Sustainability in the Big Bend

Big Bend is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Whether you are looking for God, Gaia, earth energies, or simply the space, silence and solitude to find inner peace, you can find it here.

Due to its remoteness, sparse population, and other constraints on growth, Big Bend is one of the last surviving remnants of the Old West wilderness. Environmentally and culturally, the Big Bend is still a relatively undamaged place. It’s one of the most resplendent crown jewels of nature in North America. Yet its wild and scenic landscape is also a very fragile and threatened place.

For many decades the difficulty of even getting to Big Bend has provided a kind of protective insulation against harmful outside forces. However, modern transportation and communications are making Big Bend more accessible and vulnerable. Big Bend tourism, in-migration, and commercial development are on the increase. All of these changes levy new burdens on the land.

Big Bend’s preservation—for its own sake, as well as for the benefit of people—requires that we all observe a shared land ethic rooted in respect for human welfare, including safety, and reverence for nature.

For at least the last five hundred years, Americans—and Europeans for that matter—have been struggling to find their proper place in relation to the natural world. According to the Danish writer Henning Eichberg, this struggle has taken the form of a competition between two contrasting models: “War in Nature” and “Peace with Nature.”

The War in Nature model is epitomized in the field of outdoor education by the Boy Scout movement, which was established in 1908 in England (and three years later in America) by lieutenant general Sir Robert Baden-Powell, the hero of the siege of Mafeking. Baden-Powell envisioned scouts as future soldiers and linked the experience of nature to its use as a battlefield.

Exploitive practices such as strip mining, the clear-cutting of forests, and industrial tourism are an extension of this philosophy into war-on-nature—that is, regarding nature as something to be conquered, consumed, and dominated by man.

The scouting concept differed fundamentally from other outdoor movements which regarded ‘green’ life as a way towards peace between human beings—and peace with nature. This concept of man’s relationship with nature had its roots in profound criticism of modern urban-industrial life and encouraged alternative ways of living in small, self-determined groups.

In America the concept of peace-with-nature found an explicit form in the Woodcraft Indians, a movement started by the artist Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902. Within a few years, other youth groups similar to the Woodcraft Indians, including Daniel Beard’s Sons of Daniel Boone and the Camp Fire Girls, also appeared.

Similar woodcraft movements followed in England, Czechoslovakia, and other countries. From 1868 in Norway and 1885 in Sweden, the Friluftsliv (free-air-life) movement merged a romantic ideal of harmony-with-nature with older Scandinavian outdoor traditions in an effective effort to guide people back to nature. After 1900, the German youth wandering movement, the Wandervögel, became perhaps the best-known and most influential of those promoting a pacifist approach to nature—that is, until the emergence of the hippie generation and its “deep ecology” ideals.

Thus, if we were to declare ourselves on one side or the other of the question, we would choose peace with nature rather than war in it—especially for visitors who are least familiar with our local conditions.

When you visit here, we encourage you to please travel mindfully and light upon the land, leaving behind the smallest “footprints” possible.

The tremendous rewards of high-adventure treks are drawing more and more people to backcountry settings like the Big Bend. At the same time, the vast territory suitable for treks is shrinking in size. More people and less land mean we all must be careful not to endanger the wild outdoors we have come to enjoy.

Big Bend’s backcountry areas provide excellent opportunities for hiking, backpacking, camping, driving unpaved roads, and river running. Permits are required from the National Park Service for overnight camping and horse use in the Park, and for floating the Rio Grande.

Permission must be granted and arrangements made to hike and camp on private lands—something with which we can assist you.

We urge that visitors observe the “Leave No Trace” Principles developed by the nationally recognized outdoor skills and ethics education program of the same name. The principles of Leave No Trace are not rules; they are guidelines to follow at all times.

The Leave No Trace principles might not seem important at first glance, but their value is apparent when considering the combined effects of hundreds of thousands of outdoor visitors each year. One poorly located campsite or campfire is of little significance, but thousands of such instances seriously degrade the outdoor experience for all. Leaving no trace is everyone’s responsibility.

A good way to protect the Big Bend is to remember that while you are here, you are a guest. When you visit a friend you are always careful to leave that person’s home just as you found it. You would never think of dropping litter on the carpet, chopping down trees in the yard, putting soap in the drinking water, or marking your name on the living room wall. When you visit our country, the same courtesies apply.

Leave everything just as you find it. Hiking and camping without a trace are signs of an expert outdoorsman who is a steward of the environment.