Photos by Allen Holder / Kansas City Star Near Rio Grande Village on Big Bend National Park's eastern side, a bluff affords a look at the winding Rio Grande River, which is the international boundary with Mexico.

The Mule Ears twin peaks at Big Bend National Park in western Texas are actually dikes that were once enclosed in volcanic ash.

Canyon walls form the Window, a popular hiking destination that overlooks the Chihuahuan Desert.

Near the Chisos Mountains Lodge, the short Window View Trail has a reputation for magnificent sunsets.

BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas — "Excuse me, did you see a lion?"

That was a question I hadn't been asked before.

But the woman in the floppy hat was serious. She and her male companion were headed toward the Window, a popular hiking destination where the Chisos Mountains meet the Chihuahuan Desert. I was about halfway back on the 2 1/2-mile trail, and my mind was more focused on the lunch in my backpack.

"No, I haven't seen anything," I told her. "Not even a lizard."

"Oh, good," she said.

They continued on their way, and I on mine, but I knew she had seen the sign — the one that said, "A lion has been frequenting this area and could be aggressive toward humans."

Big Bend National Park sprawls across more than 800,000 acres of far west Texas. Rugged mountain peaks look out over sweeping stretches of desert. Limestone cliffs rise precipitously over the green waters of the Rio Grande separating Texas from Mexico. Adobe ruins pay testimony to the ranches of the Old West.

And, it turns out, mountain lions and black bears roam among the deer, javelina and hikers.

I didn't tell the couple on the trail that I was almost certain I had seen a lion the previous evening — or the back half of one — slinking into tall grass near the Chisos Mountains Lodge.

"What else might have had such a long tail" I had asked the desk clerk.

"What color was it?" she asked.

I didn't know. It was dark.

Then it probably was a mountain lion, she said.

I also didn't tell the hikers how much I had been thinking about lions as I hiked alone along the Window Trail. As I trudged among prickly pear cacti and Torrey yuccas, I listened intently and kept my eyes focused not only at the Chisos Mountains peaks ahead but also on the rocky path at my feet.

If a mountain lion or black bear were lurking, I wanted to know about it. Scat along the trail would be a good clue.

I didn't know exactly what bear or mountain lion droppings looked like, but I could tell that some wild creature had been sharing this trail with me.

Reassuring opinion

"That probably came from a coyote," the ranger back at the Chisos Basin Visitor Center told me later. "Mountain lion and bear scat is much bigger."

Well, thanks. Suddenly my hike didn't seem so adventurous. After all, it's one thing to go back home and tell your friends you've been hiking among lions and bears. But coyotes?

Few hikers on the Chisos Mountains trails see a mountain lion or bear, the ranger said. But some do, and rangers log reported sightings.

Big Bend is home to about two dozen mountain lions, she said, and 15 to 18 black bears, but most of them were denned up in the winter.

Wild animals aren't the reason for hiking the Window Trail anyway. The view at the end is the draw.

After descending about 800 feet over a couple of miles, the trail winds along a creek and through a shady canyon, then ends abruptly — at a 200-foot drop-off.

I edged down over a couple of big rocks to get a closer look and a better picture. But the rocks can be slippery, and I didn't need to get too close to appreciate the beauty — or the foolhardiness of getting too near the edge. What a view: The canyon walls frame a perfect window overlooking a desert that reaches beyond the horizon.

"This is just like a hidden treasure," said Cheri Bucciarelli of Pueblo, Colo., hiking with her husband, Charles, and friends.

The Bucciarellis had been to Big Bend before and liked it so much they returned.

"We brought our road bikes and all of our camping gear this time so we can hike and bike," Bucciarelli said. "It's just a cool way to get out of the (winter) weather."

Big Bend is that kind of place. Once you've been there, you want to go back.

"People do use this park differently," said David Elkowitz, the park's public information officer. "When people come the first time, they realize they missed something, and so they come back. They get hooked."

At many national parks, the typical visit lasts only a few hours. People drive, look around and drive out.

That's not the case at Big Bend, perhaps because of its remote location 300 miles southeast of El Paso.

Many visitors return

"People stay an average of three nights and four days — and two-thirds of our visitors are returnees," Elkowitz said.

Word must be getting out. Elkowitz was speaking from the cramped Panther Junction Visitor Center, which is being renovated and enlarged.

When the center was built in 1961, the park welcomed about 90,000 visitors a year, Elkowitz said. "Now it's four times that."

