You know you have arrived in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert when it feels as if you have fallen off the edge of the Earth and into the rabbit hole. Nothing is as it appears. Moths are the size of hummingbirds. Are those twin pillars of black igneous rock (a landmark known as Mule Ear Peaks) ten miles (16 kilometers) away or fifty (80 kilometers)? Visibility reaches more than a hundred miles (160 kilometers) on a clear day, and since there are few roads or buildings to use as milestones, distance is difficult to judge. A jackrabbit runs so fast across the hardpan that its hind legs stretch ahead of its front ones, like in a cartoon. A black bear rambles through high desert canyons, picking its way through the yucca and prickly pear, oblivious to the fact that it seems out of place in this landscape. But that's OK. No one is around to notice.
Legend says that after God created the rest of the world, he dumped the leftovers into this giant sandbox. The devil is supposed to be sealed up in a cave on the south bank of the Río Bravo del Norte (known on the U.S. side as the Rio Grande), except when he escapes on a swing hung between nearby mountains. This is a place where water runs uphill, where rainbows have to wait for rain. The line between myth and reality blurs. Stare long enough at the Chisos Mountains or the Sierra del Carmen, the two mountain ranges, known as sky islands, that anchor the territory, and they levitate above the plain. And you haven't had a drop of tequila.
But you are under the influence of something stronger. Try inhaling the scent of creosote bushes after it rains and not feel light-headed. It is a powerful aphrodisiac. Walk across 80 miles (130 kilometers) of low and high desert, as I have, and an appreciation develops for what others might dismiss as a moonscape. Without trees or shrubs to get in the way, the view is unobstructed: 500 million years of geologic turmoil and erosion is laid bare over miles of fine sand, gravel, rocky rubble, spongy bentonite, lava spewed from volcanic eruptions.
The vast Chihuahuan Desert has long been known as El Despoblado, the land of no people. The name remains accurate today: The wildlife population still exceeds the human one. But in this part of the desert, on both sides of the border between Texas and Mexico, another name is taking hold: El Carmen–Big Bend Transboundary Megacorridor, a label only a conservationist could love. It is two and a half million acres (one million hectares) of one of the most biologically diverse desert regions in the world—the largest block of protected land in the Chihuahuan Desert.
The idea of preserving this place started with a dream. In the 1930s advocates in both Texas and Mexico wanted to create an international peace park. That idea never took off, but what is emerging in its place is far larger and more ambitious. On most maps, the megacorridor is blank space, the only mark a squiggly line for the river that doubles as an international boundary. It is dominated by six separate chunks of protected land that hang off the Rio Grande like clothes whipping around a clothesline. On the Mexico side, it includes the Cañón de Santa Elena in the state of Chihuahua and the Maderas del Carmen in the state of Coahuila. On the Texas side, two state protected areas flank Big Bend, a U.S. national park named for the sharp curve where the Rio Grande's southeasterly flow takes an abrupt turn to the north, like a car swerving to avoid an armadillo. The sixth piece is a ribbon of land on the U.S. side of the river itself.
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