Sweating It Out
How I learned to love the poisonous plants, treacherous terrain, and hellish heat of the Chihuahuan Desert.
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After dinner Alloway gave lectures and showed slides until bedtime. He began his lecture on the first evening with a quote often attributed to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche—”That which does not kill us makes us stronger”—pausing ever so briefly before adding, “We’ll ignore the fact that Nietzsche died of suicide.” (Actually he died of tertiary syphilis, but it’s a good story anyway.) Fear of the desert, Alloway told us, was the result of bad PR that had nothing to do with reality. “It’s not out to get you,” he said. “Otherwise, humans wouldn’t have been able to survive quite nicely in the desert for the past nine thousand years. But you wouldn’t know that from the movies you’ve seen.” For nighttime reading he had conveniently placed survival books (my favorite title, How to Shit in the Woods) and outdoor catalogs around the bunkhouse for us to read. Tools that he’d fashioned from desert plants and rocks were displayed for our inspection.
No matter how interesting Alloway’s observations were, he had to compete for our attention with the main attraction of the ranch itself. Though it lacks the alpine environs of the Chisos Mountains, Big Bend Ranch State Park has a higher mean elevation than the national park, averaging 3,500 feet above sea level. It is considerably wetter than the park too; it is rife with springs and claims three of the four highest waterfalls in Texas. Madrid Falls tumbles 150 feet into Chorro Canyon’s microclimate of ferns, vines, and forest. Even today, few Texans have ever seen it. This is rough, untamed country, which pretty much sums up its appeal. In the midst of our course we actually managed to visit some of the ranch’s hidden treasures, including Ojito Adentro, a pristine waterfall tucked far back in a small canyon, and Cinco Tinajas, a series of placid pools carved out of solid rock over tens of thousands of years. Still, given all that acreage and the few interpretative materials available to visitors, it was obvious that listening to Alloway was the best way to learn how to appreciate the ranch to the fullest.
Much of what he said was common sense. Intelligence is the most essential survival tool. Self-control is the first problem that needs resolution. In case of an emergency, get your priorities straight: Find water, make a fire, build a shelter, signal rescuers, gather food, make weapons and traps, and keep busy, if energy permits. “Boredom can be fatal,” Alloway said. “We have a saying in search and rescue. Down in twelve hours, dead in twenty-four. You can cut that in half out here.”
Water and fire are essentials. Looking for water (the presence of cottonwoods is a reliable indicator) was easier than figuring out how to obtain it, since solar stills and dew traps, touted by many survivalists as the best solutions, proved not to be effective in the Big Bend. How much water to drink, it turned out, was just as important as where to find it. “Don’t sip,” warned Alloway. “Keep your brain and liver and other vital organs well hydrated.” The best way to learn how to start a fire: “Read To Build a Fire, by Jack London,” he said, adding that rabbit pellets make excellent tinder if you can’t find anything else. In a place where everything either bites, sticks, or stings, he recommended wearing a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and a wide-brimmed hat for protection from the sun.
Alloway advised us to carry a survival kit. Into no more space than a soap dish he crammed blades, a knife, fishing line, hooks, sinkers, a teabag (as an astringent), water purification tablets, a condom (for carrying water in an emergency), an alcohol swab, a small butane lighter, two bouillon cubes, Band-Aids, tweezers, a sterile scalpel, a striker, a compass, a needle, a pencil, a box of matches, Benadryl, aspirin, Imodium, potassium permanganate, a packet of sugar (to mix with the potassium to ignite a fire), and more.
On the afternoon of the second day, he tested our mettle with a five-mile hike in the suffocating heat. We headed down a dry creekbed to a watering hole, or tinaja, that the locals referred to as Baño de los Mexicanos, the Mexican Bath, a reliable water source even in the driest of months. Observing that we’d held up all right as a group, Alloway then proposed a brief side trip. Everyone was game. He escorted us out of the creekbed to a cluster of cavelike shelters in a cliff. In the recesses of the shaded overhangs, crude renderings of human figures on horseback were painted on the rock. “These were obviously done in modern history, well after the Spanish brought horses to North America,” Alloway observed. He was at a loss to explain a more surreal depiction of two sets of eyes in adjoining floating heads. “We’re trying to get some of the elders from the Mescalero Apaches to come and interpret what they represent,” he said.
