Devil’s River

Solitude. That is the gift we have been luxuriating in over the last few days. The Devil’s River State Park is in the middle of nowhere – just wide open space. We were all alone on the 22 mile gravel road into the park aside from the sheep and cattle at the ranches, and the deer, birds, and other animals camouflaged from us. One of the ranchers had dead animals hanging on either side of his property – a string of a dozen fox on one side, a bobcat on the other. They were certainly freshly killed, but his message and his audience… who knows. But, his adorable little lambs were certainly worth saving. It took us an hour to get down that road with all of its dips and hills but we didn’t tire of the scenery. Even in the winter, the land offered drifts of prickly pear cactus, bands of yellow grasses, and hillsides of shrub and rock.

There are 20,000 acres in the park and only seven sites to camp, each one in its own setting. We were higher up looking ahead to a small hill, out to the sunrises and sunsets on either side, and a dry river bed below. It was several miles to the floor of the river only accessible by foot. We spent time on the river, Mike fishing and me birding. We didn’t catch any fish but we did see lots of turtles, a nutria (which looks much like a beaver minus the big, flat tail) napping on its own island of dry grass, two enormous black vultures, a white egret, and a variety of smaller birds. We listened to the springs spilling crystal clear water into the green-colored river.

The night sky offered us even more solitude. The Milky Way, clearly defined, dense with its cloudy foam spreading from horizon to horizon, and the sparkling diamonds of stars showing off the magnificence of the black sky. Without any light pollution it’s amazing how it all seems so soft and deep – like a blanket enveloping us from above. I just finished reading a book, Silence: In The Age of Noise, by Ering Kagge, in which he contemplates how “eyes cannot gaze at themselves, though you can study them via the stars”. He believes the stars (and I’m paraphrasing here) are part of the world of science which can be quantified and therefore finite, yet the inner workings of your mind are endless. It made for good pondering while stargazing.