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It’s a fragile little grass, with a fragile future. Guadalupe fescue was first identified in the Guadalupe Mountains in 1932 – but hasn’t been seen in its namesake Texas range for decades.

Órale, the onda of this week is the word, tutú. It means a diminutive religious character or idol. It’s shorthand for the name, Jesús, but it’s not specific to any religion or creed. It’s also non-value laden. It simply means junior or baby idol. What’s intended to be conveyed with tutú is the image of a miniature statue of a religious character, like a saint or other religious icon. Perhaps the best example of a tutú is the statuette you’ll often find on the dashboard of a lowrider, typically the image of San Martin de Porres, a 1600th century Afro-Peruvian saint.

Texas state parks showcase a host of treasured resources – canyons and caverns, dinosaur tracks and hiking trails, waterfalls and whitewater rivers. The parks also preserve a remarkable archeological record, rich evidence of Texas’s Indigenous past.

Carpenter bees are known to “rob” nectar – to take the sweet stuff without moving any pollen. But in Big Bend at least, carpenter bees and ocotillos have a mutualistic relationship, one that benefits both lifeforms.

Known only from sites in southern Presidio and Brewster counties, “Big Bend Bold” rock art is distinctive for the size and style of its imagery, which is painted in black or dark green. The style was named by archeologist Tim Roberts, who argues it was created by Indigenous Big Bend farmers and foragers at the time the Spanish first arrived here.

Órale, the onda of this week in Caló is Cucuy. It means a non-descript monster. It’s origin is an Iberian mythical creature with a coconut-like head. The mythical figure migrated in stories from Southern Europe to the Americas with the Spanish, who took it up the Rio Grande. By the time it rooted in the local culture, it was only as a rumor—something nobody could describe that was lurking out there somewhere. Today it’s a catchall term for an unseen monster, same as the “boogey man.” It could get you, but nobody really knows how.

Big Bend Ranch State Park is promoted as “the Other Side of Nowhere,” and the park’s River Road – FM 170 between Lajitas and Redford – fits that billing. It’s a breathtaking landscape of volcanic badlands and imposing canyons, and it can seem like a timeless wilderness, untouched by history.

Órale, the onda in Caló this week is the verb fisgar. In Spanish is means to harpoon or sniff out something, also to make fun of someone. In Caló, it means to be too nosy or to inquire about something beyond the point where it’s appropriate, like the vato who was fisgando about his jefito’s past and apañò some onda that made him get agüitado de amadres.

Extreme drought tests nature’s resilience. And birds are a particularly vivid example of how the creature world responds to drought, and to a landscape recovering from it.

Órale, the onda this week of Caló is chucho. It means candy. It comes from the Romaní word for a mother’s breast, chuchai, as in the source of nourishment for a newborn. It’s indeed an exaggerated metaphor for mere candy, but the term speaks to the primal desire for candy, not so much the substance itself. It says humans want chucho because it takes them back to the first sweet they ever tasted. In this sense, even the best candy is a faint approximation of a chucho.