Andrew Stuart

On April 25th, Alpine’s Front Street Books hosts an event to celebrate the publication of “Wild Women for Good,” from Texas A&M University Press.

PJ woodlands are the Southwest’s dominant forest type, covering 100 million acres here. Pinyons typically top out at 20 feet – and alongside diverse junipers, they thrive in dry, rocky places where Ponderosas, firs and aspens can’t make it.

West Texas avians have passionate local advocates. That includes Trans-Pecos Bird Conservation, or TBC. This small but potent cadre of bird experts is cultivating the bonds between our region’s birds and its people.

Kachina dolls are an iconic Indigenous art form. Their craftsmanship is striking, and non-Native people have long admired and sought to acquire them. But they’re just one element in an encompassing religious outlook.

Dr. Rachel Laker, of Hanover College in Indiana, specializes in taphonomy, which explores the processes bones undergo between an animal’s death and fossilization. Big Bend National Park is one site of her research.

Painted on cave walls where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande, the rock art of the Lower Pecos canyonlands casts a powerful spell. Its imagery is intricate, depicting human-like figures with upraised arms, geometric forms and animals like snakes, birds and mountain lions. And its scale is vast. Some panels span a hundred feet or more, and there are hundreds of such sites.

Cave scientist Riannon Colton is working to unlock one of the cavern’s mysteries: its “speleometeorology.” Because it turns out that big caves, like big mountains, create their own weather.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands – where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande – contain globally significant rock art. But these same shallow caves have preserved much else from prehistory: bits of tools and textiles, plant and animal remains.

It features prominently in the earliest European account of the American Southwest, and it’s a fascinating chapter in Texas history. And yet, much about La Junta – the Native American society that flourished at the confluence of the Rio Grande and Rio Conchos, at present-day Presidio-Ojinaga – remains mysterious. Archeologists haven’t given it the same attention as other farming and village societies.

The Devils River is frequently described as the most pristine river in Texas. Flowing where the Chihuahuan Desert blends into the Hill Country and the South Texas shrublands, it’s a luminous ribbon of water in an arid land. It’s also a hunter’s paradise, with a rich ranching heritage, and home to globally significant cave paintings. And it’s an ecological wonder, a last stronghold for aquatic creatures that have vanished elsewhere.