Speaker 1: Welcome to the crime page of bid and he doesn't podcast.
I'm here with David Keller, West Texas historian and archaeologist,
and we're going to talk about a couple things pertinent
not just to West Texas but to the entire state.
So David Keller, Hello, introduce yourself.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you very much. Joy. Yeah. So I live
in Alpine in Redford. So I've been in the Big
Ben region for more than twenty years. Did archaeology to
the Center for Big Ben's Studies for a lot of
that time Big projects and Big Ben National Park and
on private ranches across the region, also state park lands,
and then over the course of years, ended up writing
a few books on regional history and then kind of
got into some historic preservation. So I do a lot
of Adobe consulting.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell everybody about Center for Big Ben's Studies. What
is it? It's associated with the College was seul it is.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a pseudo department. I think it's trying
to become more of a department. But it was started
in the eighties by a fellow that wanted to basically
become a clearinghouse for history and archaeology indist cultural studies
across the region earl Elm, and then over time it
basically was passed on to Bob Maloof, who became the
director shortly before I came on, and he was the
state archaeologist for years, and so the center's focus shifted
to primarily archaeology. They've always done publishing, so they have
a newsletter, they have regular journals that they put out,
and then occasional papers. And Bob, when he was director,
had a program, a larger program that was partly devised
as a fundraising mechanism, but it also parsed out different
research areas that the center was active in. At that time,
soul Ross offered an undergraduate degree in anthropology, and so
we did teach some classes, but there was never a major, and.
Speaker 1: They don't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think that at this point they
are trying to develop it into a major, and so
we'll see how that goes. You know, I'm not with
sol Ross anymore. A year and a half moved on
and so now I work for myself. It's Keller Consulting.
They'll see so do the same things, but I just
don't have to report to work anymore.
Speaker 1: So archaeos but it's all archaeology basically.
Speaker 2: Mostly, although you know, what I get hired to do
mostly in the recent year and a half has been
historical preservation consulting, so either private people with you know,
who have bought a house that's an adobe or rock
or whatever they wanted some idea of what to do
with it, some guidance, but also do workshops. We did
one at Fort Leeton about a year ago for Texas
Parks and Wildlife staff, and then we did we're doing
another one. We did one last year at Fort Davis.
We're doing it again in October at Fort Davis for
mostly for National Park staff.
Speaker 1: So what tell me about tell us about the human
history of the region, Like what is I guess, how
long have people been here starting with indigenous people and
then when like Anglo settlement mostly happened when like eighteen
hundreds eighteen eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. So you know, so we the
full sweep of human occupation is is pretty much represented
here for the most part. We'll say back to Clovis periods,
so twelve thousand years yeah, more or less. We know
now that there were people here much earlier. We don't
know exactly keeps getting pushed back, right, I mean across
North America.
Speaker 1: Yeah, years, twenty years.
Speaker 2: Some people said there's been some some sites where they've
found evidence I think as early as thirty five, but
those contexts were questionable. Yeah, so those that's the you know,
books still out. Jury's still out on that one. So
we're continuing to learn more. But we know that people
were here in the Big Ben region by at least
twelve thousand years ago. The thing is that a lot
of those early early sites we suspect were washed away
during flood events, probably during the Alta thermal which was
a hot, dry period, and so a lot of them
were just erased. And so finding an intact paleo Indian
side is difficult. We have a little bit better idea
now kind of places that we might look to do that,
but it's been historically difficult. And so the two sort
of flagship paleo sites in the region were the day
Charles Kelly's site and Big Ban National Park and the
Chisos and then the Genevieve Likes Duncan site on the
O two ranch. Where is that on the O two
it's south of the Paisano Plateau. So if you're going
south on one eighteen, it's just off to the right,
it's the big expanse. Once you drop off the where
one eighteen Highway one eighteen runs out of Alpine south
towards Big Ben.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And so you go through Turilingua, but between Alpine and
Urilingua you pass Elephant Mountain. And then once you pass
Elephant Mountain you get into a large flat desert expanse
and that is pretty much the O two Ranch on
both sides. And that's what elevation. That's lower elevation, it's
lower elevation. It's mostly desert scrub country. They have a
little bit of higher stuff along the edge of the
flank of the escarpment, but most of its little desert scrub.
Speaker 1: So the people who were living there back then, I
mean there's not even is there a name for the
culture or what is the.
Speaker 2: Well, we pretty much sub divide cultures prehistorically. Of course,
they didn't have we don't know, tribal names that they
what they called themselves back in those days. So we
refer to them in really broad terms like Paleo Indian
or Early Archaic or Middle Archaic people late archic, late prehistoric,
and these are just time periods subdivisions within that do
exist in certain you know context, but they're often defined
by technology. So point styles Clovis point versus a fulsome
point versus the late Paleo indies.
Speaker 1: That's pretty reliable.
Speaker 2: Obviously, it is because those have been proven in dated contacts,
meaning they were dated after carbon fourteen.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. So just making an arrow point in this
certain shape, it was right. Yeah, if I had a
friend of mine, he's a long distance hiker, he was.
He goes in Death Valley all the time, and he
goes in these fucking mountains where like no one's probably
been in a few centuries. And he's a tall, lanky guy.
Just you know, fucking blows my mind. And he found
a clothes point on the middle. He's found a bunch
of new plant species doing that too, like just you know,
rare plants with narrow distributions that aren't known to science yet. Yeah,
he just found a member of asta racy that that
is like that. But he find a Clovis point somewhere.
He doesn't take the ship either, which I think is cool.
It takes a photo. GPS points that and puts it
back there, because that's always it's a whack and people
take it a little much like put in your mantle.
Speaker 2: Now, well, when you think about it deeply, you know
it's clear that the right thing to do is to
leave it there, and he did the right thing. That's
the right thing. Take a picture, take a GPS location,
leave it where it's where it is. You know, honestly
as a scientist, as an archaeologist, if I had my drothers,
that's what we would do. Also, we would leave the
artifacts in place. Uh. The reason so we don't depends
on the research design, but usually it's because we want
to do some in house analysis. The other reason, main reason,
compelling reason, i should say, is when the artifacts are
at risk of being collected.
Speaker 1: Well, at least if you're taking if sciences are thinking
that they're studying it, there's data collect there's something, it
can be returned to the site. But if some jackass
is just going to take it and put on his
fucking man, it's like, man, fuck you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a significant difference. You know, we try to
be understanding because everybody in their dog back in the
day and even now, you know, artifact collecting was, you know,
a state pastime. I mean even as a kid, that's
one of the things.
Speaker 1: I did that happened. It's spiritized criminal. That's insane, right right, Yeah,
people just having straight up mummies in their homes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that site was one of a number of sites
across the state which served for a while functioned as
a while as a pay to dig You would pay
money to go up there and dig in a rock shelter.
And of course rock shelters, unlike open sites, which are
pretty ubiquitous across the region, rock shelters are very significant because,
for one thing, you have a very focused, intensive occupation
inside those spaces, right, That's one thing. The second thing
is that that rock shelters afford a level of preservation
that we do not get on open sites. So perishables
are able to you know, to remain intact for very
long periods of time.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was touching thirty thousand year old sloth ship.
Speaker 2: Yeah, spirit eye.
Speaker 1: That was crazy. That was nuts, man, exactly. I'm glad
I was able to get in there too. I think
if the dude would have known who I was, maybe
would have saidn't though, But anyway, yeah, yeah, So anyway, okay,
so we okay, so that's a pretty reliable system of
dating is the points, and there's Clovis points from this
area that have been recovered.
Speaker 2: Yes, there have been, there have been you know, they're
mostly fragmentary, but we have we have a few and
mostly what we found what what the archaeology suggests that
there was very very light occupation during that period, that
the real human occupation sort of across the region didn't
start to happen in an in you know, we're in
place sort of adaptations started to happen until the late
Paleoed period. So we're talking to maybe you know, eleven
thousand years ago to about eighty five hundred years ago
something like that.
Speaker 1: What was the climate like here?
Speaker 2: Very very much wetter, you know, so we're at the
tail end of the Pleistocene, right. You know, the lower
elevations would have had the pinions juniper that now have scrub,
mesquite and creosot, that's one example. At the higher elevations
you would have had you know, aspen and much more messic.
Speaker 1: Madrones, the drones two madrones out in Picos County, Man
just growing in this little wash. I was like this
shouldn't be here.
Speaker 2: This is crazy, right, So you know you do still
find examples of relics.
Speaker 1: Old they were big drones.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I relict, I relict, you know, species, I relict individual.
Speaker 1: Do you see many of those? Many madrones are like
around here and no in.
Speaker 2: The hills No, no, no there, I mean if you
crawl into canyons you'll see them.
Speaker 1: Are there with drones in Big Bend in the Chiefs, Yeah,
there are. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there's some just right outside of Alpine too that
I've I saw just a couple of weeks ago. So
it can't Miter Peak, which which if you can go
out there with a reservation, it's it's managed by the
Girl Scouts of America, but it's kind of a little
known and underutilized resources. It's north of town, well north
west of town. It's right by Miter Peak.
Speaker 1: It gets some seeds.
Speaker 2: Man, it's beautiful out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So they have big madrones in that in that canyon
up there, and there's a it's a naha and flowing water.
