I’m maybe 10 miles from Baldy Peak in the Davis Mountains of farWest Texas, looking down at an undulating fog bank that completely obscures the valley below. It’s like a mysterious sea with a forest-blanketed peak to the rear on a landmass ascending out of it. I don’t know what’s below the gray waves. Whatever is down there, it’s a different place from up here. I’m on a sky island, another name for the Chisos, Davis, and Guadalupe mountains that rise out of the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert and have their own distinct ecosystems.
“About 20,000 years ago, we were in an ice age. The Trans-Pecos plant communities looked completely different,” says Kaylee French,
