Big Bend National Park

 

In which Moominmama observes Texans' fight to stop Trump's wall within their national park...

Signage to "Stop the Wall" is visible miles before entering Big Bend National Park, and Moominmama was fortunate to witness one of the protests while visiting the park -- including a flotilla and gathering on the banks of the Rio Grande at Santa Elena Canyon. 

While Homeland Security has allegedly changed its mind about running a wall through the Rio Grande canyons inside the park, there's still enough federal activity that Texans don't trust that Trump is backing off.

Even if the government changes its plan to build a 30-foot physical wall in favor of a "technological" barrier involving motion detectors, one Texan told me this would still involve razor wire and flood lights affecting the many animals seek out water under cover of darkness. 

Other locals report federal officials are still trying to get access to land in and near the Rio Grande and threatening to take it by eminent domain if landowners don't cooperate with efforts to house workers and equipment near the park. As a result, no one seems to trust that this fight is over. 

Moominmama got to witness a lot of Texas pride. The prospect of private land being taken by eminent domain sure doesn't float here! 

A little background from the Texas Tribune on April 3: "The Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector, which encompasses 517 miles of the 1,950-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border, has historically been the least busy of the nine sectors. In fiscal year 2025, Border Patrol recorded 3,096 apprehensions in the Big Bend sector — accounting for just 1.3% of the 237,538 apprehensions recorded across the entire U.S.-Mexico border. " 

And as one of the speakers noted at the protest on April 4: most of those apprehensions happen on roads and within communities, not along the river. As you can see here, the cliffs that the Rio Grande has carved, and contributed to its preservation as a national park, provide a substantial barrier to crossing from Mexico already. Imagine trying to scale your way down one of those 1,500-foot cliff faces!

Moominmama is camped in an area of the national park called the Chisos Basin about an hour's drive north of the Rio Grande. I am surrounded by the Chisos Mountains, volcanic peaks that rise over 3,000 feet above the Chihuahuan desert. 

Park rangers say this national park has essentially three different ecosystems: the mountains, the desert and the riparian zone along the Rio Grande. 

Though I touched down on the latter when I went to see Santa Elena Canyon, most of my hikes so far have been in the Chisos, including a climb up to the Lost Mine Peak, where I got this view.

But I think my favorite hike so far has been in the basin to the "Window," an opening in the rocks where water that collects in the mountains flows down through this gap and drops to the desert floor. 

This is the dry season so there's no water flowing now, but there's some rain in the forecast, and if it fills the creek, I may do this hike a second time!

The campground where I am staying in the Chisos Basin was largely built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. whose mark is everywhere in the stone walls and trails of this park. A multi-million dollar plan developed over many years was finally going to upgrade the facilities here, including a water system that failed and required emergency repairs in December. 

Chisos Basin was going to close in May to allow for two years of concentrated work on repairs and upgrades. But the costs have gone up since first designed, and word came while I was here that the project has been called off. 

Somehow we have $46.5 billion to build an idiotic wall in manifestly unsuitable places, but not enough money to invest in maintaining our national parks. And as Trump's latest land management hires and budgets demonstrate, he's eager to hand it all over to mining and resource extraction anyway.

So I don't expect the protests at Big Bend will be over anytime soon. And all of us, from north to south, had better be prepared to fight for our public lands. If you want to know more about the fight in Big Bend, check out: NoBigBendWall.org. 

And here's a pretty picture of cactus flowers to end with! I'll leave the mountains shortly and wrap up my stay at Big Bend with several days by the Rio Grande. More to come next week!