163. Protecting Big Bend: Officials, Business Owners, and Outfitters Take a Stand

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The poet Naomi Shihab Nye penned a poem titled Big Bend park says no to All Walls. Here are its two opening lines. Big Bend has been here, been here.

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Shouldn't it have a say? Call the mountains a wall if you must. The river has never been a wall.

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You might think that poem was written amid the current opposition to the Trump administration's plan to build a wall through Big Bend, but it was actually written a decade ago. That's how long President Trump has been calling for a man made steel wall to be built through Big Bend National Park, Big Bend State park and beyond.

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The wall would course through more than 100 miles of the remote, unspoiled borderlands, one of the most pristine wildscapes in the country.

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That part of Trump's border wall would cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Big Bend residents have united with a clear message to Washington. A man made wall would address a problem that does not exist. The region's rugged and remote topography, its mountains, canyons, desert and vast unpopulated stretches, act as a natural barrier to people seeking to migrate north into the state. Border crossings once so common in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo, are as scarce as rain in Big Bend. What the wall would do is create a lasting scar across one of America's most pristine wildscapes, a borderland largely untouched by the development that otherwise has made Texas the fastest growing state and one of the most urban states in the country.

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It would disrupt almost every aspect of daily life there for humans and wildlife alike. For those of us who regard Big Bend as an outdoor cathedral and a sojourn there to be a spiritual experience, it would alter West Texas in ways that might never be healed.

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The livelihood of Big Bend's residents also are at risk if administration officials, in effect, try to corral nature with a massive steel structure. Visitors are not going to spend their leisure time visiting a wall. The people of Big Bend, who know best the story of this great Chihuahuan desert expanse, are in the studio with us today to share their stories. Joining us today are Brewster County Judge Greg Hennington from Alpine, who was elected to that office as a Republican in 2022 and for decades before that, before he sold it, was the owner of Far Flung Outdoor Center. Also with us is Tara Shackelford, a seventh generation Texan and the co owner with her husband Joe Lorenz of Hidden Dagger Adventures, a leading outfitter in Big Bend. Tara and Joe are residents of Marathon who operate out of Dead Horse Mountain Ranch, where they can see the Rio Grande from their porch.

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Also in the studio is Sam Stavanoha, a West Texas native and Marathon resident who owns the French Company grocery there, Marathon's lifeline for locals and visitors.

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French Company also serves as the community hub in the small town that's the gateway to Big Bend National Park. Sam also serves as one of the organizers of nobigbenwall.org which has gathered more than 106,000 signatures of Texans who oppose the administration's project. You can find that petition online. Judge Hennington, Tara and Sam, welcome to big city, small town. Well, great. We've never had a group from West Texas in the podcast studio, so it's good to have all of you here. Judge Hennington, why don't we start with you and tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and what led you to decide to become Brewster county judge four years ago. Thanks for having me today.

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I always tell people that it was post lobotomy that I decided to become judge, but my background is I came, I'm an Aggie, got out of Texas A and M and I went into the banking business in Houston and was a banker, a commercial banker in Houston. And then in the around 1991, 92, I decided to try my hand at getting into the outfitting business. So I did what this young lady to the right of me did. For 32 years I was an outfitter and owned and operated a company called Far Flung Outdoor Center. You just dropped out of Houston Banking and moved to West Texas and became an outfitter. I got to see the boom and the bust of the 80s in Houston. So the oil boom had come on hot and heavy in the early 80s, and then by the end of the 80s, everybody was in foreclosure and banks were being sold. And I wanted to do something different. So I, as I tell people, I had a dog, a pickup truck and two sticks of furniture. And I said, I think I'll go to West Texas and see what we can do. So when was the lobotomy?

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The lobotomy didn't come until I got done. Wow. I actually thought that was going to be a winner. As soon as we got there, it was.

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We went into a drought. We went from raft to canoe. I moved out to Big Bend and we started doing river trips. And then we sort of expanded from there and jeep tours and ATVs. We got into lodging.

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We really became sort of an adventure resort. Did you start that company that's called Far Flung? No, it was actually started in 1976 by a couple of fellows from that moved out to Terlingua Way Before I did, I had a company called Texas River Expeditions, okay, that was out of Houston.

