Customer Reviews

Beneath the Window: Early Ranch Life in the Big Bend Country

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Big Bend National Park is a wonderful place. Some of the people who camp, hike and backpack there a lot and love it call themselves, "Big Benders." But they're not, really. At least not in comparison with those who actually lived inside what is now the park and made a living there until 1944, when BBNP was established and the ranchers and others who lived there had to leave their land forever. Patricia Wilson Clothier is one of those people. She is a true Big Bender. This is the story of her girlhood on the Blue Creek Ranch - owned & operated by her father, Homer Wilson - in the 1930's and early '40's. This is a modest book, simply written. If you are unfamiliar with Big Bend you might be better off starting with one of the general histories of the area. But if you have spent time there and have fallen under its spell, especially if you have visited the Blue Creek Ranch and hiked down out of the Basin past the Window through terrain that was the author's backyard and playground when she was a young girl, you will enjoy this book.

Clothier tells interesting, charming and sometimes scary stories about her childhood adventures, such as when she was bitten by a possibly rabid animal and when her little brother was run over by a car on the ranch. She tells us about some of the other people who lived on her ranch or nearby, including a young Mexican ranch hand who became a miner in Terlingua, who later died of lung disease from the work, and who is buried in Terlingua Cemetery. In 40 years of visiting Big Bend and reading about the quicksilver mines, this was the first time I ever learned a miner's name. Clothier also paints evocative portraits of her mother and father, and the hardships they all endured without complaint, because of their love for the land and their lives on it.

Finally, there is a sad and poignant quality to this story. Part of it lies in the perspective of those people who did not want to give up their land and way of life to make way for a national park. Part of it lies in what happened to the Wilson family.

I gained a lot from this book. From now on, whenever I'm hiking through what was once the Blue Creek Ranch, I will enjoy not only the magnificent scenery, but the stories this true Big Bender shares with us in BENEATH THE WINDOW.

I have already read this before and am looking forward to re-reading it. The book really gives one the "feel": of what it was like to grow up in the Big Bend area BEFORE and as it became a national Park! AAAA ++++++

Thank you so much for writing this book and sharing with us your memories of the most beautiful place in America! Those of us now living in the Big Bend Area can relate to the descriptions included in this book. The landscape has changed, yet the rules of the Big Bend are still the same as they were in 1936, 1912, and before.... Love it, Respect it, and Leave it better than you found it. This book is a delight and a copy will live on our shelves forever.