National Geographic - August 2022

of cement produced in India has a smaller “The energy added by them lowers the
carbon footprint than the global average— energy required to maintain the kiln tempera-
the result of recovering more waste heat from flue ture,” says T.R. Robert, the head of the plant.
gases, blending cement with fly ash from Using waste has helped the plant cut its coal
coal-fired power plants, and using green alter- consumption by 15 percent.
natives as fuel.
Similarly, other industries, including steel, are
At a cement plant owned by the Dalmia Bharat accelerating their efforts to improve energy effi-
Group in Ariyalur, Tamil Nadu, the factory’s ciency, prodded by a “perform, achieve, trade”
engineers are using nonbiodegradable munic- program that allows companies to sell credits
ipal garbage along with industrial refuse, such earned by exceeding mandated efficiency targets
as paint sludge and rubber, as fuel for the kiln, to companies that fall short. The government is
where limestone and clay are heated in the pro- especially keen to improve energy efficiency in
cess of making cement. Burning such wastes new homes and commercial buildings, which
normally creates toxic smoke, but they can be are being built at a dizzying pace.
incinerated at very high temperatures without
polluting the atmosphere. “Whatever the country built in the last 40, 50
years, we expect to build 80 percent of that in

I N D I A’ S E N E R G Y C H A L L E N G E 107

In Nikol, an upscale
neighborhood in
Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s
most populous city,
solar panels on houses
and apartment build-
ings absorb the day’s
last sunlight. From rural
villagers to city dwell-
ers, Indians increasingly
are taking advantage
of the ample sunshine
to generate electricity.



the next 10 years,” says Abhay Bakre, the head of
India’s Bureau of Energy Efficiency. “And most
of it will be air-conditioned.” A lot of this construc-
tion is happening in a hundred cities that the
government is upgrading to “smart cities”—by
adding new urban areas with energy-efficient
buildings and putting in place improved infra-
structure, such as better waste management
facilities and public transportation.

The government has updated its energy
conservation code for new large commercial
buildings, and Bakre is optimistic that advances
in design and materials will greatly reduce their
energy burden. “If you ask an architect to design
a building today,” Bakre says, “he’s not going to
come up with the same design as 10 years ago.
He’ll make better use of natural light; he’ll use
better insulation, efficient lighting, efficient
air-conditioning, pumps, water services.”

O N VISITS TO INDIA In a blue aura from
LED lights, vendors set
over the past two decades, up shop in Delhi on
I have seen the growing a day when the air was
so thick with pollu-
presence and affluence tion it was classified as
hazardous to human
of its middle class. The health. Using LEDs,
which need relatively
changes in lifestyle are little energy, is one
of many ways India is
visible not just in the shiny looking to reduce its
planet-heating green-
malls of big cities, such as Delhi and Mumbai, house gas emissions.

but also in smaller towns, where narrow streets controlled, hot water gushed from showers,
and toilets flushed with the force of a minia-
once filled with bicycles and rickshaws now ture cyclone. Such conveniences are unexcep-
tional for travelers in developed countries, but
teem with cars and motorbikes. In Dhanbad they are only now becoming a part of life for
many Indians. When I returned to the United
I talked with an automobile salesman named States, I called Solanki to ask if his message
to his compatriots about austere living wasn’t
P.J. Kumar at a swanky dealership staffed with overly idealistic and rather unfair when people
in a uent nations weren’t being asked to give
nattily dressed men and women. He told me up their comforts.

that 20 years ago business owners bought most He laughed. “If we get into this kind of argu-
ment about who needs to reduce consumption
of the cars he sold. “Now government workers first, then doomsday will not be far,” he said.
“America could make the counterargument:
and young professionals are easily able to afford Fine, we’ll consume less, but your country has

cars. The customer base has grown a lot,” he

added. Kumar started selling cars three decades

ago at what was then Dhanbad’s only dealer-

ship. Now there are a dozen.