So it's it's a it's tell everybody it's not. It's
basically a natural uhank tank. Yeah, natural bowl that's typically
in the rock in the bottom of a wash or
maybe a solution cavity in limestone somewhere else. But basically
it just allows water to accumulate holes water just like
a bowl wood, whereas for a long periods of time
after a rain, whereas you know, everywhere else, it washes
off or soaks in. So where we have it's a
naha sort of bearing bedrock. It's They're very significant for
wildlife and they most likely almost certainly were prehistorically for
people to as water resources.
Speaker 1: So the I guess the people were living here, like
eleven dousand, any idea what they were doing. Was it
mostly just hunt their gather. Was there any kind of
like cultivation anything.
Speaker 2: Like that, Nothing that we've we know about. Of course,
you know, agriculture came relatively late, but they were all
hunter gatherers, and for the full sweep of human history
in the Big Bend and as is most across most
of the state of Texas, hunter gather was the predominant adaptation.
In fact, farming in this region was the anomaly, and
it happened very late. It happened in a very abbreviated fashion,
and we can't really even call those people necessarily agriculturalists
because they were they were probably so part time that
it was it was kind of hinging on that on
that border. Those are still open questions, a lot of
research yet to be done down in that area. And
that's what I'm talking about, is the area around Forsiitio Redford.
Those are what we call the La Junta district culturally speaking,
and that was the kind of southeasternmost extension of put
blowing culture in the Americas. But what they were doing there,
the majority of research happened in the nineteen thirties and
forties and there's been very little since and so we
have a lot of open questions and in fact, so
I'm hoping that more research will get done in the
near future. There's a lot of questions we have yet
to answer.
Speaker 1: So it was still it was still dry, but it
was wetter than it is now, and it was certainly
the water table was a lot higher, and there were
probably still like flowing springs.
Speaker 2: Yess, absolutely springs where they do not exist now. And
that's pretty much true throughout most of prehistory, with one
major exception, and that was what we call the Alta
thermal which was about from eighty five to around forty
five hundred years ago, a very long period of time
four thousand years where it was, it got increasingly hotter
and drier, probably even hotter and drier than it is today.
And during that period there was a massive landscape changes,
not just in the vegetation but also in because of erosion.
Patterns changed, and so a lot of these higher landforms
that had hosted a lot of vegetation and was able
to develop soil when the alta thermal came and those
plants died away and you get you know, massive flood events.
All that settlement washed from those higher landforms down into
lower valleys and redeposited, and in some cases those areas
became pretty stable landforms over time, and they were used
by prehistoric people as living surfaces. But yeah, so that
period of time was very different from today. But then
it started to revert back too much, way better wetter periods,
And we've had a couple of pulses throughout time where
it was significantly wetter and cooler than today.
Speaker 1: Most of the moisture was coming from where the south
or the east, or where from do you know.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not really not sure. The weather patterns
probably were different, slightly different than today. You know. Now
we're in a monsoonal pattern, and I think, you know,
there are probably times in the past when maybe that
wasn't the predominant weather pattern in terms of rainfall in
this region, that it was more spread out across the seasons.
The monsoonal pattern basically is where a high you know,
a zone of high pressure is generally moves it migrates northward,
allowing this region to sort of open up to moisture.
It comes from the south, primarily a lot of its
remnants from powerful hurricanes. They enter into Mexico and kind
of get funneled up through here. So bigger canes are
often really good news for this region because when we
get remnants of that, it really that's when we get
really good region wide rains. Otherwise they tend to be
very very localized.
Speaker 1: How long What was the megafauna like back then? I mean,
when did it really go out ten thousand years ago?
Was it last a little bit longer or what?
Speaker 2: Yeah, more of that. You know, during the late Plastocene,
we started to lose a lot of these large mammals,
you know, the willy mammoths, the giant bison, giant groundsloss sabertoothcats,
those kinds of things started to die out in succession,
and there's courts on a long debate about whether that
was human caused or whether it was environment, or whether
it was the interplay of both. Yeah, and most people
think that that was really an interplay of both. But
the argument for humans being a significant factor in there
has really been bolstered, I guess in recent years. It's
hard to deny that our culpability in that, yeah, man,
And that that really opens up a really doubtable, much
bigger conversation because you know, we've we've for many years
looked towards Native Americans as sort of being the you know,
sort of the guiding light for conservation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's somehow different from every other species of human primate,
which I don't mean they were, and I think I
think that's true to an extent, But I think they weren't.
I think only with certain cultures obviously, And I think
it was something that was learned, Like they probably learned
from having catastrophic events that faced them and being like,
we got to get our ship together because the way
we're living isn't gonna work, which we would be good
to do, but especially like the way the American left
has embraced identitarianism and all this stupid you know, And
I get it to an extent, because there's certainly a
social context for oppression that's been there, but then conflating
that with like, oh, because you're this, you're automatically going
to know, because you're Native American, you're automatically going to
know how to steward the land, and all this corny
shit can get the fuck out of here. I'm sorry.
There's there's, you know, pros and cons to both cultures.
There's probably a lot of I'm always criticizing Anglo culture especially,
but yeah, I just don't buy that class draft. And
it's funny too because I pointed that out, like, well,
you know, like the MAJORI got the New Zealand and
the most one extinct one hundred and two hundred years later,
and some people are just like and none of them
have any background in natural sciences of course to ever
say this, but some people are just like, no, that's
not true. That never happened. I'm like, wow, I'm fucking sorry,
but it looks like it did. Yeah, you know, we're humans,
a human that's what we do you know it's It
doesn't mean we automatically have this enlightened state and self
awareness about our place in the ecosystem just because you're.
Speaker 2: One, you know, melon, and we're just like any other
animal on this planet, organism on this planet is it's
it's you know, our intentions to reproduce and our and
our goals are largely self interest. You know. That's just how.
Speaker 1: Funny to me how that stuff like triggers some people.
It's like, look, man, this is probably what happened. I'm sorry,
Like this is what Well.
Speaker 2: You know, those a lot of myths die hard, and
that's that's one of them that a lot of us
want to hang on to because we like it. It's
very convenient. Uh and and you know, there's there's some
merit to it. There's a lot of merit to it.
We could we could go you know into that, but
but the fact is that humans have been hard on
the planet for a very long Well.
Speaker 1: There's merit that comparing different cultures.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, and a lot of that revolves around their
belief systems, right, so you compare and contrast you know,
Judeo Christian tradition to Native American you know, any number
of Native American religions, and there are some really start yeah,
stark differences. Uh. You know, when you get away from
sort of this idea of monotheism and you get away
from this idea that humans were created in the image
of God, then it's you're looking at a very different lands.
Speaker 1: I think it's yeah, and I think it's what caused
those societies in Europe before they even cross the ocean,
they ex terminate all their nature you're worshiping people or
you know, pagan whatever, and then and then start turning
the whole society into this feudal stay where everything was
controlled by a small minority, kind of similar we have today,
and everyone else was just a surf and a peon.
And then you know, more of that fuckery. And then
what we see that came over the ocean was the
result of a few centuries of that, you know, but
it's still like in the grand context of human history,
that's still a small amount of time. Like there was,
you know, and I'm sure this ship has been going on,
like mass killings and tribalism and all this ship and
fighting over dumb ship, and it's been going on for
thousands of years, like history is littered with mass graves, man,
and we were signs of you look at chimps and
that's what they do too. They're fucking nuts, you know,
they're like, it's crazy. The bonobos are different, but we didn't.
We didn't get too much of that. Yeah, that's similarity there.
I wish we did. But but anyway, but but yeah,
the MegaFon of thing is just so crazy to me
because it's like these things were here so recently and
now they're gone. And like the plants, I deal with
plants all the time that bear bear the scars, the
evolutionary scars, if you want to call them that, of
having evolved with these things. Like when I was in
the Dominican Republic, I was seeing that. You know, you
see these palms that produce these eight inch long spines
on them, and you're like, man, what the hell? You know,
like there's nothing here today like this didn't evolve for
a goat, you know, or like any of the small
deer like creatures like this was for a ground sloth.
There's something bigger that's gone though. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah,
that's wild man. Same thing with like some of the
cac din Chile and some of the columniar cac Dian
Chile air like brown Nina. It just gets these foot
long spines and then they stop being produced at like
nine feet, which is like the height that a ground
sloth could probably reach. Ye, yeah, it's cool, it's cool.
It's cool stuff to think about. But in West Texas especially,
it's yeah, the and the Are there any uh pac
ret midden that.
Speaker 2: Have been investigated in the region.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, yeah, like in West Texas, Yeah.
Speaker 2: There are. And that's that's how you know, that's a
lot of that's why we know a little bit about
the natural environment in the past because of packrat midden studies.
There were some really significant ones that were done from
packrat middens collected around Real Grand Village. Uh, And but
there's been a number of others and so by virtue
of those packrat middens, which of course contained can contain
very very old vegetation, uh, we're able to sort of
reconstruct uh you know, vegetative history.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what have they found, I mean, what what.