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And we were coming out. We were actually competing with Far flung. And in 2001, far flung went up for sale, and we purchased their. Purchased their company, and we folded our company into theirs, and then we kept their name, and that was Far Flung Adventures. We changed it slightly to Far Flung Outdoor center. And you eventually sold that. And so about 22 or 23 after the pandemic, we had a couple of good years. And my wife said, you know, I think it's time you get to a point in business where you have great ideas. And then you say, I don't really want to do that. It's time to get out of the business, because you're going to end up being mediocre, and you can't survive in a mediocre world.

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So she'd been kind of saying this, you know, why don't we think about selling this thing? So I was dragging my feet because I didn't know what I want to do when I grew up. And so the judge at the time of Rooster county, he decided not to run.

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And so I got some calls from people and said, why don't you run for judge? And one thing, that's when the lobotomy occurs.

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And so I did. We were 1 in 22. This is my first term.

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I'm finishing my first term. And then when the business sold and we moved to Alpine, Texas, there we have it. And I. I take it you're.

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You're running for reelection. I'm up for reelection. I'm unopposed, so kind of makes it nice. Congratulations. Congratulations. And well, before November, it looks like I've got four more years that these guys will have me, and then we'll see what happens after that. And, Tara, your family's been out there a long, long time. Yeah, since the late 1880s. They were done everything from land owning landowners to sheep and goat ranchers, postmasters and mistresses and teachers. And so they've done everything you can think of in a town like that that booms and busts, too, with ranching. And somehow they stuck it out. They've. For the last six generations, they've stayed in Marathon.

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This is my dad's side of the family. And so I was born in El Paso and then grew up outside of Austin because my dad moved away from Marathon, but he did. He grew up there, born and raised in Marathon. And I had come back frequently to Marathon because my family has a ranch there. That's the dead horse that's the Dead Horse Mountain Ranch. They bought that in 1986. But they had owned other land throughout West Texas and like north of Big Bend national park throughout this long history of theirs. And so I grew up going out and I don't even know actually when the first time I went to Big Bend national park was because we really didn't need to go to the national park because we always had the ranch that we'd go and play on, which is adjacent to the park. It borders the, the park to the north. So it's the last bit of private land before you enter the national park. On that. Yeah. That's amazing.

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Sam, your story. My parents lived in Big Lake when I was born, so I was born in the hospital in Midland, Texas, so grew up in the Permian in Andrews, Texas. I, I did a year of school at UTPB in Odessa, which was an interesting choice, and went to engineering school at Texas State University, San Marcos. So we've got as far as wildlife here. We got Aggie, we got longhorn, we got a bobcat. Bearcat. Bearcat, yeah. So we got a good distribution and worked in tech for over a decade. I still do. Really? You're a former Racker? I'm a former Racker. Seven year Racker. Shout Out, Graham Lou and company.

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So that was a great, I mean, absolutely. Speaking of Rackspace, it's a great place to cut your teeth for a young engineer. I started there when I was 22 and left when I was 28 and went to work for another cloud computing firm based in Manhattan called DigitalOcean. On a trip in 2019.

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I spent a lot of time in Big Bend growing up in the Permian.

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I grew up canoeing with my father. He is a petroleum engineer and so had a natural interest in geology.

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And any geologist, especially any Texan geologist, knows the best place to go see a lot of that exposed is via a canoe paddling through the canyons of the Big Bend. So I got a pretty, pretty solid study in geology as a young kid out there with my dad. But on a trip in 2019, we were actually going out to Hueco Tanks, which is outside of El Paso, to go bouldering. And we spent a night in Marathon.

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And it was, I think maybe only my second time to ever stay at the Gage Hotel, but I ran into the woman who owned the French grocer. They're just strolling the streets. And long story short, I got, I guess maybe I had a lobotomy too. This is Marcy Evans. This is Marcy Evans, married To James Evans, the well known photographer. Big Ben photographer.

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I spent a good part of an afternoon there in the Evans Gallery with Marcy playing piano. We were chit chatting and I got this wild idea lodged in my head that after hiking Emory the very next day, I couldn't dislodge this idea and it totally possessed me. It was not buying a grocery store was not on my. What the kids say now they say. It was not on my bingo card. But yeah, I couldn't shake it. And so a few months later it was a done deal and I moved to Marathon in. It was basically late September of 2019 and I became the steward of this, you know, 100 plus year old kind of institution. It's changed hands a few times, but the French grocer has been. Has been a part of Marathon for a very long time, since about 1899. There's one other connection we need to make here in the room, and that is both of you. Tara and Sam worked as young outfitters for the judge, correct? Right. And even my husband worked for Greg in a different capacity as an EMT. He was an EMT. He could have. Yeah. Really? 9 11.

