It was late afternoon on my last day in Big Bend National Park. I faced east where the Chisos Mountains rose up in steep cliffs from the desert. A few days after the New Year, there was a slight chill in the air but I was not thinking about the temperature. Rather, I was concentrating on the rapidly shifting light as the sun sank and clouds moved back and forth. With my camera mounted on a...
The trip began poorly. The remote, unmaintained road dropping from the Andes to the Amazon was a mess. All day we had struggled to prevent the bus from becoming fossilized in the muck. Hours of labor, and we were covered in a thick layer of red, Amazonian mud. After dark, it started to rain. Huge drops pounded our hair, arms, and soiled clothes. Someone pulled out soap, another...