#big bend

[thomaswaynewolf]

[chaoticdesertdweller]

📸 Shane Huebel

[emilybeemartin]

Inktober Days 22-24

Day 22: "Scratchy"

Saguaro, cholla, prickly pear, pincushion, hedgehog, barrel cactus—how magical are these amazing plants? Iconic, unique, perfectly tuned to their environment. The pleats on a saguaro help it bulge and shrink to accommodate water availability, and the inhospitable trunks provide shelter for desert birds. 

Saguaro NP produces some of my favorite educational videos in the system, thanks in part to Feature Fridays with Ranger Freddy Gutiérrez Fernández-Ramírez. Just to add to the scritchy-scratchy theme of this prompt, some of the more unusual videos featuring Ranger Freddy show how to remove jumping cholla barbs from your skin and clothes. Rangers in Saguaro carry hair combs in their first aid kits—and it’s not to fix flat-hat hair!

Day 23: "Celestial"

In recent decades, park managers have come to recognize natural soundscapes and pristine night skies as tangible resources, just like clean air, land, and water. As I was entering the NPS field, a big effort was kicking off to designate certain units as Dark Sky parks, and Big Bend is the king of them all. It has the lowest levels of light pollution of any park in the lower 48 and is famous across the NPS for its breathtaking starscapes.

Protecting natural darkness opens up amazing new opportunities for visitors and rangers. I love assisting with night sky programs, because I remember how I felt when I first traveled away from the greater I-85 corridor and saw my first pristine night sky. It’s a primordial type of magic to see stars unveiled from urban lights and humid haze. And the good news is, unlike other endangered resources, dark skies are salvageable. When towns and cities take steps to reduce their light and air pollution, there’s no slow, agonizing recovery—the stars come right back. They’re just up there, waiting to peek at us again.

Day 24: "Shallow"

I have to confess—I used to look down on Congaree, despite it being the only national park in my home state of South Carolina. I thought of it as muggy, buggy, and a bit boring. But when I was researching wetland habitat for A Field Guide to Mermaids, I was stunned to realize just how special this landscape is. Our country used to be covered in immense floodplain forests along river corridors, but the natural flood cycles that made these lowlands so fertile also meant the land was prized for agriculture. Rivers were straightened, forests were cut down, and the rich soil was planted with crops. Because of this, Congaree protects the largest swathe of bottomland floodplain forest left in the United States.

And it’s a gorgeous park, as well. There’s something evocative and eerie about walking the elevated boardwalks over tea-colored water. Spooky cypress knees reach up through the water like outstretched arms, and several massive national and state champion trees loom up out of the thick forest.

This park may not have the accolades some of the grander, more storied parks have, but I’m proud that it’s my home state’s park and glad that it protects one of the last intact forests of its kind.

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Another big thank you to the folks who have preordered Thirty-One Days of National Parks: The Artbook! The Big Bend page features a little guide to starhopping from the Big Dipper out to other stars!

[typhlonectes]

Trans-Pecos Striped Whiptail, Big Bend National Park, Texas, USA

photograph by CA Hoyt | National Park Service

[mouseandboo]

Postcrossing US-10265156 by Gail Anderson Via Flickr: Postcard with a photo of claret-cup cactus growing in the higher elevations of Big Bend National Park in Texas. Sent to a Postcrossing member in Finland.

[klemannlee]

Varied Bunting - Christmas Mountains Oasis

[sspacegodd]

Free-range organic psychedelia.

[quixote-kid]

Sometimes you just need to get on the water. That’s the Rio Grande with Mexico on the other side. We stopped and has lunch on the Mexico bank and swam. Wonderful day.

[dangilman]

Big Bend June 21st, 2020

Big Bend National Park TX

[nessiopeia]

When I was a kid I convinced my family to go on a vacation to the middle of a desert because the dragonology book said there was a species of dragon there, and I’ve spent all my 20s trying to get back to being like that

[chaoticdesertdweller]

Highway 170 between Terlingua and Lajitas.

📸 Mark Cunningham

[katiajewelbox]

“Another Night at Balanced Rock” by artist Jim Mangum.

Source: Friends of Big Bend National Park Facebook page

[joe-england]

Watch "Let's talk about Idalia, evac, and tough guys...." on YouTube

[iwik-rytas]

landscape study #01 (photo by Caleb Fisher) - 140# CP

Ko-fi (commissions are OPEN!!!) - Instagram - InkBlot

did this to break from character (🗡️LAUGH!🗡️) artwork and cool off with something i'm not so used to doing but can paint quickly around an hour. first time back on cold press watercolor and this particular brand (Bee Paper 100% Cotton) absorbed so much water that it bled onto the backside... either my water control was just wack or this paper is not as i remembered as a teen.

[joef64]

Big Bend Landscape. 2018.

[klemannlee]

Pyrrhuloxia - Christmas Mountains Oasis