Over the Christmas holidays, we went on a camping trip to Big Bend
National Park. It is in South Texas, on the Mexican border, covering the
region where the Rio Grande makes a sweeping, lazy turn.
The park is a desert wonderland, complete with 100-mile vistas, eroded
mountain faces and miles of canyons. Of course, you will have to drive
hundreds of miles from civilization to reach there and will have to put
up with undistinguished food all along the way. But the park, when you
get there, is worth every
highway mile and every morsel of dripping fat.
The national park is not exactly virgin territory -- it has served as,
among other things, a shanty town and as a military outpost. Yet, when you
get out on a trail and see miles of desert landscape, you can't help wondering
whether your being there is really helping any. Wouldn't it be better
if all the national parks were completely cordoned off?
But then, if they are closed, who would those parks benefit?
If you ever thought that the Zen question, "if
a tree falls in an uninhabited forest, did it make a sound?", was pedantic,
please do try to answer this one.
