Talley 2 (TY-2) is a campsite off of River Road in the backcountry of Big Bend National Park. The site is slightly elevated over the remote Chihuahuan Desert, hours from any paved road but only a couple miles from the southernmost tip of the Rio Grande’s iconic big bend - Mariscal Canyon.

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I spent a summer night at TY-2 knowing I would have to wake up before sunrise in order to hike the Mariscal Canyon Rim Trail before the desert heat made it too dangerous. I thought about sleeping outside on top of the car because it was so warm and breezy, but that constant southern wind from Mexico, still so warm even at night, was so loud in my ears that I couldn’t sleep outside the car after all.

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This experience held intimate and visceral meaning to me, camped so close to the wild and scenic Rio Grande. The physical majesty of the shallow river is impossible to miss as it churns rapids and carves canyons, yet its power as a border in our modern political landscape seems both known and desensitizing. Today, mass human tragedy is concentrated at this river where it escapes the collective consciousness of Texans only a few footsteps north. This phenomenon of erasure seems as timeless as the surreal landscape itself.

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The electronic track is constructed of wind noise collected by myself at the abandoned Mariscal Mine. 
 

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