Speaker 2: Have Well, basically one thing that they found is that
that that the the Real Grand Village area was kind
of a refugium for desert vegetation during during the wetter
pulses that some of the like cacti and and maybe
kreosote bush things like that sort of hunkered down in
that area were still pretty hot and dry and spread
out from there as conditions started to dry out and
get hotter. But we also know, of course from other
middens that that, like I said, the vegetation that we
find now thousands of feet higher in elevation, we're down
in the land flaws, right.
Speaker 1: So it's you can kind of I mean, I guess
what trying to imagine what would look like, you would
kind of imagine it more of like an Edwards Plateau. Yes,
I think some more like the Edwards Plateau Big Bend Desert.
Speaker 2: And maybe some areas that were more savannah like. And
it probably also depended on how much, you know, fire
ecology played into the you know, into the local was fire.
Speaker 1: Was fire a part of the landscape here?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? You don't think that, but yeah it was, you know,
you because now there's very few parts of the desert
that can even carry fire. But what we found is that, yeah,
a lot of significant portions of the desert burned on
about twenty year intervals, and.
Speaker 1: So it must have been woodland then, damn well.
Speaker 2: And grasslands. Yeah, yeah, so those grasslands would have burned too,
and some of those were a lot of them are
of course natural lightning cause fires, but there were also
a lot of anthropogenic fire back in the day. We
don't have direct evidence of that here, but we know
it was widespread practice and sure, so we're certain that
that happened.
Speaker 1: That's crazy, but that's so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, fire managed landscape.
Speaker 1: Was what about how important was let your gia a
gob because that's a that's a huge food source. Once
you get very significant spiny leaf blades.
Speaker 2: You got this massive heart of so agave is you know,
generally we're just a really important food source prehistorically. Uh.
And they were harvested and cooked in underground earth ovens
for twenty four to forty eight hours to render them
edible and then so they would dig them up and
then they could eat them as is, or typically what
they'd did is made them into cakes and they dry
them out and they could be stored.
Speaker 1: They're so sweet. Do you ever eat like roasted a
g that's been Oh my.
Speaker 2: God, it's crazy, really sweet and sugar exactly, And so
one of the things that that we've that archaeologists have
been interested in more recent years with a lot of
research into earth ovens and burner rock middens, is that
the suspicion is that a lot of these uh agaves
that were being processed were actually ultimately intended for fermented beverages.
Oh really, yeah, that this that they were going to
be made into fermented drink.
Speaker 1: What what makes them think that?
Speaker 2: Well? Uh, it it relates to evidence that we found
in areas like paku May Consas Grandes, where that was
part of a much bigger trade network. But there at
pacu May, we've they found earth ovens and very specific
processing areas where they were clearly furmenting agave and making
beer just in pots and yeah and in vats.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So they've found that it was like a polk then, right, yeah,
kind of like a poolque uh There's they've other areas
like around the pueblos around Elpaso, they've found evidence of
jars that have corrosion on the inside. They're pitted, and
they they believe that a lot of that pitting was
caused from the acidity of the fermentation process. So there's
been increasing evidence to support that idea. Now, I think
that that was probably limited to areas where there was
more of a poll blowing presence, where there were you know,
larger aggregations of people and pottery. Also, we didn't have
that here except down at La Junta and there in
an abbreviated way. So we have no evidence for that here.
But we definitely have evidence of agave processing. So let's
sget inother agaves were roasted in these pits that made
that were basically earth ovens subterranean pressure cookers, if you will.
That leave a very pronounced uh, you know, feature on
the landscape.
Speaker 1: That stays for a while.
Speaker 2: It stays for They're very very persistent because they're made
of rock. And if the if the oven was reused
over many, many many years, or it was used very
intensively in one episode, or was years used over one
hundreds or even thousands of years, you find accumulations of
burned rock around them that can be a meter two
meters high.
Speaker 1: Especially when a rock splits from being heated.
Speaker 2: Exactly it is, yeah, And what would happen is they
would reuse rocks when they could, but rocks when they
were fired would break into smaller and smaller pieces. They
would lose their density and they were lose their ability
to hold heat, and so those were discarded. And as
those were discarded, they were just thrown out of the pit,
and over time those accumulated into huge mountains that we
call burned rock middens. And so you find those in
certain parts of the Big Bend. They're not as common
here as other parts, but central Texas.
Speaker 1: They kind of expected where you will find them, like, oh,
this looks like an ideal spot. It's got this certain
carve out in the landscape. This makes sense that this
would be.
Speaker 2: A yeah, if you know where to look.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember going when I went to someone
with someone to spirit I Cave. I remember we stopped
at a spot where there was one of those little
midden areas and yeah, there were burned scars everywhere. Have
you you been to spirit I Cave for right? Yeah?
Is that what's the story with that? That was the
place was getting looted in the fifties by people that
were just start just come paid a dig and you
can take whatever you find.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was and that's that's been the case,
you know, across across the state and elsewhere. Private land
is you know, those resources are not protected and so
ranchers can do anything they want. And in this case,
that rancher chose to open it up as a pay
to dig so people would.
Speaker 1: Come in because he owned the land and everything the land.
Speaker 2: And that's that's the thing. So if you own it,
you can you can choose to uh to do that,
and that that's what happened, and so a lot of
the significant archaeological resources were taken out of that before
scientists ever got a chance at it.
Speaker 1: That's so fucking crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, especially considering that they were taking mummies out,
taking the two bodies out, dead dead people. You know
that we had been interred there in a very respectful
ceremonial way, and then these yahoo's are digging them up
and putting them on display in their living room. Of
course they end up in the closet and then they
don't want to admit that they have it because it
gets sticky.
Speaker 1: That's what happened, right there was one of those we're
both tracked down, both of the mummies that were in there.
Speaker 2: I think one of them was tracked down. The other
one's still out. We think they know where it probably is.
But the guy who Uh. You know, I think part
of it might just be embarrassment and having had it
in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's well, the people who collected are dead obviously, right,
Like they've got to be long they've got to be
long dead. This was or maybe not.
Speaker 2: I don't well, I think yeah, no, I think that that.
You know, some of them are still living. But even
if they're not, you know, their descendants may have you know,
inherited supposed to. I think. So if you've got a
dead body, it's good to get rid of it as
soon as possible.
Speaker 1: Move. Yeah, that's a dick move.
Speaker 2: You know. The right thing to do is you know.
Ever since NACPRA, Uh, it's it's become kind of mandated
and legislated to uh to address burials in a certain way.
So tribal consultation is a big thing. Uh, and uh,
it's become more of an issue. I don't like to
mess with burials personally. There's an incredible amount of data
that you can get from them. It's really useful, but
it's such a sticky mess. And it also it's you know,
there's an issue of respect that I prefer not to.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, if I'm given given the option. And I'm
also very good friends with a Native American man who's
kind of sole purpose in life. His stated purpose in life,
and his goal is to basically reinter a lot of
these bodies that were taken. He wants to put them
back in a respectful way.
Speaker 1: I think that stuff is worth studying, and it would
probably the information you collect would probably be really appreciated
by many modern data sentence. But if you're going to
do that, I think you need to have someone who's
a modern data sentate or you know which they can
look at haplotypes and all that stuff figure out how,
but you've got to have someone there to, you know,
do It'd be the same thing if you're like digging
up a stiff at a like a Catholic senate theory.
You know, I'm sure they have the priests go out
and they do whatever. You know, it's just protocols, Yeah,
the protocols, not just like, oh look at where we're fine,
you know. Yeah, that's crazy though. Yeah. When what's his face?
Told me about that that that mummified corpse in someone's closet,
I was just like, I was just like it was
one of those moments was like only in fucking Texas, man, Like,
that's just totally fine, Like whatever, you know, big crazy man,
that's crazy. Are they ever going to get that back?
You think? Or is the or is that lady like no,
it's mine?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think I think
the one hold out it. Maybe they're claiming they don't
have it. Oh that was the last I heard, and
I have not kept up with this, so it's it's
an ongoing thing that you know, there's other people that
probably could.
Speaker 1: Dude saw it and collected a tooth like they know
maybe well.
Speaker 2: That was one that was at the at a museum
I think up in Pecason. Oh yeah, he did, he
did do that, and that was you know, a lot
of people I guess took exception to that because maybe
there was there were different there could have been a
different way of going about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was. What was interesting though, is that
because of that they were able to get DNA right
and we went out there there was a modern day descendant,
this gentleman from ol Pastor Yeah, friend, yeah, totally, yeah,
he came out with us and it was uh he
was that was like his relative from ten Thoutary six
not amazing. Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: He's a direct to send it.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. And so yeah, I said, he asked
for photos I took, So I sent them a bunch
of photos and stuff and yeah, he was like, it's cool.
How you like all the plants here? And I was like, yeah,
that's all I It's like all I focused on. Man. Yeah. Yeah,
but yeah, man, that's a special place. What is uh,
but it's being taken care of, like at least the
landowner is taking decent care of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very respectful the modern landowner. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he's really good.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: There's yeah really no extractive industry going on there. And
he's certainly very in touch with the archaeology there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he's not only you know, protecting it, he's very
been very active in its discovery because he discovered hundreds
of sites out there on his own. Oh really, yeah,
him and his and his ranch helper discovered a lot
of the sites because it's just became a passion of his.
He's over the years.
Speaker 1: Who owned it before and what was it? Was it
cattle or what were they doing out there?
