OVER BURRO MESA
and into APACHE CANYON
by C.M. Mayo
I
had ghosts on my mind—not in a
spooky way, just stray thoughts
about long-gone people on a bright,
hot morning in the Big Bend National
Park. In the foothills of the Chisos, I
parked on the road-side. My aim was to
hike over Burro Mesa west into Apache
Canyon, to a corral where Apaches
stashed stolen horses, and to explore an
arrow quarry.
The week before in this canyon, two
Italian women fended off a mountain
lion. Apparently it was a young lion
and their screams caused it to scramble
off—but that wasn't the kind of adven-
ture I was looking for. I figured my
guide, Charlie Angell, could handle
any critters better than I could.
Sun blasted down. The only clouds
were wisps, as if from a paintbrush
dipped in milk. Thorns snagged my
jeans. The trail became so faint, I sure-
ly would have lost it on my own. Just
when the hill dipped, then came anoth-
er trudge up another rise through
whips of ocotillo, lechugilla, biznaga,
beargrass, stunted soap trees... Many
had been incinerated, probably from
lightning strikes.
No sign of burros on Burro Mesa. In
two hours in this merciless landscape,
we had seen no animal tracks, no scat;
one lizard; one butterfly; two ravens.
It began to seem we were hiking not
so much to a place but into the past, for
this was a soundscape deeply strange to
me. I live in Mexico City, one of the
biggest in the world, where the thrum
of traffic surges and fades, but never
ceases. On myriad saint days, firecrack-
ers pop like popcorn; weekends, the
thump-a-thump-a of parties. Heli-
copters roar; dogs bark.
Less than two centuries ago, Burro
Mesa and Apache Canyon, indeed, the
whole of the Big Bend, were Mexican
territory—Mexico City the capital. But
notionally. Maps of the period tell the
truer story, a blank space with a name
that was a shrug of ignorance or, for
those who had heard the stories of kid-
nappings and scalpings, a drum-beat of
horror: LA APACHERIA.
Finally, not that there was any place
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to sit, we sat down.
"Drink up," Charlie insisted, hand-
ing me another bottle of water.
And this was when, suddenly as that
mountain lion must have appeared, a
lone figure carrying a pole taller than
he was, loomed above us. A Texan in
expensive-looking drab olive gear. He'd
been hiking for several days, he said
brightly—yesterday, the Mesa de
Anguila. Mighty surprised to see us.
We were the first hikers he'd encoun-
tered in the past three days.
And the pole?
For scaring mountain lions. But it
didn't weigh much; it was bamboo.
After twenty years, its bottom was start-
ing to split--he lifted it to reveal a mass