Backpacking in Big Bend National Park

My wife Tehya and I, together with 7 close friends, just completed the 32 mile outer mountain loop in Texas’s Big Bend National Park. The desert wilderness was in bloom, and it filled our hearts with joy.

The quotes below express the exquisite spirituality of the desert better than I can:

“What draws us into the desert is the search for something intimate in the remote.”

—Edward Abbey

“Like water in the desert is wisdom to the soul.”

—Edward Counsel

“Nothing, not even the sea, has seemed to affect men more profoundly than the desert. … To those who listen, the desert speaks of things with an emphasis quite different from that of the shore, the mountains, the valleys or the plains. … To the contemplative it speaks of courage and endurance of a special kind. … And of all the answers to the question ‘What is the desert good for?’ Contemplation is perhaps the best.”

—Joseph Wood Krutch