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So I was fire chief at Terlingua. Okay. Lots of jobs.

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Greg, I don't know if you remember this. Did you ever have a fire? Oh, yeah, we had fires. We always say we never, we never lost a slab, but most of our work was ems. Okay. As a paramedic, you don't know how many times people ask, how did you and Joe meet? My husband's from Wisconsin. I was like, oh, my boss and his boss was the same. What'd he do?

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He, he was operating outfitter and he was chief of fire in ems. So it's just like, how does that work? Small town.

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I can say with some amount of certainty that I wouldn't be sitting here if it weren't for Greg. Same, same. My first conversation I had over the. I was in California guiding for Outward Bound and I called Lynn and he was with you? And he was like, my niece wants to come out and work and wants to come up. And we said, sure, yeah. You said, yeah. You're like, we're taking a gamble on you.

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It's a small world. It's a great judge. Tell me a little bit about set the table for me right now on exactly what's going on, what the administration plan has been all along, what we think it is today and. And where we're going. Okay. I wish I actually knew all of the answers to those questions, but I'll tell you a little background. So in 16, when, when the Trump administration came in the first time, there was a little talk about the wall. I was an outfitter. It honestly, we didn't.

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It didn't have a feel. It just didn't feel like it was going anywhere. We were obviously opposed to it at that time, and it sort of just kind of went away. I'm not sure the history of that. Maybe the funding wasn't there, the will wasn't there. Now we've come back a second time around, and honestly, I had not given it any more thought.

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I mean, it was out there, and he campaigned on that promise.

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But I was at a water conference in Alpine that we had a water conference that deals with water issues in West Texas. And I was on a panel and James King, an old friend of mine, actually, they were asking.

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Supposed to ask questions about water. And his question was, what about the border? And I had not heard anything about it to that point. I had not, frankly, looked at the CBP map to see all the colored lines. And on that day, I said, well, I think it's an incredibly colossal, stupid idea to build a physical wall in Big Bend when we have so many other solutions. So we started doing some digging and sure enough, all of a sudden, sort out a lightning bolt, here comes this wall. And I guess in Hindsight, it's always 2020. It was in the Big Beautiful Bill.

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He got the money in the Big Beautiful Bill administration got it. And let me just say, I think all three of us were for border security.

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We're for a secure border. I think the physical wall in Brewster County, Big Bend National Park, State park, is the thing that we really struggled with. They've been using technology for years. But anyway, long story short, fast forward and now all of a sudden, we've got contractors swarming the area looking for land and man camps and water. And she really got the population, all of us really concerned about what we were fixing to do or what the government was fixing to do to some spectacularly beautiful country.

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And it didn't make sense to any of us. It was a gnat killing a gnat with a sledgehammer solution. We all of us that live out here know that the terrain is extremely rugged. There is no water. As a paramedic, I would go out and rescue people that are dead bodies that didn't make it across this country. There were so many other alternatives in our country, and our numbers show that. So the Big Bend sector has a very low rate of apprehensions, and that's fallen even more in this last year since the Trump administration's come in. And so at the end of the day, we just felt like this was an overreach or an overkill for a problem that wasn't as bad as maybe, maybe everybody in the rest of the country thought it was. And so that's where we are now. On my visits out there, I've often seen that enormous. I guess it's Border Patrol or Homeland Security blimp that's based there. And, you know, there's other state of the art technology that we see, including in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere on the border sensors, other cameras. The Border Patrol seems to have a pretty technical approach to being able to. To be everywhere at once. And it would seem like that would work in the park, would it? Just two weeks ago, the sheriff apprehended nine folks that had come across the border in the Black Gap area, kind of over where she is, and they did. They found all nine of them. Using infrared and drones, they were able to put the sheriff's deputies right on those people. No bright lights, no wall, no heavy equipment, just boom. They found them and dealt with that issue. So it's been around and the technology's only gotten better.

