Are the Millennials ruining Big Bend?

Big Bend is a beautiful place and relatively underexplored, though visitor numbers have generally been growing.

So, what's up with my Millennials dig? Let's ... dig in.

Not all of them, surely. Some of them? Quite possibly.

Two qualifiers, one on Millennials and another on my Big Bend background.

First, I don't think all Millennials are avocado toast touters. Related? I think the continued growth of income inequality has hit Millennials big-time, and that that gap probably tracks race still to some degree, even as Millennials are the most ethnically diverse generational grouping in American history.

So, are white Millennials who don't live in their parents' basement likely to live up to enough of what some might call a stereotype for me to call it a generalization, instead? I say yes, with the note that, as elsewhere in this blog, more than 50 percent true = generalization and less than that = stereotype. YMMV.

Second, me in Big Bend?

First trip was there in 2001. I was there before some asshat in Washington, D.C., decided that Osama bin Laden might invade the US through Boquillas, Mexico, and therefore, we needed to prevent some viejo from there rowing to Merika, rowing visitors across for $5 a pop, putting them on his donkey while wearing his serape and sombrero at $5 a pop or whatever for photos, then pointing them off to the village for northern Mexican food not that different than Tex-Mex. (Give me real New Mexico Mexican food instead, still.)

From 2001-2010, I was there all but two years on Thanksgiving weekend or within a week or two of that. Did one spring visit as well, and a 2011 visit. Got a bit burned out in 2010 after bad placement of my tent at K-Bar primitive and a rare late fall rain got water inside my tent, over my ground cloth.

Family of origin holiday invited, and a move to Deep East Texas, interrupted further visits.

Until this year.

Anyway, I had become a regular, and been a regular long enough to be a veteran.

Besides the scenery itself, one of the great things about Big Bend is having a 104-degree hot spring, and right next to the river to boot. Just hot enough for great late fall or early winter nighttime soaks after a long day of hiking. Fair amount of sulfur, but not enough to stink. I believe a moderate amount of magnesium, surely some of it in magnesium sulfate, or good old Epsom salts, and bits of other minerals.

You either hike about three-quarters a mile from a parking area to see the general store and other things that were there pre-national park days, or about 1.5 miles from the one campground.

Rookies (or others, as I'll note in a minute) shine their flashlights too much when they get to the springs getting ready to get in.

Anyway, at the spring, and a bit after dark at the general store at Chisos Basin, is where I learned from people who were veterans when I was a rookie about good hiking trails, when to go on them, what to look for, etc., then sharing hiking talk.

SO ...

Now we're set up for #OKMillennial.

Well, not quite.

NPS rules are two at the spring:
1. No booze;
2. No getting nekkid.

I think it was the second night of my first visit when I saw a crowd from Hippie Hollow just get nekkid and jump in.

After that, from time to time, if it was earlier in the evening, veterans would ask "what's the clothing situation" or something like that. If I see older couples, or kids of any age, I keep the swim trunks on.

I think once I had to actually do that from 2004 on.

NOW we're set up for #OKMillennial.

In totality on both the night of Saturday/21st and Sunday/22nd, there were about a dozen others in the spring. About what I remember years ago from Thanksgiving time. (The first spring I was out there, I only soaked one night; it was too warm outside, and the second day was worse. Turns out, as I found out after going over to Big Bend Ranch State Park the next day and seeing 100 on a Presidio bank thermometer, it was WAY too warm.)

Anyway, not one of the Millennials even thought to get nekkid. Most of the women, by what I could see by flashlight, had things like 1950s swim outerwear, filmy swim bathrobes or something like that over their actual swimsuits.

Whether they just don't know to think better, are that prudish, are that non-prudishly self-conscious or what, I don't know.

I suspect mainly the third. In that case, stop looking at Instagram Influencers whose body pix have been Photoshopped. If it's the first? Step outside the box. If it's the second, stop being prudish.

OK, now, something like avocado toast. Saturday, one Millennial couple brought a campsite propane tank with screw-on burner and pour-over coffee setup. I've brought coffee down before, but I made it at either my campsite or something like the Chisos basin if I had my Coleman stove with me. The coffee doesn't "decay" that much in half an hour of extra time. Plus, they brought, for themselves and friends who later showed up, four-five boxes of what must have been things like Christmas crackers and cookies, probably the type of stuff you get at World Market.

Anyway, within their group, NOBODY talked trail hiking. Maybe I should have intervened a bit, but ... I was semi-disgusted.

The second night's group did talk a bit about their day's events. So did a hippie from Oregon dumb enough to have pot in his car while driving through Texas and getting pulled over for allegedly weaving too much. (Conditions of his bail, of course, include staying in Texas until his trial or other case disposition.)

This was the first time I'd been at Christmas. Maybe old veterans, whether or not Hippie Hollow people, hit the springs at Thanksgiving still.

And doorknob help some of these people if they hit some of Big Bend's challenges. (Never seen a rattler myself, fortunately. Taken a brief stroll toward Anguilla Mesa but didn't push anything. I actually have taken a car on the Pine Canyon road to the trailhead, but per my "veteran" status, that was more than a decade ago; the road might be worse today. Others are. I have not camped at Terlingua Abajo, but one year, wound up camping at a tent/RV site behind the semi-campy restaurant in Terlingua, yes.

For Anguilla, and Bruja Canyon? Check this out.

Learn more about all the major desert hikes here, (I still need to go all the way to Devil's Den) and rim trails here. But not all of you need to be so enchanted as to actually come to the park, and if you do come? Chillax.