Speaker 2: Cattle, sheep and goats And there were multiple owners. But
you know, Donald Judd was one of them.
Speaker 1: See that is insane to me, Like, why would you
try to graze cattle out in the desert man.
Speaker 2: Because it's cheap land and you can.
Speaker 1: It's just you're gonna fuck the land into a commas.
Speaker 2: I don't care. There's nothing well, I mean, you know,
it's uh, there's multiple reasons why. But I mean maybe
because you just don't have the option of doing anything
else you are poor, or it's you don't care about
the land, especially when you're leasing it and it's not
even your own asset. I mean, typically the story has
been that if that land is not watched carefully or
you don't have a specific lease agreement, they're gonna overgraze it.
It's just gonna happen. It certainly happened in Pensil Canyon.
We still see the evidence of that. I mean it's everywhere.
The evidence of what cattle grazing has done to this
region is very evident to anybody who has a cursory
understanding of of a biology of plants, you know, of
how the landscape's supposed to look.
Speaker 1: What is cool, at least is that I don't see
any of the nasty invasive grasses we have down in
South Texas. It's like buffalo grass or grass we have it.
Speaker 2: Oh, buffal grass is a big problem.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it here. Well it's frost tolerant though.
Speaker 2: No it's not. So it's the main problems we have
with it or down on the river corridor where you
can't get rid of it. It's just like you know,
giant cain. Now, Tamarisk is another story. Now that's an
interesting little success story is still ongoing. You know, the
beetle release has been extremely effective and I don't know
how many. I don't know a bio control. Uh, there
was some released years ago around Candelar area, and I
don't know how many more releases there were there were
after that, but that the beetle has has become almost
region wide down there, and so now.
Speaker 1: It was invasive too, but it only bothers tamar.
Speaker 2: That's the supposition. We hope that the case. But right now,
so there are at tamarisk dying down around Redford now,
like there's a big die off happening and so it's
very visually evident. So it's really changing things great, which
is good, you know, you think, but then also there's
other invasives that that are just taken right over, you know,
or others they're just increases. You know.
Speaker 1: There's so many wonderful native grasses here though, it's crazy,
like the boutry of cloas and they all show up
or like just they're still volunteering. Yeah, they're cool. That's
cool to see. It is cool to see tons of
buda lua and yeah, just fucking really dope grasses. Yeah, yeah, Well,
I think that's a good segue into the public versus
private land issue, which I wanted to talk to you about,
because ninety six percent of the state is private land,
I think, and you know, you talk about this. I
made a post on this on social media, and I
got this. I felt like the same, like fucking dim
wit was common thing on everyone because you go to
the pay as just an Anglo dude, you know, double
digit IQ pictures all the same. It's like these guys
were all the same clone of each other, which they
probably are because we're conformist herd species of primate. That's
what we do. There's very few original thinkers in the group,
you know, but and they would all they would all
say the same shit. They're like, you know, like it
goes somewhere else, like, well, you know, I like to
I like it here. I like the you know, I
moved here for family reasons. I like the geology and
the plants here. And so you think people shouldn't be
able to own private property. It's like, holy shit. That
that's when I realized, Like this motherfucker's never left the state,
Like he doesn't realize this isn't about owning private property.
This isn't about like you shouldn't be able to own
a few acres of land. That's about living in a
state where the public, the vast majority of the public,
has absolutely no access to any of it except for
a few crumbs which are paid to access and ridden
with regulations through Texas Parks and Wildlife. I like this.
You know, where's literally every state west of here, you've
got at least forty to sixty percent, in some cases
much more than that, like in the state case of
Nevada public land. And having experienced that, like growing up,
you know, when I was getting into botany, like that
was where I mean, I would go to fucking Utah.
I would follow my hobby does it all the way
to southwestern Utah where it ends to go up to
Nevada to Idaho and there's it's public land everywhere, Like,
where are we going to sleep? Then? I know that's coool.
How about that mountain? Then we can go check out
the other side of that mountain and see what's growing there.
You know, in the morning we wake up and these
dudes have never experienced that, and that's why they're so
triggered by Well, first off, you know, Texas has kind
of got the I mean a lot of places do
in metroanity of Texas, but the arrogance thing, you know,
that's real, like Texas Texas pride, right exactly. Yeah, it's
like they've but they've never there's just like no intellect.
They're like they're not they don't realize that this is
the anomaly. This is not normal, Like most of the
Western United States is publicly accessible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Unfortunately, Texans aren't known for being really broad thinkers.
There's there's a lot of exceptions, but I mean, culturally speaking,
you know, there's some badass people here, really wonderful people, sure,
but there's.
Speaker 1: But the culture itself, the dominant culture, is not an
intellectual They.
Speaker 2: Traveled, no, no they're kind of anti intellectual.
Speaker 1: Right, proudly anti intellectual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's it's a it's just interesting you know,
redneck Texas as well and alive. Yeah, it's crazy, man.
That's how you know Trump got in office, right, Yeah,
because we're We've got a lot of those guys. And
they're not limited to Texas, of course, they're all over.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the And I'm not a
big I don't I haven't smoked weed in like three years.
But I think that's one of the reasons that they're
so against legalizing pot here too. It's because they want
people drunk, because that's a good way to numb and dumb.
You know, you have to end up dealing with your ship. Ever.
You know, you don't never like think because I mean
a lot of stoners will just sit there gate mouth.
But I certainly sometimes I like, I'll smoke weed and
it'll boom put me into it. I'm like, oh my god,
and I'm seeing myself in a new way, and I'm like,
oh cool, all right, I want to change my behavior.
I want to be like weed can be mildly psychedelic
like that. Think that's probably a large reason why people
like Ken Paxton are so against legalizing Maybe.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't think Ken or most of those
guys know anything about weed.
Speaker 1: No, I would love to fucking do them with good time.
Speaker 2: I think if they knew a little more, they'd probably
be more relaxed about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this guy's love rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, totally. And I don't advocate weed either either.
Like I said, I think it can really I've watched
a lot. I mean, it's not going to ruin your life,
like you know, aiast their alcohol, but it's it does.
You can get a lot of nothing done on it,
you go. I know the people who are exceptions, but
I know a lot of people who get loopings. But
the point is it's just you know, it's this, Yeah,
this culture here is weird, man, it's like this repression too.
It's like this really and me being like a loud
daego who's like, you know, traveled all over and been
all over. It's weird. Like I say, it's directly evident
to me. I'm like, man, people are afraid of like
voice and opinion sometimes or it's or like say anything
or go against the grain, or the most people are
this is of course a generalization, but it's a there's
like an enforced social order just like any place, but
especially here. Yeah, but it's a weird thing. But anyway,
but so how do we get to this public this
private land? This goes back almost two hundred years?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as the contingencies of history, you know, so Texas,
as we all know, has a really unique history. We
were part of Mexico. I mean we're part of Spain
and before that, and then you know, people from the South,
from the United States started culinating colonizing Texas even when
it was still part of Spain and then turned over
to Mexico and it was part of Mexico. But anyway,
what happened was essentially when the United States, I mean
when Texas joined the Union, they i would say were
allowed they they kind of had to cut a special deal.
What Texas wanted to do was what all the other
Western states did, was they would give up their public
lane sort of to the Feds when they joined the Union.
But Texas, but Texas wanted to do that also. But
they also wanted the US to pay off their war debt.
So they had this warring with Mexico. So they had
this ten million dollar war debt, and they have had
one hundred million acres of land, and they were saying,
so you'll take the land pay off our debt. You said, no,
no way. But it turned out five years later with
the Compromise Agreement of eighteen fifty. Yeah. So yeah, continuing absolutely,
you know, So the question is why does Texas have
no public land to speak of? You know where Nevada's
what fifty five million acres, We've got less than three.
So what happened? Every other state has massive amounts of
public land BLM for a service, you know, other other
kinds of federal land, and we just don't except for primarily,
you know, the national parks and some smaller national grasslands.
And it was because basically, when Texas joined the Union,
they Texas was allowed to keep all of its public
land instead of reverting to federal control.
Speaker 1: And why is that they worked.
Speaker 2: The kind of it It was part of the Compromise
of eighteen fifty. It was because it was mainly because
Texas had a large war debt. And so what originally
they wanted the US to pay that off in exchange.
Speaker 1: For oh didn't want to buy it.
Speaker 2: They didn't want to buy it.
Speaker 1: So they were like, all right, well let us keep
it and we'll sell it ourselves. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But so what happened in eighteen fifty, that was eighteen
forty five when they joined They say, you keep the
debt and you keep your land. In eighteen fifty, part
of the compromise that chopped a bunch of Texas off
all of New Mexico, the part that is now New
Mexico was chopped off of Texas. And so the agreement was,
we're going to reduce the size of Texas and in
exchange for that, we'll pay off your debt. You still
get to keep your land, the rest of your land.
Speaker 1: And so why didn't they want to just buy the
land outright? Why didn't the Feds want to just buy
the land outright?
Speaker 2: You know, uh, you know, they had plenty of land.
It was not a scarce commodity.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: And they you know, they didn't just you know, money,
they didn't want they don't want to pay for it,
it's too hard to.
Speaker 1: But they would buy New Mexico and these other.