I began reporting this article by riding along

with Chetan Singh Solanki as he journeyed

through Madhya Pradesh to spread his man-

tra of energy self-reliance. After I left him, it

was hard not to feel a little guilty about staying

in hotels where the rooms were temperature

110 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

too large a population. Why don’t you reduce I couldn’t help but despair at how puny this
your number of people?” accomplishment seemed in the face of the
climate crisis. The moral force of his message
His message, though utopian, wasn’t going was undeniable: Boundless consumption is not
unnoticed, he insisted. Since we’d met, his foun- sustainable even if we unlock new supplies of
dation had begun offering an online energy lit- renewable energy. But will Solanki’s fellow citi-
eracy program that explains the environmental zens in India, and in the rest of the world, listen?
costs of fossil fuels and suggests ways of reduc-
ing one’s carbon footprint. At a recent event, a His hope is that India will lead by example.
man who’d taken the course came on stage and “I’m going to spread this message in India and
announced it had prompted him to cancel plans see how people take it,” he told me. “Then I’ll
to buy an air conditioner for his home, Solanki take it to other countries.” j
told me. “He said, ‘My wife was angry, but after
doing the training herself, she agreed.’ ” Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, born and raised in India,
is a National Geographic contributing writer who
Inspiring this one couple to become more lives near ashington, D.C. Arko Datto, based
energy conscious seemed admirable—and in Kolkata, photographs long-term projects on
I’m certain Solanki will persuade others—but social, political, and environmental issues.

I N D I A’ S E N E R G Y C H A L L E N G E 111

Daylight at the crest
of Big Bend’s 12.5-mile
South Rim Trail offers
a sweeping view of
northern Mexico’s
Chihuahuan Desert.
Created in 1944, the
national park comprises
more than 800,000
acres and is bordered
by the Rio Grande.

In Big Bend National Park’s desert borderlands,
the frontier legend of West Texas comes to life

on a landscape that’s full of surprises.

WHERE THE MYTH LIVES

By R O B E R T D R A P E R
Photographs by B R Y A N S C H U T M A A T

113



LEFT ABOVE

Every morning Molly Cowboy Lane Shaw
Ferguson Rodriguez, takes a break in the
who lives in Ojinaga, bunkhouse of the
Mexico, drives across sprawling, 110-year-old
the border into Texas Kokernot o6 Ranch
for her job as band near Alpine. Cattle
director at Alpine High raising is the region’s
School. In the evenings main industry, but it’s
she sings and plays precarious because of
guitar as the leader of severe weather and the
a mariachi band. vagaries of the market.

W H E R E T H E M Y T H L I V E S 115

THE BLACK BEAR AND The abandoned stone
HER TWO SMALL CUBS farmhouse of James
and Melissa Sublett,
WERE FORAGING who settled here in
IN A DENSE WOODLAND 1913, lies just off Ross
Maxwell Scenic Drive
OF MESQUITES, inside Big Bend. The
Subletts made the most
junipers, and Texas madrones when I encountered them some of their rough habitat;
20 yards off to my right. The mother bear stopped but did not they were among
rear up. No doubt she had heard me coming. She looked me over. the earliest large-scale
I was her inferior in every way that counted at this moment. farmers in the area.

I was hiking alone that October morning on the 12.5-mile-long
South Rim Trail in Big Bend National Park in West Texas. I’d
arrived at the park just after dawn, escorted by jackrabbits and
roadrunners along the highway, and for the first two hours of
steady ascent the only signs of life had been butterflies, a couple
of bright yellow Scott’s orioles, and a backpacker who was just
returning from a solo campout.

After taking a break at the South Rim, with its commanding
view of the surprisingly verdant north Mexican desert, I’d begun
to see a few other hikers coming up from the opposite direction.
One of them told me that she had spied the mother and her cubs.
Although signs throughout the park warn tourists about its more
formidable wildlife, no more than 40 black bears live there; I
had yet to come across one in nearly three decades of frequent
visiting. And black bears rarely attack humans.

Still, I had heard back in the town of Marathon, Texas, some-
thing about this particular bear that gave me pause—she’d lost
the third of her cubs several days earlier when it had strayed
onto a road a few miles from here and had been hit by a vehicle.

