My Inaugural FreeRanger Experience

By Keith Stone

As a young schoolboy, I was first made aware of the Texas Big Bend country because of its historical significance to the rest of the state and the American west in general. For some years, I had hoped that my folks would plan a vacation out that way and I politicked toward that end, but we repeatedly piled into the Vista Cruiser and wheeled off to the Rockies in Colorado. I can say that all those trips to Estes Park and the Big Thompson Canyon were wonderful, but I still had a yearning to see the mountains of Texas. I would be thirteen before I got my chance.

One of my closest running buddies in junior high school asked me one October if I would like to travel with he and his dad out to a group campout in Big Bend National Park that Thanksgiving. Sounded great to me and at last, I would get a look at far West Texas for the first time. We would be traveling with a convoy of other car campers and the common thread that united us all was the Camp-O-Tel. Does anyone remember this strange precursor to the modern RV?

The Camp-O-Tel was an aluminum case, about the size and thickness of a king size mattress, that would magically unfold into a spacious tent that slept four, two in a central double bunk, and one each in the wings that were made when the two halves of the top were folded out. This entire contraption fit onto racks on top of the family sedan. It had a ladder so the American family of four could climb into it, kitchen and table and extra storage modules that would slip into ancillary racks on either end of it, and an awning that would unroll from its own aircraft grade aluminum tube, pinned onto one of the bunk wings like the tip tanks on a jet fighter. It was pretty cool. And it was not difficult to fit atop the average four door American road yacht of the day. Camp-O-Tel owners would form into clubs that would morph into Camp-O-Tel convoys on any given holiday weekend. So, into the ’67 Chrysler New Yorker, with our sumptuous accommodations securely bolted to the roof, off I went with Robin and his dad on my first voyage of Big Bend discovery.

We hooked up with the others in our caravan, maybe ten cars in all, at the Camp-O-Tel dealership just a block or two away from the old Will Rogers Coliseum in  Fort Worth. Once assembled, we wheeled into the November sunset, bound for an overnight stop at a state park just outside San Angelo. The campground was on high ground, on the southeast side of a lake, fully exposed to the 25 knot wind blowing that night. I was thankful my mom had insisted on zipping an extra sleeping bag around mine, giving me an extra measure of protection against the sub-freezing temperatures that night. Inside the rooftop tent, I could feel the wind buffeting the car on its springs and trying to lift the Camp-O-Tel off its pinnings, but I was snug in my quarter bunk and extra covers.  I hoped it would not be so cold and windy at our final destination.

We all arose early the next day and started quickly toward Fort Stockton, then on toward Marathon. As the terrain became increasingly mountainous and less populated, I imagined what secrets it must have held from the early Spanish conquerors, that they might have walked these very valleys under the wary eyes of the Apache and Comanche. In Marathon, we all stopped to walk around, have a picnic lunch and tour the Gage Hotel. I could look out onto the far horizon and see rugged ridgelines and peaks reaching for the sky, clear and bright, completely unpolluted still in 1970. We crossed the Southern Pacific tracks, heading south for Persimmon Gap, and I read the sign indicating the seventy something mile distance just to the entrance of the park. We had spent more time at the Gage than the rest of our convoy and they had gone ahead without us, expecting us to catch up that night at the campground nearest Boquillas Canyon. Driving alone down that thin ribbon of desert highway, I had the sensation we were setting out across the open sea, safe haven and civilization far over the horizon.

Looking at the map, I realized our campground was miles beyond Persimmon Gap, that we would arrive well after dark. Although I was increasingly fascinated by the ever changing vistas, I would not see the Chisos or the Sierra Madre until the following day. The sun set on us while we were passing through Persimmon Gap, silhouetting the jagged outlines of the buttes and peaks. It looked so different than what I had seen in Colorado or New Mexico even and that feeling of being alone in a vast wilderness was still pervasive We made the campground at Cottonwood, unfolded our car top condo and set about to making meals and playing cards. There were some in the caravan who could play guitars and sing and there unfolded the first bonfire jam I ever attended. It would be nearly another year before I even began to play Saxophone, but I added my voice to anything they played that I knew. Looking up at the crystal clear night sky, I watched the sparks from the fire as they seemed to meld with the strikingly clarified stripe of the Milky Way. It gave me a shiver of pleasure and awe to be one of so few to have witnessed this perfect night. All my young life I had sat around evening campfires on outings with fellow scouts or family, but I had never been in a place that seemed so little touched by man, despite our little oasis there at Cottonwood.  It had been as fine a Thanksgiving as I can remember. I knew I would want to come back one day. It never occurred to me that it might be twenty years before I did.

The following day rose bright, sunny and cold, but warmed up fast. The caravan intended to camp their second night in the Chisos Basin, so we folded our camp after breakfast and drove down to the river where the ferrymen take tourists across to Boquillas, Mexico. That was the first time I saw the massive escarpment known as the Sierra Madre, running northwest to southeast for a hundred miles. It was interrupted only by the thin slot in the rock where the Rio Grande had carved its way through and created what we call Boquillas Canyon. I’m sure one of the educational markers by the trail had told us how many millions of years that had taken.