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So, yes, all of those are available versus building a physical wall. What we hear in San Antonio, Judge, is that the opposition throughout the state, particularly in West Texas, but throughout the state, including in the state Capitol in Austin, is not become a partisan issue. And that people on both sides of the aisle, and even obviously people that don't identify with either political party are speaking with one voice about opposition to this and are trying to convince people in the Trump administration, including, I hear, our top state elected officials, Governor Abbott and others, this is not smart to do. You should have the wall where you're in the most populated areas of Mexico and Texas on the border, but not out in the borderlands that are so wild.

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I've not found anyone, certainly not in our neck of the woods or really in Texas, that has spoke up and said we absolutely need a wall. I'm sure there's somebody out there that thinks we ought to have a physical wall, but for the most part, at least, our community is concerned.

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It's 99.99% opposed to the physical wall. I would say that 99.9% of the voters out there voted for President Trump, and certainly of the ranch owners are Republicans. Do you feel, are you confident that kind of opposition will quietly lead to a reversal of the plan? Well, I'm optimistic that we're going to end up with technology.

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They have announced that the. And that's the big question is where is it going to start? But let's just say the Big Bend Ranch State Park, Big Bend national park, and as I understand it, all the way just east of Langtree is now going to be technology. Only now what, what we need and what I've asked for is, okay, if that's going to be the case. And I guess there's no guarantees in anything in life. People, things, you know, people can change their mind, but the federal government's always been able to change their mind. So that's nothing new. But it'd be nice if we could get some clarity. All right, if. What does that technology wall look like? I think there's a lot of concern that it might be bright lights and lots of poles. And I don't think that's what they're talking about. I think they really are talking about some high tech, like infrared sorts of things. So I remain optimistic that's going to be a solution. I don't know what to do with parts of the wall, parts of the border. They're going to have a wall. Still think the wall across the spectrum is not the greatest idea in the world. I think it's just a colossal waste of money. But I think there could be some. I'm sure there's some places where a physical wall might make some sense. Somebody could argue that it makes sense to do that, but certainly not in our area. Tara and Sam, what's going to happen to people whose businesses, including yours, depend upon your livelihoods, depend upon the visitor industry? I think it's a lot of speculation for us as a river outfitter talking about if there is a border wall, will there be gates and gate codes? And I mean, they can say that. But if you go to Del Rio and those communities that are on the other side of the wall, on the Mexican side of the wall, that still live, you know, north of the river, they do not get those gate codes for those communities that are going on the other side of the wall. So it's hard to trust that, that we, as an outfitter, we'll keep you all safe by giving you the gate code so you all can still access these popular spots. Because again, you give one person a, a gate code, the next day a thousand people have this gate code. So it's kind of like giving the keys of America. I mean, it's hard to believe that that would be something that they would do. Obviously it changes our feelings too, towards Recreating in this beautiful landscape when there's a towering wall on one side of you. Man made wall. When we talk about the Rio Grande Valley, for example, there's many stretches of that wall that are more than a mile north of the river. And. And they're not. The wall is not cheek by jowl on the river all the way, which is what some people think. It's well above it and you end up in a with a no man's land between the United States Mexican border, which is the river and the actual property that's being cut off by the wall. And I don't know the details of exactly where they've mapped the wall out in your part of the state, but I would anticipate that they couldn't build it along the river everywhere and therefore it will be well north of the river in places. True. Yeah. And so it might not even be just can see right from the river like you mentioned. It could be a mile away. But it sends a message to our tourists. It sends a message to anybody that's coming here internationally, which we can get a lot of people from out of state internationally, that this is not maybe a safe place. Right. I mean, yeah, I can't give you a number of how what percentage that would affect tourists coming down here, but I know that it. It also puts us in a position where whether or not we want to run a business with a park that has a wall through it and my family also being just not even talking about business owners I guess, but also just landowners. The river, that's the only water source that these ranchers have in a 200 mile radius at times their getaway as well. So are we going to give the gate code again to like the outfitters and also all the. Anybody that wants to recreate on. I mean again, where do you. Where do you draw the line on that? But yeah, I would say that it would have a detrimental effect. The amount of visitors that it would affect are the percentage of our business that it would affect. If we just took out our whole river section. We could take out a big portion of our hiking section because a lot of our hikes are along the river. So yeah, it couldn't.

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It's not just like y' all still have backpacking, you still have hiking, you still have Jeep tours. Big part of our company is based on seeing the Rio Grande. People want to see the river and witness it.

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Sam, how do you think it'll affect Marathon and Frenchco for that matter?

