Aside from remote stretches of sandy beach on South Padre Island, I can say without reservation that Big Bend is probably the best slice of outdoors this sprawling flat state has to offer. Cradled against a grand turn of the Rio Grande River, and sharing 118 desolate miles with Old Mexico crawling with dope smugglers and human coyotes, and wacko nut-jobs on both sides of the border laying low or on the lam, Big Bend National Park and the surrounding, inhospitable terrain elevates the wild and wooly, and the wonderful, to superlative extremes. Harsh, prickly country unique and brash in that romantic Texas kind-of-a-way, I continue to dredge up fond memories of our autumn visit a few years ago; the solid image of a large, reddish-brown mountain lion, or cougar, sporting a long tail, gliding gently across the road on our drive down from the castle of jagged cliffs enveloping Chisos Basin. I also recall, rather vividly, getting trapped in a shoot as we scrambled into steep-walled Santa Elena Canyon while someone on the film-set down by the river's edge screamed in a blood-curdling tizzy, "Get the #@%* out of the way! We're trying to make a movie!"

---

Support Canada Free Press

---