The dramatic desert landscapes of the Big Bend country along the Texas-Mexico border reminded historian Walter Prescott Webb of "an earth-wreck in which a great section of country was shaken down, turned over, blown up, and set on fire." By contrast, naturalist Aldo Leopold considered the region a mountainous paradise in which even the wild Mexican parrots had no greater concern than "whether this new day which creeps slowly over the canyons is bluer or golder than its predecessors, or less so." Whether it impresses people as God's country or as the devil's playground, the Big Bend...