Now here she was, and here I was.
I looked away and resumed casual strides while not-so-casually
wondering: Do bears seek vengeance? Do they mourn? Then the
trail took a sharp turn, and I watched as the dark and diminished
tribe slowly receded into the woods. The mother, I decided, was
no different from my own, who had also lost a child and had

116 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

responded by redoubling her maternal commit- separating the two countries. Arizona’s Organ
ment to the two that still lived. Pipe Cactus National Monument is also a bor-
derland park, but it has been fenced off from the
To take in the encompassing abundance of United States’ southern neighbor since 2006,
wildlife at famed national parks like Yellowstone, after the shooting of a park ranger four years
Denali, and the Everglades is its own enriching earlier by a Mexican national.
experience. But such communions achieve a dif-
ferent significance in the desert. They remind By contrast, no similar physical barrier has
you that life is at the same time precious and been erected along Big Bend’s long and rugged
where you least expect to find it. Above all, life in border, with the result that the park, even while
the Chihuahuan Desert that comprises Big Bend’s minding its own business, has been continually
1,252-square-mile expanse is stubborn and easily thrust into debates over U.S. sovereignty and
misunderstood but also impossible to forget. national security. The specters of drug traffick-
ing, illegal immigration, and even terrorism have
There’s another dimension to America’s 27th drawn scores of federal agents to the periphery
national park, one that adds a layer of territorial of Big Bend. And that is its paradox: One of
intrigue: Big Bend shares a 118-mile border with America’s most off-the-grid national parks, a
Mexico, roughly 6 percent of the boundary

W H E R E T H E M Y T H L I V E S 117

GUADALUPE REMOTE AND RUGGED

MOUNTAINS Big Bend, named for a large curve in the Rio Grande that forms
its southern border, is one of the contiguous United States’
N.P. largest and most remote national parks. It’s home to an entire
mountain range, fossils dating back 500 million years, and
Midland unusually rich biodiversity thanks in part to its three distinct
ecosystems: river canyons, desert floor, and isolated mountains.
El Paso Alpine T E X A S

Direction Marathon Austin
of view
BIG

BEND

N.P.

Chisos Mountains range Grande GrandeLA LINDA DEL CARMEN
Bears and mountain lions ioINTERNATIONAL BRIDGE
roam among oak and Sierra Larga (closed)
pine trees in this “sky Rio C
island,” which rises SIERRA
4,500 feet above the
desert floor—and can
be 20 degrees cooler.

To Sierra del Caballo Muerto
Marathon Telephone
M t s. Boquillas
Santiago Persimmon Canyon Canyon
Gap
Rio Grande Boquillas
Village del Carmen

R o s i l l o s M ts. Balanced R
Rock
To Alpine C hMr itsst.m a s Elephant Tusk
Panther Junction Punta
de la Sierra
(park headquarters)

Chisos Emory Peak SSiearnraVidceente
Basin Mariscal Mt.
7,825 ft
HISOS (2,385 m) Mariscal
Canyon
Burro South Rim
Mesa T
MOUNTAINS A
T
E
S
S
ROSS MAXWELL
Study Butte- SCENIC DRIVE Mule Ears E
Terlingua Peaks X
IC
D O
E
Famed fossils IT M
N
Big Bend’s fossil record U

features 40-foot crocodiles E
R
and one of the largest ptero- T

saurs ever found. The record Castolon
extends from the park’s

oceanic beginnings to the Elena Escarpment S
extinction of dinosaurs
and the rise of mammals. ta E
Santa Elena
S a n D

Anguilarande Canyon Overlapping habitats
G Endangered plant and
Lajitas Mesa de N animal species—and others
Rio A that are at the extreme
limits of their ranges, such as
CHIHUAHU the Mexican black bear and
the quaking aspen—can be
N found here. Odd juxtaposi-
tions include cacti growing
on beds of moss.