Speaker 2: Well they know that was just given so another every
other state. When those states joined the Union, all the
unsold land reverted to Federals.
Speaker 1: So when Texas joined the Union, it still had a.
Speaker 2: War debt, yes, oh yes, a big war debt.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so that had to be resolved and ultimately the US,
I believe, did pay that off and tech but Texas
got to keep its public land. And so what Texas
then proceeded to do was to to sell it or
give it away. And some of it was given landscript
for you know, veterans, but they also gave a huge amount,
about a third of it away to the railroads as
an inducement to build more tracks. So for every mile
of track that was laid, they got sixteen sections of land.
Speaker 1: Jesus, but what is a section? How many acres?
Speaker 2: So it was six hundred and forty acres?
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they became the biggest landholders state by far.
But the catch was they had to sell it within
twelve years, which flooded the market. And what Texas had
wanted to do was to encourage homesteading and just to
be you know, this very democratic sort of agricultural society
where people were out on the landscape. But in effect
it consolidated control because well, for one thing out here,
you can't have a small ranch. It's not viable. You
have to have a lot of country to run a
viable operation. That was true even back then, and so
land became consolidated anyway of Texas' best effort not to
do that. But yeah, Texas, I wouldn't say squandered its
public land, but it certainly wasn't certainly really careful with it.
It basically liquidated a lot of.
Speaker 1: It within like a certain amount how many decades, within
how many decades after joining the Union.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the majority of it was gone by
eighteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Compromise of eighteen fifty applied specifically to Texas. That's like
a Texas thing or what is that exactly?
Speaker 2: I think it was involved to other states and there
were other components of it. It was a component of
the Agreement of eighteen fifty, the compromise, So that was
just a piece of it. But Texas lost a lot
of territory there. But they were able to resolve their
debt and they also got to hold on to all
the rest of their public land. Texas did retain about
a third of what they had left for the public
school system, and some of that is still owned by
the state, but all the rest but anyway, that's the
gist of it, and that's why we don't have BLM
land and national forests and things that have been right
next door in New Mexico and Colorado. So if you're
used to the public lands West, if that's what you're
used to, or if that's what you've been exposed to
it at some point in your life, like you have,
and like I have, because I spent a lot of
time in New Mexico and then lived in Montana, you
sort of becoming accustomed to a whole different, you know,
degree of access to land that we just don't have Intoa, and.
Speaker 1: You think nothing of crossing a barberie or fence, right,
these are just here to keep the cattle instead. Doesn't
mean I can't go there.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And that's that's true on our national forest lands
because those areas are leased out to ranchers that can
graze their cattle or whatever whatever kind of livestock they have.
But it's still public access, so yes, you can still
go out there. Obviously, that's not the case in Texas.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: If you're born and raised in Texas and you don't
get out of the state much, that's just something you
come to understand and accept. But if you've gone away
and you get used to being out and recreating and
experiencing the larger American lands West, and you come back
to Texas, you can feel really confined really quickly. Yeah,
and it's it's it's kind of startling. So it's given
me that, like yourself, that broader perspective, and it's it
begs the question, why is this like this here?
Speaker 1: What's amazing to me is that friends who grew up
here and it's like they were if they go to
other states and I've been with them, Like if friends
who were from Texas we go to other states and
I'm just walking wherever I see a fence, I jump
over it because it's public land, They're like, what what
are you doing? Like it's they're they're afraid. You know,
it's holy shit.
Speaker 2: Well, because yeah, the mantra is if you cross that fence,
you well may get shot killed.
Speaker 1: Right point till you get rested right.
Speaker 2: Right or whatever. But so it's you know, trespassing on
private land in Texas is something that you know, a
private land land is sacrificanct.
Speaker 1: Hey, it's just so stupid, it's so creepy too, and
I get it to an extent because if like you know,
we have a conservation property, if I saw dudes lurking
around it, I'd want to know what they were doing.
But the way some of these landowners roll up on
you when you're not even on their property, you know,
and they're like what are you doing? It's like I'm
looking at stuff like I've got a like it's obvious
what I'm doing. Like I'm not doing anything nefarious. You know,
I'll be I mean, i'll be nicer than that, you know,
But this is my train of thought. I mean, I've
got this whole thing. I like wave and smile and
talk to people, chat them up and whatever. You know,
I always do that. But it's just so it's like
just settle down, man, you know, like there's nothing you
don't there's nothing here, Like I'm not I'm not at
your house. It's a it's a there's a vastness, there's nothing,
there's no buildings in sight, there's nothing that could be
stolen or tampered with or like what are you?
Speaker 2: But if you're on their land, they take it as
often as a personal frame.
Speaker 1: It's a personal they're.
Speaker 2: Very and they yeah, they don't want to there. They
if you haven't asked permission and you suddenly are there,
they're offended.
Speaker 1: Have you found that many landowners who own large parcels
of land will be receptive if you ask?
Speaker 2: It can be It depends. I mean, if you're ask
is for purely recreational reasons, that chances are you're going
to get a negative right and say no. The way
I've been able to personally, and one of the things
I've been able to do to circumvent this problem access
is being in a very fortunate position to be able
to offer a service to landowners. That has allowed me
access to vast amounts of private land that other people
just simply don't have. That's helped me out. It doesn't
help anyone else out doing surveys. But during surveys, yeah,
so doing archaeological surveys or if I'm doing historic preservation,
whatever it is, they of course they allow you on
for those purposes. But you're there to work, you know,
and if you recreate a little bit, that's a side thing.
But yeah, if you just ask, can I hike on
your property or go camping on your property, I'd be
surprised if you find a sick.
Speaker 1: Can I do a plant survey and I'll pull you
out a list of what.
Speaker 2: I'm maybe that although they do get us, they get
really sketched out about plants well, because of the Endangered
Species Act.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't affect plants in Texas.
Speaker 2: They don't know that, and they are always afraid that
you're going to find something that's endangered and that their
land's going to be taken away. And it is such
an entrenched mantra that they even if it's proven untrue,
you can show them all the evidence, they're not going
to believe you. We have organizations that are pretty much
dedicated to doubling down on these kind of ideas. One
is the Davis Mountains Heritage Association, which is based out
of Alpine here, and so that that would be an
interesting conversation to have with some of those guys. They say, well,
they're private property rights. It's private property rights group, and
so they they sort of defend that against any threat.
And one of those threats and the reason that it
started was because there was a push I think it's
twenty years ago, thirty years ago to make part of
the Davis Mountains a national park. And that just created
a firestorm of opposition.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Really Yeah, yep, it's an interesting story that no one
has for.
Speaker 1: The economy there too.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, Well, it is, but it's very Again, it's
you're you're touching on something that's really sensitive to landowners
and they feel that even if it's not their land,
it's the ranch next door becomes part of a national
park that is just deeply offensive to them. Wow, on
some levels that I can't quite explain myself, but it's
really bizarre. I will say that, in spite of whatever
views I have on public land and access, I have
cer times in my life worked alongside with private landowners.
We really reached across the aisle where we had a
common cause, and I found myself in the weird position
of defending private property rights. But what I was defending
it from was not folks like you and me. I
was defending it from what should have been an illegal
taking eminent domain for private gain. In that case, it
was the Transpacos pipeline, which was taking land from private
landowners under eminent domain, but it was not intended to
serve the public good.
Speaker 1: So you can't form a national park where you can
build a pipeline. The exact state is all kinds of
fucked up. Man. Oh yeah, wow, So what happened with that?
We lost?
Speaker 2: We lost after you know, an in battled fight. We lost,
and what we found out kind of way towards the end.
It shouldn't have been this way, but there was a
very little known piece of legislation that had been passed,
I guess quietly years before that handed the power of
eminent domain to any natural gas carrier, regardless of what
the project.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So this is a level of insanity that you have
a hard time wrapping your head around. But it's on
the books and that's what allowed Transpagos pipeline and all
these other smaller pipelines that are being pushed through to Mexico. Yeah,
that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Where So where does trans Pago's pipeline run from?
Speaker 2: Runs from the Waha hub, which is up in the
Permian near uh, what's the town there, Quinosa? From there
to down through it runs right to outside of Alpine, Uh,
you know, through the Pysona Pass uh, and then east
of Marfa down to border crossing, which is actually west
of Presidio M H and so, and then continues on
into Mexico.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's nuts.
Speaker 2: It was. Yeah, it was a very destructive act in
a process. Of course, we were five not just because
we wanted to have something to fight against. I mean,
there were certainly people maybe that were involved that that
was what their intent was. But mine was to stop
the damn thing because really a lot of people here
and myself included, love the Big Ben for its natural
qualities and we fear anything that's any thing that's going
to destroy that, and so fighting against the industrialization of
the last best place in Texas, that was basically what
we were doing. But we didn't stand a chance, and
so we didn't know that. I think the only good
that came out of it was an enduring organization, which
is the Big Ben Conservation Alliance, which still exists. And secondly,
you know, I think we did two things which I'm
proud of. One is that we elevated the region in
a way that maybe it hadn't been before in recognition
of its natural resources. And the other thing was sort
of saying, hey, it's the whole region that's significant, not
just Big Ben National Park State Park. It's the whole thing, right,
because you can't you know, those those ecological and cultural
significance does not stop at the fence boundary, right, It's
the whole thing, and it's all important. So we because
it all did across private lands, we reached out to
and worked with private landowners ranchers.
