The Brazos River is, in my opinion, the best river in Texas. It may be rivaled in beauty by the Guadalupe and it tributaries, and it is certainly rivaled in size by the Rio Grande, but to me it has meant Home for the last ten years of my life. The headwaters of the Brazos are in New Mexico and far west Texas, but the actual river itself begins in north Texas, west of Dallas-Ft. Worth. Originally named Rio de los Brazos de Dios (The River of the Arms of God) by Spanish explorers, the name is fitting as the Brazos has thoroughly wrapped its metaphorical arms around me. I first moved near the Brazos in 1998 to the city of College Station, where I was a young, wild, and reckless teenager, and thought I was ready for the real world. I moved to College Station to attend Texas A&M University and pursue a degree in Exercise Science. Within a few months I had succeeded in drinking a year’s supply of alcohol, nearly failed out of school, and conceived the first of three stunningly beautiful children with my childhood friend and now best friend and wife. Within a matter of months I went from the wild and carefree teenager to a semi-responsible father and husband. Life happens fast. My wife and I both grew up in San Antonio, a short, by Texas standards, drive from College Station. Each time we headed home to visit friends and family we crossed over the Brazos just north of town, and every time, without fail, I felt the river urging me to climb down the banks and explore. For some reason back then I never followed that urge with much gusto. Sure, there were a few times I drove to some spot on the river to try to catch some catfish, at which I always failed, but I never really put much effort into it. After a long and difficult six years and a summer in college, I finally finished my bachelor’s degree, and then decided I still liked school despite the difficulties I had as an undergrad. So I enrolled in a master’s program, also at Texas A&M, which I was able to finish in just one year. Deciding that I still wasn’t ready to start working for real, I decided to pursue a Ph.D. so that I could spend the rest of my life not working for real. The life of a college professor is quite laid back with lots of vacation. There are of course the end of semester crunches to get grades wrapped up and research projects finished, but all in all, it is a great lifestyle. Let’s get back to the river though. I moved with my wife to Waco to work on my doctorate, which just so happens to also be situated along the banks of the Brazos. It is here that my true love affair with the Brazos begins.
Once on a visit to the McLennan County Library, I checked out a copy of the book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, by Aron Ralston. This book tells the fateful story of a guy who was canyoneering in Bluejohn Canyon in Utah and left behind a little piece of himself in the wilderness. While climbing over a boulder, he dislodged it from its precarious position in a slot canyon. The boulder crushed his hand literally, “between a rock and a hard place”. After five long days of being cold, hungry and drinking his own urine, he ended up severing his own hand with a dull Swiss Army knife, muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve, after first breaking the two bones of his forearm. Following his gruesome self amputation, he proceeded to hike several miles and repel down cliffs where he eventually stumbled upon some hikers who helped get him rescued. Aron Ralston’s story is a wonderful tale in itself, but it was the suggested readings he included in the back of his text that introduced me to my most cherished authors, Edward Abbey and John Graves. Mr. Ralston suggested to his readers that they look into the book, Desert Solitaire, by old Cactus Ed, and Goodbye to a River, by Mr. Graves. So, being a diligent student, I immediately sought these books out. As it happens, Goodbye to a River is a book about my river, the Brazos. Mr. Graves weaves intricate tales of Texas history into the undulations of the river, creek by creek. At the time, in the 1950’s, the US Army Corp of Engineers were planning an onslaught of dams on the Brazos, so Mr. Graves was taking a farewell trip through his boyhood backyard before it was stopped up for good. Thankfully, only one of those dams was ever built, and the Brazos flows freely and proudly through central Texas from Lake Whitney, 20 miles north of Waco, all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to his trip, the Brazos had already been damned at Possum Kingdom, a name I have always found amusing, and Whitney. His trip consisted of a solitary three weeks in November down the Brazos in a canoe. He caught fish, hunted ducks, and just otherwise had a grand time on the Brazos. This tale of adventure in a canoe inspired me to eventually purchase a second-hand canoe of my own to begin my own trips on the Brazos. We’ll discuss more of this later. Edward Abbey, the Thoreau of the west, Cactus Ed, the monkey-wrench wielding anarchist, is truly the most inspiring writer I have ever had the pleasure to read. Perhaps his most well known work of non-fiction is Desert Solitaire. This book chronicles Mr. Abbey’s time as a park ranger at Arches National Monument (now a National Park) near Moab, Utah. He describes encounters with snakes, rabbits, clouds, and survey crews while espousing his vast knowledge of the desert southwest and his disdain for the modern-day way of life. His ability to transform his ideology into written word both logically and convincingly is unsurpassed in my, admittedly small, experience with literature. Like Mr. Graves, Abbey describes a very similar farewell trip to a river that he dearly loved as well. Sadly, Mr. Abbey’s river was damned up near what is now Page, Arizona. The Glen Canyon Damn backed up the Colorado River, effectively covering over 80 side canyons which contained beautiful grottoes, hanging gardens, and otherwise irreplaceable natural works of art. Now, the bottoms of these canyons are the final resting place of beer cans and plastic bags haphazardly thrown overboard by careless boaters. Just before the Glen Canyon Dam was finished in 1963, Abbey and a friend took a trip down the Colorado to say goodbye to their river. They similarly enjoyed catching fish and exploring the side canyons of the once great Glen Canyon. The accounts told by Abbey and Graves have forever changed my view of the world, particularly its rivers, and even more particularly, the Brazos River. It is a funny thing how the threat of loss makes us appreciate the things we would normally take for granted.