SCALE VARIES IN THIS PERSPECTIVE. DISTANCE FROM
CASTOLON TO RIO GRANDE VILLAGE IS 34 MILES.

haven for escapism, cannot escape the endless Pre-pandemic, 400,000 tourists traveled
tug-of-war of geopolitics. to Big Bend annually; it is among the least
visited national parks in the U.S. (Yellowstone
Y O U W E R E AT the South Rim yester- receives nearly 10 times that number of guests.)
day?” Craig Carter asked. The 58-year- In part this is because of its remote location. The
old rancher grinned. “I’ll bet I’ve been nearest commercial airport, in Midland, Texas,
there 700 times. Whenever I’d go, I felt is four hours from the park’s entrance. The drive
from Austin that I regularly undertook as a long-
like I was seeing it for the first time.” time resident of that city could charitably be
viewed as a seven-hour Texas geography lesson.
Carter lives just outside of the park on a Limestone Hill Country segues to mesquite
shrubland to butte-crested Permian Basin to
12,000-acre horse farm called Spring Creek semibarren plains that, eventually, give way
to the mile-high Glass Mountains just north
Ranch. The life of his family has been insepara- of Marathon.

ble from Big Bend. Carter’s great-grandparents Big Bend’s far-flung locale is likely a major
reason its scruffy charms have long been prone
lived inside the park before the state acquired to underappreciation. To have the largest num-
ber of bird and cactus species of any American
its 700,000 acres and deeded it to the federal park does not confer glamour. The history it
reveals—300 million years of once mighty seas,
government in 1943.

The previous evening I’d been in the dusty

town of Marathon, 23 miles north of Carter’s

ranch, in my room at the Gage Hotel, the iconic

94-year-old adobe inn that has long epitomized

upscale desert lodging. A country music band

was playing on the bar patio, and I went to check

Big Bend’s far-flung locale is likely a major reason
its scru y charms have long been prone to underappreciation.

it out. Carter was the lead vocalist. It turns out forests, dinosaurs, and earthquakes—is a stun-
that he regularly tours Europe as a solo act and ning but obscure tale told mainly in fossils and
with a band, and that he also makes steady stratigraphy. And while Big Bend’s imposing
income as a movie wrangler—“teaching actors geological formations have the craggy prehis-
how to ride a horse and not shoot themselves,” toric vibe of Italy’s Dolomites, they somewhat
as he described it. lack the postcardworthy symmetry of Utah’s
Arches and Arizona’s Grand Canyon.
I spent the morning bouncing along in Car-
ter’s jeep in proximity to quail and mule deer But Big Bend has something else that its coun-
while he shared with me his secret for how best terparts do not: that 118-mile liquid border with
to cook javelina (“The trick is to take out the Mexico known as the Rio Grande, whose undu-
musk sac near the base of the spine”) and the lations give the Texas park its name. Its frothing
spot on his ranch where he once discovered a acrobatics in Santa Elena Canyon draw kayakers;
1900 Indian Head coin (“I’m saying that’s my its low-water points southwest of the park draw
great-grandfather’s last nickel until someone contrabandistas conveying whatever may be of
proves otherwise”). interest to the U.S. consumer.

The mythic Texas that resides in the world’s One morning during my recent visit, I drove
collective imagination—an undomesticated, out of Marathon with my friend James Evans, a
cactus-strewn moonscape of sturdy-hearted photographer who has lived in the town for the
cowboys—is manifest in Big Bend country like past three decades. We veered off Highway 385
nowhere else. It’s also fair to say that the Chihua- to the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area, on
huan Desert breeds unorthodox behavior. Big the park’s northeastern flank. Although the year
Bend devotees regard this as a highlight rather had been a dry one even by the desert’s parched
than a drawback. standards, a recent rain had awakened green

CHRISTINA SHINTANI, NGM STAFF; ERIC KNIGHT 119
SOURCES: JOSELYN FENSTERMACHER; NATIONAL PARK SERVICE; OPENSTREETMAP; ESA COPERNICUS



Canoers Matthew
Grisham and Kelon
Crawford of Wild
Adventure Outfitters
ply the Rio Grande
through Big Bend’s
stone-silent Boquillas
Canyon. Fully 118 miles
of the river border
the park.

Just west of the park,
Terlingua has long

been a refuge for off-
the-grid naturalists.

Joselyn Fenstermacher,
shown here in her

home near Terlingua,
is a field biologist

whose career has taken
her from Scandinavia
to Antarctica.

