Originally Posted by
Nathan Potter
Terlingua used to be a semi ghost town but is more active now, if funky, but with some stuff to photograph if you are inclined.
I haven't been, but Edward Abbey's visit leaves me with a near-living image of the place, and makes me want to go for real some day.
From "Big Bend," in his book, One Life at a Time, Please:
"The name Terlingua is said to be a corruption of the Spanish tres lingua – three languages. The three languages once spoken in this area, which gave the town its name, would have been Spanish, English, and probably Comanche."
"The Comanches' annual migration took them through the middle of what is now Big Bend NP. Following these same tracks for centuries, the Indians left so many skeletons of stolen cattle, horses, and human captives that their path became known as the Trail of Bones. Nothing can be seen of this trail any more; the white bones of the Comanches' victims have had 130 years to disintegrate and disappear."
"Crowned with a forest of juniper, pinon pine, oak, madrone, and other trees, the Chisos Mountains rise like an island of greenery and life in the midst of the barren, sun-blasted, apparently lifeless, stone-bleak ocean of the Chihuahuan Desert. An emerald isle in a red sea."
Toward the end of his visit, Abbey stumbles down a trail in the dark, returning from a day hike, cursing himself for not bringing a flashlight.
Typical.
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