After a 3-day extension of my Chisos Basin stay in Big Bend National Park, the Park Volunteer (called a, “Camp Host”) I had encountered every day noticed my tidy campsite. I responded to his query that I wasn’t leaving yet and we spent a few seconds in silence just standing there. So, I offered to show him some of my photographs.
His job must have been a lonely one. He hurriedly stashed his Park truck and came back to review the photos. That’s when I told him I was heading west to photograph Indian rock art. And that’s when I learned of the red buffalo.
The red buffalo, he said, was so perfect that experts were called in to verify authenticity. He gave me a generalized description of where to find it. It required a short drive down a dirt trail off the main road, followed by a riverbed walk where I would find unusual-shaped rocks. Among the clues to its location were that the rock on which the red buffalo was to be found is visible from the river bed. He also said that the artwork is always in a shadow.
Now how could that be? I wondered, and asked as much. How could the artwork be above the riverbed and yet always in a shadow? The man’s response was vague and I was under the impression it had been some time since he had been there.
As it turned out, the easiest part of the search is pictured above: It’s the road going west.
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