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It certainly won't improve things for Us, we've spoken with a lot of entrepreneurs in Marathon and beyond, and there's a lot of, there's a lot of activity that's already like in development or investment that I think we're already seeing some people pulling the brakes actually on, on, on their plans for growth because they want to find out what's going to happen first. They're making, they're already planning. Some people I've talked to are already actually planning an exit. Like Tara said, even if you just look at how the optics affects tourism, there's already harm being done. Because even, and even before there was national coverage on the issue. I'm sure you've had guests over the years and Greg too. And what, what do they ask you?

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They say, oh, you know, we were nervous about coming down here. Is it really safe to be out here? Greg's probably heard this for decades, you know, as an outfitter. And so you've are. You've been telling that story to travelers for years. Like, yeah, it's absolutely safe. Well, that, that kind of rhetoric is just going to get even louder. You're going to be spending way more time giving some solace to your, to your guests and, and explaining to them that it is safe. And I think that based on the conversations I've had, I.

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And we do have a robust tourism economy, but it's, but it's fragile. And you have a lot of choices when you fly. And we hope you fly with us. We hope you come out to Big Bend. You know, we want to take care of you and we want you to have a good time. But people have choices where they can take their family, where they can travel.

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And, and I think we all agree that our domain, our tourism economy is, it is fragile and it's not a gamble that anybody wants to take. Nobody wants to see what happens and see how it goes. You're one of the organizers of knowbingbenwall.org, which I mentioned at the outset. Tell me about that organization and what it's been up to and what its goals are with this petition. Yeah, so was spun up in early February, just before the DHS Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security finalized these environmental waivers. And the, and the way the waivers were based on, were based on a claim that the Big Bend sector was an area of high illegal entry, which, as Greg mentioned, is just verifiably false. So the entire set of these 28 waivers is based on a false claim, even in a relative sense. Right. If you look at the entire southern border.

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And so the Group spun up pretty rapidly. A lot of us are, of course, based in the Tri county that are working on novigbenwall.org and we, we seek to build out a platform for Texans for Americans somewhere that they can go where they can get involved. Of course they should. They could and should sign the petition. It's on our homepage. They can sign up for the newsletter. There's educational resources, there's, there's collaboration with other groups in the state. You know, we have seen other groups spin up in Austin. We seek to be. To build out a platform with tools and resources and educational materials all available on our site and on our socials.

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And we've seen other groups spin up and we, we seek to facilitate their outreach and promote. Promote their activities. Of course. There's the Austin Capitol Rally tomorrow in Austin that's organized by a group called Save Big Bend.

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There's an event that was on Tuesday in Lockhart organized by a group called Together for Big Bend.

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And so we're making a great effort to get a lot of these organizers to converge and we seek to like, collab, collaborate and spread, spread the message on, like I said, on education, we have sections on wildlife, we have sections on the waiver, on CBP website map updates. And we try to really keep our finger on the pulse and provide a platform where people can find out the latest in what's going on, how they can get involved, how calls to action addresses and email addresses for all of the pertinent representatives and all that, and all of those tools and resources are available on our site.

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Are you sharing that petition with state and federal elected officials or what's the end game there? The end game on the petition? Right. It's a tool for getting observability on the issue, really, whether or not the. There, there's no number of signatures that equals that guarantees us some outcome or anything, but if you can have that in your pocket when you're writing your representatives, you can say, hey, me and 110,000 other Texans sign this petition because we care about this.

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It has impact. Yeah. So for people that are watching or listening Today, on Friday, April 3rd, when the, the episode released, Tomorrow's a Big Day.

