Originally posted on Tangle February 28, 2026
When I was 14 years old, I traveled to the Big Bend region of West Texas for the first time.
My extended family had lived along the U.S.–Mexico border since the 1970s, but this was my first time visiting them. As a suburban kid from Philadelphia, I’d never seen anything quite like it. Counties nearly the size of New Jersey held no more than a couple thousand permanent residents. Mountains, rivers, desert arroyos, cattle ranches — miles and miles of wild, untouched land stretched out in every direction, mostly unobstructed. The land is populated by ocotillo and agave plants, pig-like mammals called javelinas, coyotes, mountain lions, bears, snakes, deer and (more recently) majestic mountain sheep called aoudads. It was and remains the Western Frontier — alive and well, still unmarred by oil fields or residential buildings or government overreach.
Read the full article at ReadTangle.com.
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