I bought my used canoe in the spring of 2006 and soon was off on my own river trip. In this case it was on the North Bosque River, which is one of three Bosque Rivers that eventually make their way to the Brazos after passing through the dam that created Lake Waco. The other Bosque Rivers are the Middle and the South. Once leaving the damn, the three Bosques simply become the Bosque for several brief miles before it joins forces with the Brazos in a beautiful city park named after the Cameron family of Waco. My first foray on the North Bosque was fairly uneventful. As I remember, it was a cool morning. I think I may have caught one channel catfish on a trot-line to fry up upon my return home. I made several other trips to the North Bosque over the course of the next year. Perhaps the most memorable was one trip in which I took my son and nephew out to float on an extremely flooded river. The put in that I always used was just above Lake Waco, and being that we had an unusually high amount of rainfall that spring, the lake was about 15 feet above flood stage. The water was so high that we put in about 200 yards up the embankment from the usual spot. We soon found ourselves paddling among the treetops. It was quite an unusual experience to know that we were paddling through what just a few months before was just air. The high water forced all of the tree spiders, I am not sure what their real name is, but that is what we called them, to congregate in huge masses so that anytime we brushed against a tree limb, the boat was showered with long-legged spiders that scared the pants off of both boys. I soon grew weary of paddling the North Bosque due to the fact that I wasn’t having much luck with the fishing. Fortuitously, I met a guy named Jason, who was also working towards a Ph.D. at Baylor, had several small children, and shared a love for paddling and fishing. We soon became paddling partners, but struck out for another river. The Middle Bosque proved to be quite productive in many different aspects. The scenery is quite a bit more enjoyable than the North Bosque. There are rocky cliffs, not that high, but nice just the same, at several points along the river. The fishing was much better. It seemed I caught fish on every trip I took, including white bass, large mouth bass, sunfish, and my one and only small mouth bass. One particular spot on the river has a very rocky shore that contained dozens of fossils. We found wonderful specimens of ammonites and clams, and a few others that we couldn’t identify. Our children really enjoyed hunting these fossils, so when the fishing would slow, we would trudge up and down this spot kicking over the rocks in search of new treasures. On several occasions we would paddle down stream towards the lake where the river widens. Once scaring up a flock of hundreds of little black ducks of which I don’t know the name, but perhaps they were lesser scaups. On a couple of occasions we would paddle a very short way up the South Bosque, where it meets the Middle Bosque, but sadly I never explored that river much. At the confluence of these two rivers we found a tree that had been downed by a beaver, although we never encountered any beavers on the water it was exciting to see evidence of their existence in our small neck of the woods. As our paddling experience increased, our interest in doing a longer trip did as well. Soon, in January of 2008, we had an overnight trip down the Brazos planned. We were to put in under the Lake Whitney dam and take out at a run-down RV park 22 river miles down stream in the small town of Gholson. As always, the shuttling of cars and gear proved to be a logistical challenge, but by afternoon the first day we were on the water, in separate canoes, and catching white bass. We caught five in all that day, not a large catch by any standards, but just right for a fish fry in camp that night. The first day’s paddling was very challenging with a stiff breeze coming out of the south that produced small white-caps on the river. The scenery was particular nice that first day and far outweighed the negative feelings we shared about the wind. We passed several seep springs, some hundreds of feet in length, which overhung the river with dangling roots from the trees above. These springs made a beautiful tinkling sound as the drops of water fell to the river below. At one point on the river there were some unusual limestone overhangs that jutted out horizontally from the river bank between 5 and 8 feet above the river. I stopped here to enjoy the scenery, not knowing what this place had in store for me in the future. That first day, we paddled about 7 