Bikepackers against the Big Bend border wall

No al Muro, by Jerod Foster

I’ve made thousands of photographs in Texas’s Big Bend. I’ve spent months of my life hiking, biking, driving, and motorcycling both sides of the river that runs through it. I’ve explored its backcountry, studied its ecology, and have scars to prove it. I’ve made friends with its locals and its visitors. I’ve watched it transition from a dirtbag’s haven into a destination for those needing to satiate desert-focused wanderlust. I’ve led hundreds of university students on outdoor adventures, bikepacking trips, and storytelling expeditions to the region, and almost every single one of them has spent at least one night on the banks of the Rio Grande. I’ve watched every one of those students look in awe at El Despoblado, much like I did years before them, and find inspiration. I’ve watched spiritual awakenings happen in that land.

And not once have I thought it needed a wall running through any of it.

The Texas Big Bend is one of the last truly wild places in North America, remarkably untouched in large areas of it, and for good reason. It’s a hard place to be. What happens to be a beautiful but delicate habitat for some of the continent’s most unique desert ecosystems, flora and fauna, isn’t very hospitable for human populations. As a result, its wildness stays intact, interrupted only by the odd stretch of tarmac or gravel, a few head of cattle on large, parched ranches, and a few failed quicksilver mines. But, you wouldn’t know that if you’ve never been there. To more fully understand the Texas Big Bend requires being there, to appreciate its terroir is to take it in from its ancient, sloughed peaks and from deep within its dry arroyos.

One of the best ways to embrace the Big Bend is to bikepack the 300,000+ acre Big Bend Ranch State Park. It’s been my pleasure to have led several university and public groups through “the ranch” over the years on two wheels, starting from the waters of the river that separates two beautiful countries, and moving deeper into the vital drainages that feed it during monsoon season. Moving at a bikepacker’s pace through rough country allows participants an intimate immersion with the region’s natural environment and history. When the train of mountain bikes halts for rest, the quietness of the area presses in. It’s so quiet you can hear yourself sweat. At night, a pack of coyotes howl on the ridge a quarter mile away from where you’re bivied. If you’re lucky, a mountain lion’s caterwaul is heard, leaving you to wander about the futility of sleeping in a plastic sack. You become familiar with place names like Fresno, El Solitario, La Posta, Javelina, Leyva, Sauceda, Pila Montoya, Pila de los Muchachos, and others that represent different memories of the purest—yet challenging—environment you’ve ever rolled a tire through. And, then you push your bike onto Chorro Vista, and the most beautiful landscape scrapes its way in front of you, layers of rock, sediment, and color stretching southeast toward Big Bend National Park, toward the Rio Grande, and toward Mexico’s Sierra del Carmen. 

And at that moment, as my dear friend Madison Walker Martin puts it, you realize this is a place you’ve been given, that you must work for, and not because it’s yours through ownership, but because it’s yours to steward, to help see that it remains wild.

The Texas Big Bend does not need a steel wall cutting through it. Border activity evidence in the area shows us it’s unwarranted. Monitoring alternatives exist that are far less invasive, more efficient, and in the case of the Big Bend, a better use of public tax dollars. As good friend and Big Bend outfitter Tyler Priest has written, a wall’s construction will result in environmental, archaeological, economic, recreation, and cultural disaster. It will significantly fragment wildlife habitat, challenge ways of living in this region, and mar a heritage of care for an increasingly rare thing in today’s world: 

Wild places.

#noalmuro

By Patrick Farnsworth

Like many of you, when I heard about plans to construct a border wall in Big Bend, my heart sank. I went immediately to a place of panic and fear — with an overwhelming sense that this could not happen. Not on our watch. Not after so many others have fought to make our public lands public, and to keep them that way. 

Anytime our public lands are under threat, the outdoor community feels it first and feels it deeply. To us, these aren’t far-off abstract places on a map. They are our sanctuaries, our playgrounds, our retreats, and our revivals. They remind us of our mortality and insignificance against the scale of the natural landscape — and in doing so, they help us regain some balance in an otherwise chaotic world. 

