El Mirador: May 2011

"The Guadalupe Mountains are the exposed portion of an ancient coral barrier reef, most of the reef now buried beneath the desert plain of West Texas. Shaped like a giant horseshoe, the reef extends from the Guadalupes northeast into New Mexico (including Carlsbad Caverns), curves east and south back into Texas, rises again above the surface in what are called the Glass Mountains near the town of Alpine and terminates in the uplifted Apache Mountains at Van Horn, Texas."

"Between the presently elevated ends of this great geological structure there once flowed, in the Permian period 225 to 280 million years ago, an arm of the sea. At that time, according to geologists, the Capitan Reef (as the whole structure is called) was created and built up by the lime-secreting growth of algae and other small organisms. Later the sea disappeared, the climate changed, and the whole region was lifted several thousand feet by underlying crustal movements of the earth. Through the millennia that followed, the higher portions of the reef, formed of harder stuff than the surrounding terrain, were gradually exposed by surface erosion. The highest point of the ancient reef, Guadalupe Peak, is now a mile above the low-lying salt beds on the west and southwest."

"There is ample wilderness at Guadalupe National Park on the surface of things - 77,500 acres of it. Guadalupe has fifty-five miles of primitive trails but little in the way of roads. U.S. Highway 62/180 passes through the southeast corner of the park for six miles; a few old-time wagon roads, too rocky and high centered for modern automobiles, approach the eastern canyons and wind across the desert bajadas (alluvial slopes) on the west side. There are no other roads."

"...Afterward, for a long time, we sit in the shade of the blessed trees, listening to canyon wrens, to the scream of a red-tailed hawk high against the cliffs, to the moan of the wind. We watch the evening sun go down beyond the dry lakes of salt and the far northwestern mountains out in New Mexico. This is a harsh, dry, bitter place, lonely as a dream. But I like it. I know I could live here if i wanted to. If I had to. After all, I've been here before."