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4 o' clock in Austin on the Capitol grounds. There's a big march or protest and Tara, what's happening in Big Bend on that same day, the locals are organizing a First Amendment demonstration down at Santa Helena Canyon. There will be vans caravanning folks from Marathon and from Terlingua as meetup points in the morning on April 4th and we'll be going down the Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive and putting boats down into the mouth of the canyon and floating there just at the entrance of the canyon, people can swim, they can bring kids are welcome and family, friends, locals, anyone who can't make it to Austin or might find themselves in Big Bend national park this weekend, they can go down to Santa Helena Canyon if they want to take part in this demonstration. Judge, back to your role as an elected official in West Texas. We saw the New York Times story that I think was released on Sunday or Monday, earlier this week is getting a lot of attention and it referenced, I think letters that were signed by other county judges or sheriffs in the area. Can you tell us about that? Yeah. So take the grassroots, which I think is fantastic, what these guys have been doing and bubble that up to the elected officials. And to make it real clear, people have asked us, well, why aren't we spending money to oppose the wall? The problem with it is is we can't spend taxpayers money to lobby. That's effectively not something we can do because there's somebody that's probably for the wall. So we can't lobby against it. But what we can do is we can be opposed to it by consensus. And so what we've done is the sheriffs, the five sheriffs of the five counties contiguous and the six county judges stretching from Terrell county all the way to Hudspeth county have signed joint resolutions based on the grassroots effort that says we're opposed to the physical wall and we, we looking for solutions to that issue. And where were the letters directed? They were directed to the Governor Abbott and to our senators and our congressmen and our state representatives as well. I personally have not met with the governor but there have been some high level meetings with the governor, Governor and I think that message has gotten through to the governor's office about and I think that's why we're seeing some movement now in the state park and national park. Do you think the governor is in touch with the president and, or his, you know, I can't speak to that but I'm going to guess that, that their conversations hopefully have been had, let's just put it that way. I think, I think the governor is fully aware of what's happening.

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I've not spoken to him personally so I can't, I can't say that out of his lips. But I think he is the right people have met with him to let him know that this is an issue. And I think that's, I think that's borne some fruit for our area. Do you know whether or not your legislative representatives at the state or a congressional level have.

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Have weighed in on this? Yeah. Cesar Blanco and Eddie Morales are both our state senator and Rep.

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Respectively. Both of them have weighed in against the physical wall. We are in the process now of getting that the judges together for a meeting with Senator Cornyn and hopefully Senator Cruz where we can just get in a room and talk about.

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Here's what frustrates me most as judge. These two folks, I was in their shoes, need to get back to running their businesses and generating that $68 million economy that we have in tourism and Big bend and the 2.4 million we generated in taxes last year in Big Ben. And they need to know that they can run their businesses and make decisions with certainty and not have to spend, quite frankly, time giving interviews and running around working on grassroots organizations. They need to be back to their businesses, get back to work. You know, but the point of the matter is that's really what, that's where their benefit. These are two young entrepreneurs that. And they're willing to do it. And I'm glad they're doing it. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it. But the point of the matter is, is that this is what's frustrating me is let's get a solution and move on. And I'm hoping we can get there. Well, any last words? We're running out of time, but we're obviously deeply appreciative of you guys coming into the studio and we're going to be watching events unfold tomorrow. And I do wonder after tomorrow, what's next. Yeah, I want to make it clear too. We, we talk about Big Bend and I think people assume that we're just talking about Big Bend national park or Big Bend Ranch State Park. And I really want to advocate that there's, you know, there can be thousands of people rallying behind these pieces of public land that we're trying to save.

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But there are dozens and dozens of private landowners that are probably at more risk of losing their land, parts of their land or access to the river that they need. So I would just really push people to not get too comfortable with these promising the promising progress we've had with hearing about the CBP map, you know, is changed. Just the same week there were survey markers found in the state park along the Hoodoos Canyon, the very, the very places that, that the CBP officials said that they were no longer doing a physical wall. So, like what these survey markers mean, it's just, I'm just saying that I would be skeptical and we can be like still like optimistic about it and still be really positive that we can make a change. But to not forget about those landowners that are up and down stream of these public pieces of land and let's like take care of them too, from Fort Quitman to Lake Amistad is really what we aim to protect here. And like judge said, detection technology, we don't even have a totally clear definition of what that is when the it's just an image on the CBP website that gets updated. It's just a map with some colored lines on it. There's no pretty unsophisticated map environment. There's not even, there's scarcely a caption much there's scarcely a caption much, much less a, a statement about these updates or these reversals on, on those colored lines on the map. Unless, unless the judge has, has seen a, a release a press, a statement that I've not seen. There's been no verbal statement.

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Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming in and being on Big City Small Town. We're going to be watching with this and and I suspect we'll be back in touch. I'm going to make one last plug. Please go to our site no big benwall.org to learn more, to get involved, take action and follow us on socials at no Big Benwall. And we hope to chat with you on online and we're open for business. Brewster County. Come out and see us. It's spectacularly beautiful country. Come out and stop at his store. Do some business with her. Come on out to the big bend. Don't let this, don't let this scare you. Thank you, Greg.

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All right, y', all, thanks for listening to this episode of Big City Small Town.

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