We drive the two-lane blacktop up into the park, and shoulder our packs at the Pine Springs campground, elevation 5,800 feet. At the trailhead we hook up with ranger Michael Haynie, who has worked in the park for the past five years and knows its crowns and contours like no other. We are joined by Lisa Conte, enthnobotanist and president of PS Pharmaceuticals, a company that explores the medicinal qualities of native plants. She is on a busman’s holiday, and wants to hike the high trails and explore its flora.

Not many come to Guadalupe — a third less than those who visit Big Bend — and that’s part of its appeal. The National Park Service has deliberately curbed development to keep it wild. There are no hotels, cabins, lodges or restaurants in or near the park. No showers or soft drink machines. There are no scenic overlooks to drive to, nor or any canyons accessible by car. But there are 80 miles of lyrical backcountry trails in the 86,416-acre park.

Heading up Pine Canyon, we fall in line behind Michael, who walks like a whisper with his sotol plant staff. The flatlands quickly drop away behind us. Even though the ascent is over 3,000 vertical feet, the trail is designed well, with frequent sharp switchbacks that keep the hiking at a low-pant grade. The park is a lush island in the middle of a vast brown desert basin. There are bigtooth maples, gray oaks and smooth, red-barked madrones here, trees more common in rain forests. Some 250 birds take roost here. And the park harbors a trove of wildlife, from bear to bobcats, elk to hog-nosed skunks, and 60 other mammal species. “The thing that spooks me the most, though, is not the five species of rattlesnakes, the scorpions or the mountain lions … it is the lightning,” Michael says, looking at a bruised cloud in the middle distance. Storms gather quickly here, and the mountain is exposed, with few places to shelter when the bolts begin. About 80 percent of the fires in the Guadalupes are caused by lightning.

The trail to the summit climbs 3,000 feet in just over four miles through an open landscape of rock, tree and cactus. Click on image to see entire slide show. (Photo by Christian Kallen)

As we coil higher, we move into the north-side shadows, where snow still dusts the gravelly path. At a lofty overlook midway, Michael points out the landmarks across the immeasurable terrain. “ ‘Don’t confuse the map with the territory,’ the pioneers used to say. But out here, the territory is the map,” he explains, pointing across the valley to Hunter Peak, and beyond to a volcanic point he calls Nipple Mountain, both of which have been orientation points since the Mescalero Apaches first wandered into this sanctum sanctorum.

About a mile from the top, we stop to rest and hydrate at a level outcrop sheltered by junipers from the sheering wind. The air is thin and light and rich with the scent of pine. Even though the temperature is cold — I have five layers beneath my ski jacket — the air is so arid it sucks the sweat right out of me. I’m carrying a gallon of water for the eight hour hike, and take a long, long drink.

Lisa Conte takes the respite to decipher for us some of the 1,000 plant species on these slopes. The skunkbush leaves are used medicinally to treat skin problems such as dermatitis or itching, as well as for stomach problems. Lisa explains that Native Americans used skunkbush in childbirth and as a contraceptive. A treatment for falling hair was made from the oil of the fruits. Ground Apache Plume roots have been mixed with sugar for a cough; ground leaves mixed with wild tobacco for rheumatic joints; ground flowers mixed with horehound, flour and water to massage swollen parts of the body; and ground plumes mixed with commercial Dragon’s Blood (sangre de venado), rock salt, soot, and wine to drive away evil effects of bewitchment. And then there is the century plant, or mescal, from which ancient wise ones developed the potent medicine we know today as tequila.

Then I look down and see a mollusk shape in the rock. A tropical sea washed around these rocks about a quarter billion years ago, before the dinosaurs. Guadalupe Park sits amid the world’s most extensive exposed fossil reef. I run one hand across a hundred-million-year-old seashell embedded in the Permian limestone while I touch the petals of a young cactus with the other. Time, here, has turned to stone.

At one point Didrik, who has climbed Everest, gets off trail and does some bouldering, even though the sedimentary rock is soft and crumbly here. Michael, who has a degree in psychology, mildly chastises Didrik: “For those who don’t have common sense, we have park rules,” and Didrik gets back on track.

At last, after four hours of climbing, we make the final turn around a ridge, and there, in a trice, is the top of Texas. We scramble up, and become part of the sky, unbounded by geography or history. A golden eagle soars below us.

On the wind-whipped top, I look down over Bone Canyon to the Chihuahuan Desert, and beyond to the fine-lined Sierra Diablo Mountains, over the Glass Mountains, across Texas and see a land of myth and lore, of grit and possibility. Down over there is the Alamo, where the Lone Star spirit was baptized in fire; and there is Austin, where the living legend Lance Armstrong leads the ride to hope and health. Not far away is the Y.O. Ranch, where real cowboys ride, and wildlife from around the world has found refuge. And there is sun-bathed South Padre Island, where folks come to reel in their dreams; and Corpus Christi, a fabled harbor for boats of all sizes and intentions. On the eastern edge of the state is Caddo Lake, an otherworldly bayou dripping with mystery and ghostly beauty. Toward the midsection is Fort Worth, where cattle and cowboys parade and the two-step is the rage. Up in Amarillo I can see mountain biking cognoscenti peddling Palo Duro Canyon, one of the more furtive natural wonders of the world; and down Rio Grande way a few hikers and canoeists bathe in the gilded late light of Big Bend. And there are a thousand magic places between, all within the borders of a space called Texas. While climbing Guadalupe Peak we meet a descending “high pointer,” one of the elite club of climbers who attempts to mount the highest point in all 50 states. He had, with Guadalupe, now done 48 of the 50, and he declares the view here to be the best.

“I like to be in the resource,” Michael Haynie tells us when queried why he doesn’t work in an office where he could perhaps better exploit his degree. And what a boundless resource Texas is.

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