The park's busy season lasts from October to April, and spring break draws the largest crowds of the year. But there's another season that many potential visitors overlook because of the anticipated heat — summer. This is Texas, after all.

"In the summer it is somewhat hot down along the river," Elkowitz said, "but the mountains start at 5,400 feet and the high trails never get above the 80s, and there's almost nobody on them."

At times Big Bend can almost feel as if there's nobody anywhere in the park. It's a long drive from Marathon, the nearest town north of the park, to the park headquarters — nearly 70 miles.

As I headed toward the lodge on a February evening, dusk was settling over Big Bend. I met only three or four cars headed the other way and saw at least that many white-tailed deer leaping across the highway. I also dodged at least a dozen javelina — black, bristle-haired piglike creatures that seem completely oblivious to traffic as they snuffle along the road.

I was plodding up the Lost Mine Trail late one afternoon when the point was repeated.

"Looks like you're going to close the mountain down," a hiker told me as she and her husband passed on their way down.

"Maybe," I replied.

"No, really, you're the last one up," she said. "And you have about 45 more minutes, slogging, all the way to the top."

Great. Just me and the lions and bears.

A progression of views

I must have missed the other hikers because the Lost Mine Trail is the park's most popular hike, ranger Elkowitz had told me earlier in the day. I didn't wonder why. Around each hairpin curve of this trail up the north side of Casa Grande peak, a new view awaits. The vegetation thickens with pinon pines, Texas madrones and alligator junipers, along with desert plants like the sotol, lechuguilla and my favorite, the agave, or century plant, easy to identify by its tall, blooming stalk.

I took a quick look at my watch and kept going. I had plenty of time to make it to the top of the trail, about 2,250 feet above and 2 1/2 miles from the parking lot.

The Chisos Mountains comprise 40 square miles — a "mountain island surrounded by a hot desert sea," park literature says. That seemed like an accurate description to me. This is spectacular scenery.

As it happened, I didn't close down the mountain. On the way down I met perhaps a dozen hikers still climbing. It stays light until about 7 p.m. in February, but dark takes on a whole new meaning in Big Bend. I hope they were carrying flashlights.

Even in its isolation, Big Bend speaks loudly. The igneous rocks of the Chisos cry out with evidence that volcanoes spewed lava and ash millions of years ago. Fossils voice a history of rich animal life, including a variety of dinosaurs.

Remnants of another era

But as I headed south along the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, a much more recent life form spoke — from the Old West.

This was active ranch land in the last part of the 19th century. Adobe ruins, a couple of windmills and some non-native fig and pecan trees remain from what once was the Sam Nail Ranch. A little farther south was the Homer Wilson Ranch, which once counted 4,000 sheep and 2,500 goats.

A small house and smaller foreman's quarters show that the ranchers relied on local materials: timber from the mountains, rocks from Blue Creek Canyon, even reeds for ceilings.

At the Castolon Historic District, a visitor center and store are the face of what was an active community in the early 20th century. At the time of the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. Army established a border outpost here called Camp Santa Elena. Its buildings weren't completed until after the war, when a trading post moved in. It lasted until the park took control in the 1960s.

The end of the road marks the end of the park and the end of the country. But that's the magnet for a drive to this part of the park anyway — the Santa Elena Canyon and the Rio Grande.

After two days of climbing mountain trails and wandering desert landscapes, I wasn't sure I could be surprised again by the beauty and diversity of Big Bend. I was wrong.

For nearly a mile, the Santa Elena Canyon Trail leads deep into a limestone canyon whose walls reach 1,500 feet above the river. At one point, only 30 feet separate one side of the canyon from the other, Texas from Mexico.

This is a very different type of landscape. Tall, reedy grasses that look like bamboo grow thickly on both sides of the trail, creating a canopy for hikers. The air is noticeably cooler, thanks to canyon walls that block out the sun.

Although the Rio Grande is a playground for canoers, kayakers and rafters in other parts of the park, it is slow and silent here.

In fact, it's the silence that is most noticeable. Ahead of me I noticed two women hikers speaking in library voices as they walked along the trail. It was as if they feared they might disturb the majesty of the canyon. They had the right idea, I started to think.

Then laughter rang out. From somewhere behind me, raucous voices called loudly to one another, echoing through the canyon. These guys were clearly reveling in the pleasure of the moment, celebrating the beauty of a park they — and I — might never see again.

And who could argue with that?

— Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.