Originally posted June 18, 2026
On a brisk November morning in 2017, I led my husband and our kids, then 12 and 10, down a gravel path to the rocky shore of the Rio Grande. To the west rose the steep cliffs of Santa Elena Canyon, the 1,500-foot limestone walls of Big Bend National Park. To the south, on a grassy bank maybe 100 feet away, was Mexico, almost close enough to touch.
We stood at the doorstep of a foreign land and a gorge millions of years in the making. I told my kids: This is the edge of America.
Then our awe turned to laughter as we realized our chihuahua mix, Charlie, was lapping up the Rio Grande as if the river were his personal water bowl.
That is the magic of a place like Big Bend: It feels both enormous and intimate, a place to connect with the impossibly vast world and those closest to us. Spaces like that bind us to the moment and to something timeless.
Such places deserve special care.
Read the full story at Austin American-Statesman.
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