Speaker 1: And they didn't want it either.
Speaker 2: They did not, A lot of them did not. A
lot of them didn't want it, but didn't want to
fight it because they felt like they were going to
get a better deal in the end and they didn't
have a chance. And so that was the majority of
landowners we're in that.
Speaker 1: Like the same thing with the border wall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was an eminent domain thing. So yeah,
most of them didn't want it, but some of them
just sucked it up trying to get a better deal.
But those who didn't had to take it to court
and then ended up, you know, getting usually a much
poorer settlement in the end, but still had the pipeline
through them anyway. And one of the stands that we
made was at an archaeological site near Hovey on the
east side of the Davis Mountains up here, and it
was a really significant archaeological site that they were going
to plow right through, and so we were saying, hey,
you know, at least in this case, can you go
around it, let's save this site, and didn't do it.
Speaker 1: God, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So we were there to witness the destruction when
when it actually happened, and it was well, it was
the site. You know, it was a multi component site
with a lot of time depth. We don't even know
how much, but at least four thousand years based on
the point types that we were finding. It's a very
large site that had different site components in its different
areas based through it was sort of functionally around a spring,
but they basically plowed through what we would consider a
prehistoric kitchen an area with a bunch of bedrock mortars
and earth ovens.
Speaker 1: That's fucking crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just disregarded that because they didn't have to. The
interesting thing was that they did hire an archaeological survey
done under their own dime. They didn't have to do that.
Speaker 1: Why'd they do it just to make them look good.
Speaker 2: Apparently, because obviously they weren't following the guidelines of their
own archaeologists. So it was it was interesting and eye opening,
but in the end it was just depressing.
Speaker 1: Where was that up?
Speaker 2: It's north of Alpine. It's about, you know, twenty miles
north of Alpine, a on a private ranch just east
of the Davis Mountains. It was probably the site may
have been the site that Mendoza came to, you know,
back in the in the eighteen I'm sorry, what was
his Sorry, I can't remember that.
Speaker 1: The date No.
Speaker 2: Sixteen, sixteen eighty five, I think, wow, holy yeah, so
very early on. Anyway, it was it was part of
a natural trail corridor through there. It was one of
the stops along. There was just a spring just like
Alpine was on that same trail system. And the spring
here at Alpine was another stopping point, uh, throughout history,
throughout prehistory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was. It's they're all dried up now.
Speaker 2: Right, some of them still have as a flow trickle trickle, wow.
But but it was a it's a really important side
and it was unfortunate to lose that.
Speaker 1: But how deep is the limestone beneath alpined? You know,
because there's limestone everywhere, but there's this all this volcanic
on top of it, right.
Speaker 2: There's volcands. I don't know, I don't know the answer
to that. You know, that would be a probably looking
at some well logs, you know, water well logs.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, that would be able to deeps the water
table here five hundred feet or something.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, now really, I mean there's the wells
here in town are really shallow, really it wells like
twenty thirty feet.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: It just depends on where you're at in town. But
there's there's shallow wells. The wells that we operate of
off of now are deep wells, but there's water much
closer to the surface.
Speaker 1: But generally it's drier now here than it was twenty
or thirty years ago, right, your old timers talking about
every every afternoon it used to rain here. Yeah, Yeah,
that's crazy.
Speaker 2: It is. Yeah, I mean that's global climate change in action,
you know. So it's we're seeing it and we're seeing
it come harder and faster than anybody ever predicted, except
the you know, the worst predictions. And that should be
eye opening, and it should it should be reason for
us all to you know, kind of have a come
to Jesus moment and change our actions and change the
way we vote and change the way we live. And
then we're not doing that. And of course what that
means is that we're doing. We're doomed. Were two ways
about it.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so much oil company propaganda out there too,
of course, it's just.
Speaker 2: I mean they have all the money, all the attorneys.
You know, you can't fight that. They can put any
spin on that they want, and there's enough global people
out there to wrap it up that, you know, our
fate is kind of sealed. I hate to say that,
but you know, but.
Speaker 1: The propaganda is just the dumbing down of America bills.
I've got this guy coming out on the podcast on
Tuesday who's done all these videos. He does a bunch
of videos teaching people shit look organic chemistry and like
YouTube videos. But then he's got all these videos attacking
people like Joe Rogan, not attacking but criticizing them for
just the fucking charlatans that they kind of are, you know,
like the pseudoscientists, and that dude has like climate and
I ares on his podcast left and Right, and they're
just like this whole cult and you know this like
with a far reach, this whole cult of like idiocracy
you just see hitting America, and it's got to be
funded by special interests and wealth and you know, powerful
interests from way up. But it just blows my mind. Man,
I'm like, damn, this is like, this is exactly what
Carl Sagan was talking about, you know, forty years ago
when he wrote the book, you know, the demon haunted
World Science is a candle in the dark. You know.
It's like he's like that whole quote, like I foresee
in America and either my children's future or their children's
future where and then he just starts listing everything that's
happening today. It's like the dumbing down. It's like ignorance
mixed with arrogance, and then this anti intellectualism too. It's
it's crazy.
Speaker 2: It's very pronounced, especially in Texas especially, you know, and
it's it's yeah runs deep and uh you know, but
that also means, you know, where you have something that strong,
you also have a kind of equal and opposite reaction
to that. And that means people like myself and I
guess you and otherre's a lot of whom are native
to Texas, but they don't share those views.
Speaker 1: No, there's a bunch of there's some pretty great people here, yeah,
on top of on top of their ship. But it's
just uh, it's just getting away from that dominant culture. Man,
it really is. We're apes, We're tribal apes. You look
at chimps there in groups, were in groups like how
do I feel? How's my buddy? If they just we
do what's around us. You know, we do whatever a little,
whether it's part of the big group or a little group.
We just it's just conformity, you know. And it's the
But the people who are like fuck that, I'm not
gonna do that. I'm gonna do my own ship. I'm
gonna this is you know, those are the people I
want to be around. That's those are the gems. But yeah,
and I don't fall people for being conformist. It's I
think it's in our DNA. That's our social behavior can't erase. However,
many millions of years of that is coded in us.
But man, we got the power to be different, you.
Speaker 2: Know, we do have the power to be different. And
that's I guess that's where the disappointment comes in in
my book, is that humanity has the opportunity, has a capability.
It's so much good, you know, and do so many
great things, and we fail and.
Speaker 1: It's all dependent them cultural teachings though, and what culture
you're a part of.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but but you know, we just, yeah, we can't
ever get on the same page, even even within our
own state, within our own political party, much less our
own country, much less the globe, and so you know,
and these rise of dictators and it's a it's a mess.
Speaker 1: It's that kind of last forever though. It can't. It'll it'll,
it'll break wall.
Speaker 2: It's we're very close, very close to that wall. You know,
America is not the United States is not going to
be in the end. I mean, it's certainly can't maintain
its position as a global superpower forever.
Speaker 1: No, No, we're.
Speaker 2: Kind of at the end of that story. And whether
you know, whether it's a hostile takeover or we're bombed
to smotherings or what, I don't who knows what's going
to happen.
Speaker 1: Or we just kind of become I mean, I think
it's already happened. We're just kind of becoming irrelevant to
a lot of other nations. I think, Yeah, our culture
is just, man, it's crazy. I don't know. You know,
we export some of the biggest, most entitled asshole behavior
and you talk to other people from other countries, it's
what they mean, it's a joke. It's a the American
you know, prototype is kind of a joke.
Speaker 2: It is it is.
Speaker 1: Just thinks it's the best, but has no experience to
think that it hasn't traveled at all, like this this
unearned arrogance. But it's yeah, it's a shame though, and
no humility and no compassion or gratitude and.
Speaker 2: Just you know, certainly not in our leaders. It's just
not in their DNA, it's not their different kind of
animal and our political system I've been sick created then
they've always existed, but it empowers them. And unfortunately those people,
as most as a lot of people know, are not
the best leaders. They're well, actually the worst.
Speaker 1: There's that George Carlin bit where he's like, yeah, people
always talk about politicians suck. Oh yeah, they suck. Well,
where do you think they come from? They come from
American universities and American schools and American churches, and you know,
I would say the public sucks. You know, it's and
it's like it gets dark, and he got dark in
the lafter years. He's like, the public sucks. Fuck hope,
but he just goes off about it. He's like if
you have shitty, entitled, arrogant citizens, are gonna have shitty, arrogant,
entitled leaders. That's what we get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, we don't seem to have mechanisms, you know,
to to bring people into the system that do you know,
have insight and compassion, probably because they're smart enough to
know they don't want.
Speaker 1: To, right. I would never want to do that in
no way, man. But also it's it's all culture teachings
and this ship. We don't have a national culture anymore.
Our national culture is Chick fil A and consumerism and
driving everywhere and being trapped in a car in the
parking lot and the fucking lawn in front of the
cul de Sac house. That everyone that's like means you've
made it if you've got that. Like, we don't have
a natural culture anymore, a national culture. We don't have
like a or anything worth respecting as a national culture.
You know, it's consumerism and that's become everything. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have this incredible freedom in the United States.