OPPOSITE

Throughout Big Bend’s
summer months,

cenizo, or Texas sage,
blooms prolifically
across the desert.

shoots from the spiny ocotillos that maintain up to the morning light. The horse and cattle
sentry over the region. Splashes of purple sage had vanished. While Evans stood on top of his
and red firecracker bushes girdled the primitive four-wheel drive and took pictures of the river,
one-lane road to the river. I studied the dirt and the random assemblage of
seashells from the late Cretaceous period a hun-
We found a campsite no more than a hundred dred million years in the rear view.
yards from the Rio Grande, though it required
evicting a family of javelinas. Three cows and Driving back to Marathon, we took a detour
a white horse grazed nearby, oblivious to us. to the old La Linda International Bridge, once
Whose were they? Descending to the Texas side used to haul fluorspar from Mexican mines to
of the riverbed, I could see the spidery imprints the United States. The bridge had been closed
of a heron—and someone else’s bootprints, for decades. But a large campground beside it
though it had been several hours since we’d was still in operation. Camp manager Butch Jolly
spotted any other human. In the desert, life is said that he’d seen bear tracks by the river that
always closer than you think. morning, not far from the fishing hole where he
previously had pulled out a couple of 40-pound
The moon still loomed and the desert tem- yellow catfish. I asked him what he used for bait.
perature had dropped to the low 40s when I woke

122 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

“Hot dog wieners with garlic, steeped in butterflies that had made their seasonal trek
cherry Kool-Aid for four hours,” he replied. north. This may be the land of big skies, but what
truly humbles the soul here is the everyday spec-
B O R D E R PAT R O L O F F I C E R S are a com- tacle of grace in the desert.
mon sight in Big Bend country, but
there is a frontierless aspect to this Feeling in need of company one afternoon, I
part of the world. The omnipresence went to see a prehistoric friend, the Mule Ears
Peaks. The drive there was along a well-paved
of cuisine and laborers from the other if winding road called the Ross Maxwell Scenic
Drive, which roller-coasters its way along the
side of the river are only the most obvious signs of western fringe of the ruddy Chisos Mountains.
By the time I arrived, it was over 90 degrees.
this reality. The park’s small population of black
The trail snaked through acre after acre of
bears are themselves migrants from Mexico. ocotillo, yucca, sotol, and sagebrush. But my
eyes remained trained on the vista ahead—
In turn, Big Bend’s colorful buntings and specifically, on the two dark, more or less trian-
gular pillars jutting out of the plain, in and then
warblers make their winter home down south.

One morning I walked over to the Gage Hotel’s

lush botanical garden and was stunned to find

it canopied with many hundreds of monarch

W H E R E T H E MY T H L I V E S 123



Along Big Bend’s
Grapevine Hills Trail,
the so-called Balanced
Rock is a 500-million-
year-old natural work
of art. Geologic
anomalies abound
throughout the park,
the result of prehistoric
floods, earthquakes,
and volcanic eruptions.

out of view with every turn the trail took. The Alpine to drink tequila with the legendary six-
geological anomalies happen to be lone survi- foot-five Texas Ranger Joaquin Jackson—a good
vors of a volcanic eruption in the park that oth- friend now six years deceased, though not from
erwise disintegrated enormous frozen sheets of drink. The largest town at the northern edge of
magma about 29 million years ago. From that act Big Bend country, Alpine (population 6,035) has
of natural violence, the Mule Ears were born—a the area’s best offering of camping provisions.
pagan monument playing its eternal game of For me, that meant stocking up on fine cheeses
peekaboo, a joke that never gets old. and excellent wine from the Texas Hill Country
and from Baja California at Taste and See Bakery,
I TO O K M Y L E AV E of the Gage Hotel’s as well as locally roasted coffee at Plaine.
plush bedding and swimming pool, and
headed west from Marathon to the other At the coffee shop I also met with Kayla
towns encircling the park. Duff, a 24-year-old native Californian who’d
Alpine, the seat of Brewster County, recently opened Big Bend Beef, a ranch-to-table
has been a nexus for cattle traders for more repository of grass-fed Brangus beef cuts. Duff
than a century. In decades past I’d gravitated to had brought me a hefty slab of flank steak for an
upcoming fajita cookout.

