,” cheer up, for it may be that you are also going to get to be face-to-face with a big black bear before the day is over.
Cheers,
Acree
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