We inspected scat deposited in the riverbed to determine whether its origin was javelina or mountain lion. He pointed out a plant known as Mormon tea, which contains a stimulant not unlike caffeine. The bright red blossoms of the tall, spindly ocotillo were cited as a delicious punch drink, and when its roots are soaked, the liquid makes an effective poultice for sore joints, muscles, and general fatigue. The naturally occurring steroids in yucca root powder were similarly mentioned as an occasional treatment of arthritis: “A quarter teaspoon of powder in a cup of water, once a week, is said to provide relief.” The yellow-blossomed senna was important to recognize in case we might someday need a natural laxative, though Alloway cautioned, “A little bit is all right; too much causes cramping. Treat this as medicine. Just don’t go out and try it without knowing what it is.”
It was startling to realize how many plants surrounding us contained alkaloids or toxins that could induce varying degrees of psychosis. A general list of must-avoids included plants with seeds that are red, hairy, or have prickly pods; those with leaves shaped like an open hand (including poison ivy); pea- or trumpet-shaped flowers (for example, jimsonweed); or flowers that exude odors that are pungent or smell of almonds or peaches (a sure sign of hydrocyanic acid). Some plants have more-subtle hazards. “Try these blossoms,” Alloway said, pointing to the fluted red and purple blooms of the strawberry cactus. “They make great daiquiris. The Mexicans say not to eat too many during the heat of the day.”
By the end of day two, Alloway’s contention that the desert is good for the soul, even for folks who never intend to stray far from the city, was beginning to make perfect sense to me. “We need to have places that aren’t so easy,” he said one night, standing on the porch of the bunkhouse, staring at the stars. “Our civilization needs it. In one hundred years we’ve lost instincts developed over tens of thousands of years. If you know the hardest way, if you know the most primitive way, the easier it is to utilize modern technology.”
By day three I had adapted to what I’d once regarded as a hostile environment. I felt confident enough to enjoy setting out on my own to take short hikes in the morning and evening. I even developed an affection for lechuguilla and sotol, succulents that flourish all over the ranch and the entire Big Bend. Sotol I already knew as the main ingredient of the local version of fermented white lightning; drink enough and you’ll have visions of snakes crawling up your ankle. My familiarity with lechuguilla had heretofore been limited to a couple of unplanned encounters with its hooklike spiny tips, which are loaded with an exceptionally irritating toxin. My attitude toward both changed after snacking on lechuguilla and sotol hearts. The day before, we had dug several fire pits, into which we’d tossed whole uprooted sotol and lechuguilla, then covered them with leaves and dirt to be slow-cooked for 24 hours or more. The method, one that desert peoples have employed for several thousand years, effectively cooks out harmful alkaloids found in both plants.
The results were impressive. Roasted chicken, which was cooked during the last hour of the process, was tender and juicy. I thought the consistency and the texture of both succulents resembled an artichoke heart, while their smoky, nutty taste reminded me of a sweet potato. They were flavorful and unusual enough to rate as a double-digit side dish at Star Canyon, Cafe Annie, or Biga—or so it seemed to me, out there in the desert.
Some of the others weren’t so sure. “Y’all must be getting better pieces than I am,” said Windell from Houston, stepping aside to spit out the lechuguilla heart he’d been chewing. Later Windell admitted that he was still in a transitional phase when it came to embracing the desert. “It takes you a while to get accustomed to being out here,” he said. He shushed us and motioned for us to listen. “Hear that bird? When I first heard it a few minutes ago, I thought it was a beeper.”
For three days the band Cake’s determinedly blasé version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” played over and over in my head like a mantra. Now, at the end of the workshop, it finally had some meaning. I knew how to obtain food and tools from the plants of the desert. I could get my bearings, produce water, start a fire, build a shelter, and even make a needle and thread from a lechuguilla stalk.
I wouldn’t panic if the engine suddenly died or a tire went flat while I was driving on a back road in the middle of nowhere. If I suddenly felt a toothache coming on (you can never tell out in the desert), I was prepared to look for leatherstem, or sangregrado, as it is called in Spanish, to break off a piece and rub the red sap on my gums to numb the pain. I knew too that leatherstem is an effective astringent that can soothe cuts and scrapes, although it can eat holes in cloth. The song continued to play in my head as I approached the ranch gate, unlocked it, drove through, and relocked it. The summer sun beat down on me, and I could feel sweat break out on my forehead. It felt good. I hummed to myself, “I will survive.”
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