It's the freedom to buy any goddamn thing we want. Yeah,
because if you look at our other freedoms, they're they're
not quite as fleshed out.
Speaker 1: Art science, intellect. That's all fallen off. We've been defunding
that for the last fifty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not use since.
Speaker 1: Reagan, so forty years, I guess. But anyway, well man,
thanks a lot for being down to come on. It's
I could talk to you for another hour, two, we
could talk forever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's there's plenty of fodder out there, plenty of
things to talk about. But you know, glad you're here.
This is an incredible region. And just at any point
that I'm allowed an opportunity to speak, I just urge
people to be respectful of the land and each other,
you know, just that's all it is. It's pretty simple,
because I just see an inordinate amount of disrespect everywhere.
We run disrespectful, and it's painful. So for some of us,
for a lot of people, it doesn't, you know, it's
just it is what is. It doesn't mean anything to them.
But for people who like myself where you know, I
look at a landscape and I see a holistic thing.
It's I don't even see the fences. I see a landscape,
and when I see insults to that, it hurts. It hurts,
really like a physical pain. When I see that pipeline
scar when I see someone blading a new road, when
I see them tearing down a mountain, what John is
doing up here on a mountain is an absolute travesty.
Oh so John Shootvega. He owns with his wife Blue
Water Natural Foods, which is a great asset in Alpine
because it's our only natural food store here. A lot
of us like to go there. Unfortunately, he also owns
a bunch of a mountain and he likes to play
with heavy machinery, and so he's been tearing up that
mountain for several years now. Originally he wanted to make
it into a subdivision, but I think the thing was
he couldn't get the city to agree to give water
and the infrastructure he needed. So he's made it, making
it into an RV park. In the meantime, he's blasting
out pads, and not blasting, he's hammering out pads and
moving a lot of rock up there. I mean, you
can hear his one of those hammer drills, power drills
going when he's doing it anywhere intown and you assume, well,
that's some public works thing, highway department. Maybe, No, it's
some dude up there with a big machine trying to play.
Speaker 1: That's crazy too. That's because that's what that's the argument.
You hear people saying in Texas for private land, well,
the private landowner can take care of it. Fuck no, no,
I've seen the private landowner can fuck the land into
a coma and totally scrape it barren and doesn't have
anybody to answer to. You can't do that on federal land.
A lot of federal lands have been turned into solar
farms whatever, but even that's an extensive process. They have
to pay for it. It's it still sucks. That shouldn't
be legal either, but you know it's no private landowners
can do anything. I've seen private landowners multiple times, like
repeatedly just destroy and you know, some rich guy gets
a hair up his ass, thanks he knows what he's doing,
and he just starts destroying shit, and it's sending everything
that lives there running for cover, you know.
Speaker 2: So it's unfortunately it's more the rule than the.
Speaker 1: Fucking idiots just blasting shit around, like drive drunk and
driving a fucking skid steer around. That's such a thing.
Speaker 2: If you have a skitser, you suddenly or bulldozer, you
suddenly really look, you need some dirt to push around,
you need something to do with it, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just yeah, you're exactly right. You've got this toy.
You need to go use it somehow. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: And so John's got some big toys and he's using them.
So next time you get a chance, take a look
up there, because that's that's his legacy. That's his legacy
to alphine it. And to me it feels like, you know,
he's just up there kind of giving us the bird.
Speaker 1: You could do so much like if man, if you've
got someone who had had even like the slightest inkling
of like restoration or conservation, they could be turning that into.
Speaker 2: Nature trails, yeah, or something something beautiful, an asset for
the community.
Speaker 1: For like these three hundred pounds to take ships and.
Speaker 2: Fucking ostensibly, what he's doing is giving these our veers
a great view of the town. But the cost of
that is he's diminishing the view of the rest of
the people of Alpine. So the community, it's a net loss.
Speaker 1: A lot of stuff lives up there too. Yeah, there's
a bunch of I think the there's supposed to be
a fran of stomach population up there. Yeah, someone's telling
me about a bunch of cool I mean, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: It's a real disservice, you know. But on that note,
I will say this and any private property rights guy,
this is the first thing they're going to say, and
I want to acknowledge this at the outset, and that
is that there are a lot of private landowners who
do great things. Jeff Fort's a good example. But there's
dozens of them, hundreds thousands way, you know, across the state,
who are respectful, who do good things with the land,
who you know, take care of their wildlife, who are
mindful of the cultural resources, put them into conservation easements,
donate the land to you know, public land.
Speaker 1: And in that case the land looks out but it
really does.
Speaker 2: But unfortunately that's more the exception than the rule.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's luck of the draw and it's not common.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and being a private landowner, you have the right
to do anything you want on your land.
Speaker 1: Well, most people too are just so disconnected from quote
nature or conservation. They have no clue. The don't want
people know corporate logos than you know, three native plants
that go.
Speaker 2: Around, right, And so people become landowners, they don't have
really any understanding of the land in an ecologic sense,
and so they don't even know what they're destroying, and
that to me is the big rub. And that was
definitely one of the mantras that we repeated with the pipeline,
because they were putting this pipeline through and we did
not even know the variety of things that they were
destroying the process of that, and until we know. You know,
people hate property rights, people hate the Endangered Species Act,
hate NIPA, hate you know, this idea of environmental review.
But in my mind, every single thing, every road, every
stop sign should have to go through some kind of
review process to say, what is the larger impact of
this taking, how is this going to affect the landscape,
How's it going to affect the wildlife?
Speaker 1: Controversial plays like California, it's i mean, people still get
away with shit because you know, but they plays like California,
you have to do ers. Yeah, you got to do
environmental impact reviews and all this. It's mandatory, right, And.
Speaker 2: Of course you know that is the case with public
land and also in private land where public funds are used,
but those are pretty isolated cases, and so the mass
majority of Texas is privately owned, and so that means
the vast majority of Texas is at risk of being damaged.
And of course that ship sale, most of it has
been torn up. The worst example locally is the Permian Basin.
They've destroyed whatever good yeah, chicken pok with oil wells.
And of course all that was economically driven, and it
would have been hard to replay that in any version
without the same kind of the same outcome. But bugs
me because they are a different culture. That extractive industry
sort of creates a different culture.
Speaker 1: It just is.
Speaker 2: Whereas Big ben we had the luck of not having
massive oil reserves.
Speaker 1: Just luck.
Speaker 2: But so most of our sort of cultural heritage comes
from big ranches and it's a very different culture and
it's a very different mindset, uh. And it's one that
I have much more of a connection to because they
do have much more, much higher awareness of land issues.
I mean, because if you think about it, a lot
of ranchers really consider themselves grass farmers because the grass
is what is the is their primary resource, and so
they have to take care of the land to some
extent or they're screwing themselves. And of course some have
been much better than others and doing that and executing it,
and then you've got other factors that they can't control,
for market and climate. In my books that I've written
about in this area, the Two Ranch History and the
Pentol Canyon book, I deal with that a lot. I
talk about that a lot because it's it's just a
significant factor.
Speaker 1: What was going on in Pentho Canyon.
Speaker 2: Uh, you know, the Pentol Canyon was what I found there.
It was just a really good little microcosm of early
sort of homesteading. There was a bunch of little ranches,
little homesteads that occurred in that canyon back in the
day when when homesteading was occurring in the eighteen eighties
and nineties. That of course, that was all were consolidated
over time and then became, you know, one big ranch
by the end. But it was a story of those
small beginnings that I that I tell there, and it
was it was they had their own schoolhouse. I mean,
all these ranchers knew each other, There were friends, they
helped each other out.
Speaker 1: How long ago was twenty years? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Was there? You know? These that school was was in
the nineteen teens, was there? There's still remnants of it.
If you drive through you can si live out here.
Speaker 1: Then the railroad was running through here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, all these all these settlements were
depending on the railroad. Very little existed before the railroad came,
so it was all after eighteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like roads, were there any long distance highways.
Speaker 2: No highways, you know, there were dirt dirt roads that
were at that point. Most of them had been built
by the military. Other than that, there were just trails
that had had kind of been used through time. So
there was very little out here before the railroads came,
and that was kind of the enabling infrastructure that allowed
this area to be settled. And of course Alpine didn't
even exist, that was the very end of their of
their reign, but they were still here in the in
the eighteen eighties and that's why you know, Fort Davis
was established, was to protect the mail route and people
passing through to California and settlers from Indian raids. But
but yeah, you know, it was just, uh, it's an
interesting history, but you look back at it, we were
stealing that land. We stole all of it, the entire
continent for people who are who were already here, and
so we have these deep seated American values that that
you know, that equal rights and all these things, but
we cannot forget this sort of major, you know, like transgression.
Speaker 1: That we did em Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, if it wasn't us, it would have been someone else.
That's all true, you know, the more powerful forces going over.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't make it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't make it right.
Speaker 1: Especially the way that this, this civilization, this culture is
treated the land is terrible. It's just fucking you know,
God put it here for us, we can do whatever
we want with it. There's just no respect for the land.
There's no respect for the things that live on it.
There's no perspective of place in it. Those are the
things I like about indigenous cultures, and so they had
a place for that. But again I think they arrived
there as a result of making mistakes, absolutely, you know,
and seeing population crashes and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, instilled in them a degree of humility,
in the right and gratitude.
