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The Montezuma quail is one of Texas' most mysterious and elusive birds. Level ground may belong to bobwhite and scaled quail, but these quail live on…

As every schoolchild learns from Johnny Appleseed, bringing plants to the people is good work. Since 2002, the Big Bend's Native Plant Society has been…

The low deserts of the Big Bend near the Rio Grande are the most forbidding of West Texas landscapes. They're at the lowest elevations in the Chihuahuan…

Prickly pear and cholla cactus are among the most recognizable of West Texas plants. They're part of the "opuntioid" subfamily of cactus. In a recent…

Hueco Tanks State Park, east of El Paso, contains an ancient rock art legacy unlike any in West Texas, or in North America. Thousands of painted images on…

America's national parks have never been more popular. Parks visitation hit a record high – with 330 million recreational visits – in 2016, the year of…

Órale, the feature for this episode is rajar. In Spanish it means to break or splinter. In Caló it means to cower, give up, or quit the fight. It also means to break a promise. People who commit to something and then don’t follow through are rajones. People who keep their word once they give it even at great cost to themselves, are people who no se rajan. There’s an old saying in this regard that invokes the image of someone who is down to his last breath yet still no se raja: ‘scupo sangre, no rajo.

Órale, the word for this episode is maestro. It’s an honorific, a title of recognition of an individual’s mastery of a certain subject matter. It’s conferred informally but universally by the community. It evolved in a setting where, in the absence of degrees or journeyman certificates of any kind, and people earned their bona fides through demonstrated skill and acumen. There were maestros in every field, music, teaching and coaching, auto mechanics, carpentry, and of course, matanzas.

Órale, the feature this week is the word trinquetear. It’s a verb that means to cheat or steal by tricking or scamming somebody. In modern Spanish, a trinquete is the cross beam on the main mast of a sailing ship. But if used as an analogy, it refers to the constriction that occurs if you wind the cross beam like a tourniquet. In Caló, there’s triqueteada, not trinquete, and it means the scam the victim is woven into. The person doing it is the trinquetero(a), always a skilled and creative person. If you know a trinquetero(a), you can’t help but appreciate their art.

Five years ago, archeologists began excavating the San Esteban cave south of Marfa, searching for evidence of the Big Bend's earliest inhabitants.