Robin, his dad and I decided we wanted to take the burro ride into Mexico and began to make arrangements with one of the ferrymen. No one else, however, in the caravan wanted to go, so once again we found ourselves on our own and expected to catch up later. I thought it was quaint and somehow clandestine to wade into a foreign country on the back of a burro, never having been asked to produce a passport. That was the first time I ever stood (or rode) on foreign soil and it was exciting just for that, but the little village of Boquillas turned out to be a place that time and modern convenience definitely forgot. Robin’s dad had a smattering of Spanish he could call upon and managed to communicate to the ferryman that we were interested in comida and la Coca-Cola. He led our burros to a dusty low adobe hut in a collection of dusty low huts that somehow passed for a cantina. There we were served surprisingly cold Coca-Colas made so by a hand-me-down Coke box powered by the town’s only gas powered electric generator, but after a good look at the sanitary conditions, we decided to have lunch in our car headed toward Panther Junction later. One soda pop and we all had a healthy case of the “been there-done thats” and rode back across to the United States. From there, we drove down to the trailhead for the short hike into the mouth of Boquillas Canyon. The day had grown quite warm and the wind blowing from out of the desert south of the river felt as warm as a July breeze. It was nice to walk in the shade of the canyon walls and skip flat stones across the lazy Rio Grande. I would have been happy to stay another night at Cottonwood, seeing as how we were habitual laggards anyway, but Robin’s dad wanted to see the Chisos Basin and take us for a hike to the Window. So, off we went in our Camp-O-New-Yorker to Panther Junction and the news that would make us true FreeRangers, even though the term was not yet in our lexicon.

At the ranger station at Panther Junction, Robin’s dad inquired about the way into Chisos Basin and where were we to find the rest of our party? The ranger told us that the few spots available had been already taken by a few of our caravan and the rest had been turned away. He thought the members of the caravan that had been turned away had elected to drive on to the camping area near Santa Elena Canyon. That was miles and miles away and no guarantee we would get a spot even though we would be assured of getting there long after dark. Some further discussion with the ranger and it was revealed we could get a permit to camp in a primitive area if we were so inclined. In this case, the ranger said, the nearest spot would be along a road that led north into the wilderness, to a place called the Grapevine Hills. Not far from the Panther Junction station, we would simply take a right into the desert, onto a dirt road, rather than the left turn onto the paved road that leads up into the Basin. The permit was free, we were pretty much self contained as far as water and such and hell, it sounded like more fun than hours more of driving. We had learned in two short days that time and distance had a whole different meaning out here than it did in Dallas/Ft. Worth. We could find ourselves in utter wilderness, at the Grapevine Hills, in something like thirty minutes with not quite two hours of daylight left to enjoy.

The turnoff could have been easy to miss in the dark, but it was marked with a small sign (imagine that) pointing north onto the high mesa that stretches between the Chisos and Persimmon Gap. We could see in the near distance a collection of small buttes that were identified on the map as the Grapevine Hills, reflecting all the reds and oranges of the low sun as the dusk approached. After about twenty miles on a remarkably passable road, we were abreast and to sunward of the buttes and pulled into a wide spot in the road we decided would make as good a campsite as any. Thirty minutes later, our beds were made, coffee and hot food were on the stove and we had a nice, but small fire going between the car and the edge of the brush to eastward. We were positively alone out there. No other campers had taken the initiative to try this place rather than drive on to Santa Elena. Fact is, I felt kind of smug about it, like we were onto something special, just for us.

It was all so new to me. To watch the sun sinking below the southwest horizon and to witness all the colors of the spectrum in just that special desert way was thrilling. It was so cool to see terrain silhouetted in relief rather than city lights coming on. But it was not dark. Outside the puny sphere of our campfire light, the rising moon, all the brilliantly unobscured stars, and the stripe of the Milky Way lit the world around us in a ghostly pale light. For a while, the moon backlit the Grapevine Hills so that they rose up next to us as if close enough to reach out and touch. The highest escarpment was probably no more than three hundred feet above our heads but it was so unlike any horizon I had grown used to, I couldn’t stop staring at its seams and shadows, looking for detail or signs of life. Occasionally, I swear I could see eyes reflecting the campfire back at us from low in the surrounding brush and scurrying noises made by something larger than paws. It occurred to me long after that the glowing eyes had probably been curious burros. It gave us two young city boys the creeps, ignorant of the indigenous population as we were. As the fire began to wane we prepared our camp so as to protect it from creatures of opportunity in the night. Climbing into the Camp-O-Tel and wiggling down into my most welcome cocoon, I heard the first of the coyote’s wailings.