Speaker 1: That we just do not know. This culture has never
had that. We have a fucking out.
Speaker 2: We've really lost it. But some people have come have
come around to it. I guess you and I are
probably some of those we have a tribe between the
dominant cult The dominant culture is not it's not you know,
and they're who are they? Well, turn on the TV.
Speaker 1: The dominant cultures pigs. It's like chick fil a and
McDonald's and just you know, this is what's in it
for me. And that's just there's nothing to pay attention
to anywhere else. It's just it's got to be a
lonely world to living in. That Like if I had
never found quote nature or plants, I'd be so fucking
miserable man too.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's everything to.
Speaker 1: Me, geology, any of that, any like context for an ecosystem,
because all you know is the human world. Then that's
the only thing you've got. That's all you've got, and
that's what people think of me and successful or exactly.
Speaker 2: That's your that's your entire costs.
Speaker 1: The proper existence it is, no matter what, no no
way around it. That's not just like a matter of opinion.
That's it.
Speaker 2: The proper existence, I think, oh absolutely. And most people
are so caught up in that they don't even see it.
Speaker 1: Or they just yeah, or they're completely severed from the land.
They never get the opportunity of.
Speaker 2: Experience and it so this, you know, the nature deficit
disorder rampant, and we don't even know how deep seated
those effects are, but they're studies that have been done
so that there's it's very significant. So, you know, lots
of people that live in New York have never gotten
out of the city. I mean Central Park.
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And uh, you know, most urbanites really are just
so disconnected from the natural world that, uh, they you know,
it's almost like they live on a different planet.
Speaker 1: But I see a lot in cities like that, in
cities like New York and in Chicago, it said, I
see like much more reverence for land than I almost
see in a rural area. Yeah, they want, they want
to get out to see it. They know, they know
they're from it.
Speaker 2: They see the value.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like they would see someone bulldozing a patch of
ranch and I'd be like, oh my god, what are
you doing? Like we don't have that where I come from,
whereas here it's just it's abundant. Just fucking get rid
of it. That's the thing they do in stuff, because
they clear land before they sell it. Dumbest shit imagine
of course, like what it's it's like one hundred and
five degreasier for six months? Why are you clearing that land?
That land is keeping everything else cool? What it is?
It is what they do. It's it's so what they
do and be just profoundly stupid. That's the thing that
drives me. That's why I'm like, damn, is it like
letting the water supply when they're doing this or something?
Or how the fuck does you know? You got to think, like,
you know, you bill yourself as supposedly I'm a ranch
and I'm working the land. Well, then you would know
that having vegetative cover over barren rock is going to
cool the whole landscape, whereas if it's just the rocket
and eat it up by the sun, you're creating a
heat island, you.
Speaker 2: Know, right, and it's going to cause erosion. And it's
you know, two plus two equals three. Man.
Speaker 1: It's just you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's almost like it's almost like asserting control and dominance.
Speaker 1: It is it is.
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, we've dominated this is this has been transformed.
It's open and I've.
Speaker 1: Been a ranchers down there like that which is my land.
I'm working it like it's illegal. Then I see these dudes,
I'm like, holy fuck you, like sixty years of unaddressed
mental trauma, mental and emotional trauma, you've never gone to therapy.
You probably think going to therapy makes you a pussy.
Like you're a fucking wreck, man, no offense. I could
see it though. You know, I've like traveled and I've
met enough people like that. I worked with dudes like
that at the railroad, Like you're a fucking wreck, you know, like,
oh my god, I feel bad, but you like get
some help, you know, before you crack. But it's a shah,
it's a shame. Man. Well what do you think is
in the what do you think is in the future
for this reason for West Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, man, that's a good question because
I I just have no idea.
Speaker 1: Where the continent starts to dry out as you move west.
It's like the first big patch of air Atlanta as
he moved west. It is.
Speaker 2: You know, I think we're due for some major transformations here.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: You know, COVID had a big impact just because we've
had a lot of people move in and a lot
of first time records, you know, people that had never
been here before. Were coming out and recreating and and
didn't have a clue about what to do and how
to bang.
Speaker 1: I remember the first time I went there at twenty fourteen.
It was desolate. There was nobody there. And I've tried
going there two years ago. Yeah, it was just a
fucking mess. That was like no way man.
Speaker 2: So that's that's changed the landscape, you know, and it
not so much affected you know, Marfa Alpine and Marathon.
It's mostly down into Lingua.
Speaker 1: But getting I mean everything's getting more. Marathons had a
bunch of development in the last few years I've noticed,
which is cool in some ways, but it just is. Yeah,
there's more population coming here. I just hope it means
it means the land. Yeah, there's more, there's more people. Yeah,
so that's happening. You know, there's so those and those
people bring different values, good or bad. And then of
course we've got dealing with global climate change, and because
we're situated where we are, we stand to be, you know,
significantly affected by that. We don't know how or in
what direction, most likely by drying out, hotter and drier.
But we've also witnessed more intense storm of it. So
down in Redford, where I spent a lot of time.
We've gotten almost no rain in the last two years,
with two exceptions. And those two exceptions was a two
and a three inch rainfall that happened within the first
one within about an hour, and the second one with
over a period of four or five hours. Wow, massive
rainfall events that basically blows out, you know, irrigation works
blows out, Yeah, all the rain at once in the
desert where there's no vegetative.
Speaker 2: Covered a whole water. It flooded out a friend of
mine that it reworks the the drainages, it blows out,
you know, all kinds of dams and things like that.
They're meant to contain water, slow it down. Even on
my own property where I've made all these little, you know,
burms and basins to catch the rain. Water they're meant for,
you know, they're kind of built for a one or
may maybe a two inch rain. They can't take more
than that. It just the volume just blows them out.
So I end up, you know, rebuilding those and then
we're looking at them dry out in the sweltering heat
for the next nine months. There's no brain and so
I'm walking around with the water hose until we get
the next you know, to lose.
Speaker 1: Where is Redford exactly?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about twenty miles east of Presidio. Oh wow,
right on the river. It's basically the last sort of
Mexican village on the US side that's still intact, meaning
it's got most of its you know, the original families,
the descendants of the original families are still there, which
is cool and significant because the same was true for
Candelaria ridosa. But they've those populations love along since left
and it's there, don't They don't resemble anything of their
former cells. And that was true because you know, the
elephant Butte Dam, Yeah, impounded the water, and so the
water in that portion of the Rio Grande minute to
such an extent that farming was no longer viable. Because
the Rio Grands are replenished by the real conscious which
comes out of Mexico at Prosidio, everything downstream from there
still gets a flow. And so that means that the
farms in the Redford Bolsama in Redford and Mulatto on
the Mexican side still exist. You know, there's still limited
farming on the US side, but they still farm all
the fields in Mexico, they're still pulling water from the
rio and so, you know, that makes it interesting, you know,
kind of culturally, and I appreciate that aspect down there.
But the main thing I love about it, and I'll
have to admit, is that we're surrounded by the nash
by the state park down there, and so I can
be hiking within you know, very short drive and I'm
hiking you know, out in the open desert, or I
can be on the river in twenty minutes. And that's
where it's at for me. You know, I really need
for my own self, I need access to big lands.
And maybe it was Montana that spoiled me, but I
think it was way before that. I just, you know,
I realized at a very young age that the earth,
the natural world, was probably the most important thing in
my life to me, and and so I've always you know,
fought for the right to be in it, to protect it.
It's just it's every it's everything to me. So being
down there is it's just kind of a dream, really,
it really is.
Speaker 1: Big ben Rats is something else that's that's an amazing.
Speaker 2: Is amazing, it's a very it's an underutilized resource. I'm
glad it's underutilized. I hope it doesn't get overrun. Has
very little infrastructure compared to the national part, and I
think that, you know, their intent is to keep it
that way, and it really does help kind of thin
out the population, uh, because it's it's kind of harder
to get into and we like it that way. I
really hope it stays. It's an incredible asset down there,
both of those parks.
Speaker 1: How was that I went to the Solitario I think
the southwest side of it to get to give photos
of Quarcus Hinkley I have may It was a year
and a half ago. Yeah, that was something else that's crazy.
There's that one rock shelter there with the hands.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, Prince, Yeah, it's it's incredible and all kinds
of archaeology. Good buddy Tim who actually the guy who
called me on the phone, you know, twenty five years
ago about that job at the center. He is now
the park archaeologist down there, so I get regular updates
on stuff he's finding, and I get to volunteer and
help him out down there on some of his projects.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It's it's really great, but an incredible place. And of
course the River Road when seventy runs along the real
ground there and there's a bunch of great campsites and
put ins and takeouts on the river there that you
you really don't have the same access in the National
Park that you do in the State Park. Yeah, it's
a lot easier to get to subscribe.
Speaker 1: Man, that's cool. Man, thanks a lot for being down
to come on this.
Speaker 2: Well, I really appreciate you asking me, and hopefully I
have been helpful, but no, it's been great man. Yeah,
I want.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's all. That's There's a lot of ship
to talk about in West Texas. We keep going, but yeah,
we'll have to do another one sometimes. Yeah. Man, Well,
thanks a lot, appreciate it, right, everybody else, have a
graciate day. Go fuck you somebody,