For me, Big Bend is the public land I feel most connected to. As a lifelong Texan, I’ve had the privilege of visiting its grandeur for more than 30 years. I’ve hiked and biked its trails, swam and paddled its rivers, soaked in the hot springs, and had too many margaritas in Boquillas. Over the decades I’ve collected a lifetime of memories there. 

But as I reflect on what a border wall would mean for this place, two trips keep coming to mind. 

In 2021, my friend Connor Thomas and I went on a three-day bikepacking trip in Big Bend National Park. On day one we rode from Grassy Banks to Talley Campground. That evening, I took a photo of Connor standing at camp, surveying the mighty Rio Grande and the land beyond. If this wall comes to fruition, it would stand where Connor stood. That view would be gone forever. 

The next morning, we hiked six miles to the top of Mariscal Canyon — 1,850 feet above the river valley below. The views were breathtaking. We sat at the canyon’s edge, looking out over the Rio and a vast, uninterrupted landscape stretching in every direction. A setting that should remain untouched for all to enjoy as we did that fine February day. 

Inspired by that trip, we returned the following year, this time to float the Rio through Mariscal Canyon. 

We loaded packrafts onto our bikes and once again rode the 30 miles from Grassy Banks to Talley. The next morning, we broke down our bikes, secured them to our inflatable rafts, and paddled into the canyon. 

What happened that day became a core lifetime memory. 

The canyon walls rose so high they made your neck ache if you stared too long. I remember thinking, Just last year I sat at the top of that wall, as I drifted slowly through the canyon below. I was struck by the immense passage of time etched into those walls, carved by the Rio over millions of years, and by the scale of it all. 

After the 10-mile float, we camped at Solis before pedaling back the next morning.

I shudder to think how these trips would have been altered, or made impossible, if the proposed wall had existed. Experiences that have shaped my life would not only be off limits to me, but to anyone seeking adventure, wonder, and connection in this place, forever. 

And those were just two of countless trips. 

The more I visit Big Bend, the more of myself I leave there. It has grown in me as I’ve grown, becoming an integral part of my life’s story. In 2025, I had the privilege of creating a cycling ultra race — the West Texas Showdown — to introduce others to this landscape and offer them the chance to experience it by bike. Now, just months later, the region faces the possibility of being forever scarred. This community cannot sit idly by and allow a wall to take this event, and ones like it, from us. 

The Big Bend region has long served as a gateway between our two nations — not just for people, but for countless species of flora and fauna. It is a truly wild landscape. A sanctuary for anyone with an adventurous spirit. 

What it is not, is a meaningful corridor for illegal crossings. Anyone who has spent time there understands how remote and unforgiving the 1.3 million acres of Big Bend National and State Parks truly are. The notion that this is a primary crossing route is disconnected from the reality of the terrain. 

At times like this, I take inspiration and find hope in the devotion, sacrifice, and leadership of figures like Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and Edward Abbey who have been fierce protectors and advocates for the wild untamed wilderness that we enjoy today . We owe people like them, and countless other advocates for the outdoors, a tremendous debt for the untamed wild places we get to enjoy — and it didn’t come easy. The fight to create and protect public lands is as old as this country itself. 

Time and again, these lands have come under threat from political and corporate interests that don’t reflect the will, or the long-term good, of the people. 

These lands are mine. They are yours. They are ours. And yet, they belong to no one — except the coyotes, jackrabbits, rattlesnakes, and the countless plants and animals that call Big Bend home. 

It is our responsibility to stand up for them. To stand against outside interference that would diminish their home and tarnish the landscape for those who come after us, hoping to sit along the banks of the Rio or stand on the rim of Mariscal Canyon in awe. 

And right now, they are under threat once again. 

History shows that when this happens, it is the will of the people that must rise to meet the moment and stand up for one of our nation’s greatest treasures.