It started out a single voice, tentative and distant. Soon the voice was joined by a few others, just warming up. They would be answered by another voice or group from a different point of the compass rose, some closer, some so distant as to be only faintly audible. Robin and I listened with bated breath for just a few moments, then began to laugh aloud, kind of a nervous “that doesn’t scare me” laugh. About then, the various groups of a capella coyotes began their concert to the moon in earnest, each animal adding its long woeful wail to one huge cacophonous choir. The volume of it would swell and wane as if on the command of some grand maestro coyote and one movement of the symphony would meld into the next without a seam, endless. By this time, Robin and I were no longer laughing but instead had a bona fide case of the willies. Robin’s dad, on the other hand, was getting quite the chuckles from our psychological discomfort. I wondered if our little tent, with its metal base and six feet of altitude was going to be enough to keep me from being eaten while I slept. It took a long time to relax enough to fall asleep, but it was never because the coyotes took five. They kept it up all night. Only occasionally would there be a moment of silence, which would cause me to wake up, only to be lullabied back into unconsciousness by a fresh chorus of twelve bar wailings. I’ve heard coyotes since, but I have yet to hear again the kind of show they put on that night. The skin on my spine crawls even now just to remember it.

With the dawn came the most sublime silence. As soon as I was aware of the first slivers of light, peeking over the Sierra Madre far to the east, I wiggled out of my sleeping bags and into my clothes. Any of you who have done this in a pup tent know the best way to work up body heat first thing in the morning is to try to get fully dressed while lying on one’s back. The Camp-O-Tel wasn’t much different than a large pup tent on top of the car, at least in terms of headroom. Down the ladder and quickly into the adjacent brush I went, in search of a suitable spot to make water.  In a hurry, I stumbled into the brush about fifty feet,  came to a stop and began to fumble with my belt and Levi’s. Seconds later, during the first rush of relief, I rolled my head back to observe the dawn and instead observed something that interrupted my flow and caused my heart to skip a couple beats. I could see that I had an audience.

There in the mesquite and creosote and cactus were a herd of deer, not twenty feet from me and spread around me in a semicircle. Realizing I was not in danger, I resumed my urgent business and looked around me slowly. There were several dozen, all perfectly camouflaged but for their shiny brown eyes and small white tails swishing. I stood there, in awe, long after I had finished urinating, just looking back at the deer all looking at me. I tried to be as still as I could and not one of them was moving, but I observed their nostrils contracting and their tails were still swishing. It was as if we were each waiting for the other to make the first move. I had, after all, invaded a small part of their world, evidently interrupting their breakfast foraging with my pre-breakfast bodily function. Their breaths and my own made vapor in the chilly air and far and wide around us, I could hear birds coming awake with the new day. Some part of me was profoundly affected by my incredible solitary luck to have witnessed such a thing. I thought a silent prayer of thanks. Then, when I realized I was being keenly observed by several dozen deer with my pants around my knees, I began to laugh uncontrollably. How absurd a scene that must have been to the imaginary third party.

With the silence so rudely broken, the deer started en mass away from me and into the deep arroyo between our camp and the nearest of the buttes. The morning reverie was instantly shattered by the sound of hundreds of dainty hooves in full flight. As the deer worked their way down into the arroyo, they raised a cloud of dust and scattered every bird, lizard and rabbit in their path. They crossed the dry sandy bottom and began working up the slope on the other side before they slowed. I hastily fastened my pants and followed through the brush as fast as an awkward human could. I emerged from the brush onto a large rock ledge that overlooked the small canyon. Looking left and right, I couldn’t see how the deer had gotten down there without wings or at least parachutes. This was a feature of the land we hadn’t seen in the previous night’s dusk. I sat down on the rock for a while and observed the deer from several hundred yards. Most of them watched me from their side of the canyon. By and by, they grew bored with me and began to graze their way up the slope and around the corner of the butte until they were out of sight. I lingered for a long time until I heard my campmates calling out that the coffee was on. I took one more moment to give some thanks to the earth for allowing me all the morning’s privileged experience, rose to my feet and went to get some breakfast.

Too soon, we were packed and on our way. We stopped to poke around Terlingua for a little while, still quite the ghost town in 1970, long before the little boomlet town of Lajitas attracted anything more than a chili cook off. From there, on through Alpine and Fort Davis, more of beautiful West Texas that I had never seen. We all know how long that trip is, back to anywhere from there. I had time to think about great it was to be in such a place with people that I really liked and sincerely hoped I’d get the chance to do it again. I’ve spent a lot of time in recent years in the Davis Mountains and Alpine with the Pierce brothers, my friends who own homes up there. Twenty-six years passed, however, before I made it back to the Big Bend country proper, courtesy an invitation from Sandy and Andy Chiles. The camps at the Adams Ranch are all I have known with the modern FreeRangers, but as long as the thing is alive and I am welcome to be a part of it, I will never play another New Year’s gig in some skanky ballroom for $150. And I wouldn’t dare miss the first of what promise to be two great millennium parties out there. See ya’ll soon.