126 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Like taverns through- studios and signs that read “Adobe Is Political”
out the United States, and “Maintain Social Distancing: Keep One Cow
the Valentine Texas Apart.” The Hotel Saint George, where I called
Bar (in the tiny West it a night, was a repurposing of an 1886 struc-
Texas town of the same ture of the same name, now its own statement
name) features auto- of austere elegance.
graphed dollar bills
stapled on the walls. Although a resilient desert ethic connects
Unlike the others, Marfa and Big Bend, a far closer kinship is appar-
the Valentine watering ent in Terlingua, the former silver-mining ghost
hole describes itself town later made famous by the musician Jerry
as “open when open”— Jeff Walker, an annual chili contest, and, above
which is once a year, all, its rotating cast of desert hermits.
on February 14.
Two hours south of Marfa, Terlingua had
I threw the meat in my cooler and drove long served as the edge of existence for urban
another half hour west to Marfa. Initially famous castaways who elected to live in abandoned
as the movie set for the 1956 Western film Giant, school buses or other found objects and subsist
starring James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor, the on rainwater and produce from desert gardens.
town spent the ensuing postproduction four (One of these recluses in the early 1980s was
decades in a state of slumber. Or so it seemed: David Kaczynski, who gained notoriety a decade
The minimalist artist Donald Judd had relo- later when he informed federal agents that his
cated there during the 1970s, quietly snatching brother, Ted, was likely the Unabomber.)
up downtown real estate and erecting striking
art installations in the desert. A trickle of Judd Today Terlingua retains an agreeable sem-
disciples begat a flood of artists. The new ver- blance of civilization. At the Taqueria El
sion of Marfa is variously described as Brooklyn Milagro—owned and operated by casting direc-
South or Austin West—snide caricatures that fail tor Mimi Webb Miller, whose former life as the
to capture the revelation of such a self-contained girlfriend of notorious traficante Pablo Acosta
ecosystem within the austerity of the Trans-Pecos is memorialized in the Netflix series Narcos:
desert. I spent a day wandering past random art Mexico—I met for dinner with Paul Wiggins,
Terlingua’s resident philosopher and silversmith
for more than 40 years.

Wiggins, a wiry and elfin aficionado of obscure
history books and firearms, had brought with
him something I planned on gifting to my
fiancée: a hand-tooled leather belt studded with
silver coins. I paid him and then bought us tacos
and beers.

The restaurant was overflowing with patrons
whose T-shirts professed allegiance to various
university football teams. I inquired about the
area’s mainstays: a woman who rode to town
on her mule, a man named Spider who built art
objects out of concrete, the paleontologist Ken
Barnes. All relocated or dead, Wiggins said.

With stoic understatement, he observed,
“We’re having fewer devoted eccentrics now.”

I didn’t argue. Still, as Wiggins knew better
than I did, the only devoted eccentric who really
mattered was what sprawled out around us. The
desert remained incorrigibly itself. j

Robert Draper has been a contributing writer for
National Geographic since 2007. Born in Houston
and based in Austin, Bryan Schutmaat roams
Texas back roads seeking beautiful landscapes.

W H E R E T H E M Y T H L I V E S 127

INSTAGRAM PAUL NICKLEN

FROM OUR PHOTOGRAPHERS

WHO Nicklen, a National Geographic Explorer, spends
a lot of time immersed in the frigid waters around
A Canada-based nature the world’s icy environments. During one trip to
photographer, filmmaker, Antarctica, he pulled on his dry suit to photograph
and marine biologist blue-eyed shags—which also have pink feet. The
gregarious birds breed in colonies on the Antarctic
WHERE Peninsula and can be quite curious. As Nicklen
stayed motionless in the ocean, several youngsters,
Lemaire Channel, Antarctica including the one above, approached him and pecked
inquisitively on the dome covering his camera.
W H AT

Canon EOS-1D X Mark II
with a 16-35mm lens in an
underwater housing dome

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This page showcases images from our accounts: @natgeo, @natgeotravel, @natgeointhefield,
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