God paints the sky over the Big Bend of Texas with a fiery brush tonight.

In these moments at day's end, the sun plunging below the horizon explodes in a dizzying rainbow of colors. Great streaks of salmon, flaming red, pale lavender, and hot liquid gold splash upon a canvas so vividly blue it's impossible to capture with words or film. I anchor my stance, lean into the raging wind, and turn my face toward the heavens to accept this awesome gift.

Miracles of nature are commonplace in the Big Bend, a vast swath of the Lone Star State that draws its name from the serpentine path of the Rio Grande. This fabled river starts as a clear mountain stream high in the Colorado Rockies and ambles southeast across New Mexico, entering Texas at its westernmost tip near El Paso.

Here the wide, muddy expanse forms the border between the United States and Mexico and dips into the Chihuahuan Desert before changing its mind and beginning a long, slow arc to the northeast. This great U-turn in the river forms the boundaries of the Big Bend, a region so immense it could hold the entire state of Maryland with room to spare.