river miles before making camp at the most absolutely perfect spot. The site we found was sandy, but covered in leaves, which made for comfortable sleeping. There were plenty of dead oak trees around to provide fire wood which gave off a tantalizing aroma as dinner and coffee cooked on its coals. Jason, being fairly new to fishing, had never eaten any fish he had caught. I showed him how to filet the bass and we dredged the filets in a combination of white flour and cornmeal before frying them in a cast-iron skillet placed directly in the fire. Our meal was delicious, with a flavor amplified by the surroundings and the fact that we provided it ourselves. Overnight, a cold front blew in, dropping the temperature into the thirties, but we slept well despite the chill. We were woken early by the sound of something thrashing about in the water. Jason jumped out of the tent believing that the water had risen and was attempting to relieve us of our canoes. It turned out that a duck hunter was just setting his decoys up for a morning hunt just 75 yard upriver from our camp. Being that we had pitched the tent among some oaks, he didn’t see us in the low morning light. Within minutes of setting out his decoys he was blasting away with a shotgun that, had we not be awakened by his thrashing in the water, would have led us to believe we were being attacked. We made a quick breakfast of turkey bacon and egg tacos. Yes, I said turkey bacon. Jason’s wife did the shopping and in her attempts at healthy eating, bought us bacon that just isn’t up to par when compared to the delicious, thick slices of cured pork that I am accustomed to. If given the choice when the fateful day arrives, my final meal will consist of pan fried bacon and eggs. There isn’t much else on earth that tastes better. Soon after breakfast, we were broke camp and got back on the water. We had fifteen more miles to cover that day, with wives waiting at home for us to take over the childcare for the rest of the weekend, so we were diligent in our paddling. With the cold front that blew in came an uncomfortable drizzle that had we not been prepared with waders and rain jackets, would have soaked and chilled us thoroughly. None the less, the paddle down stream was a cold one. We stopped at one muddy bank to cook Ramen noodles which helped to warm us from within. Cold and hunger can make even the simplest food taste delightful. We made it home before evening with plans in the works for another trip. Jason ended up making a few trips on his own, perfecting the art of landing multiple large mouth bass seemingly at will, as I was busy with school and other things. But we did make one last trip that summer before I moved out of the area. Knowing that I would soon be leaving the Brazos Valley, Jason and I planned a short 8 mile float from the dam below Lake Whitney. He brought along his two eldest sons, and I brought along mine. We were all having a great time, but things would change soon after. Lake Whitney, being one of dozens of man-made lakes in Texas, was built chiefly for flood control and hydroelectric power production. Summertime in Texas can be a time of very high energy demand as folks at home are trying to cool their homes from the stifling heat and humidity. Each day, the dam at Whitney sounds three load bellows from warning horns that alert all downstream that the lake is about to open its gates. We heard the horns blowing, knowing the river would soon rise and the current would pick up. We were stopped on a rocky island for a quick snack to keep the kids satiated when the water began to rise. Soon our boys were riding the oncoming water as it flowed through a small depression in the island making a water ride of sorts. Jason’s son was swept downstream in what looked to be fun, but seemed to scare both Jason and the boy. After a ride myself, we got in our canoes and passed over a wonderful standing wave about two feet in height that provided a nice thrill. We fished as we made our way downstream to a campsite halfway to our take-out across the river from the strange horizontal rock formation I alluded to earlier. We set up camp and had more snacks, but soon decided to paddle back up river to fish and float a while longer. My son and I got ahead of Jason, and as we came alongside our campsite, I decided to get a picture of my son in the canoe with the overhanging limestone in the background. Being semi-thoughtless, or just my usual self, I figured I could dump an anchor overboard and take a quick photo with my wife’s expensive digital camera. What I didn’t realize was that canoes, anchors and swift currents down mix well. At first the swift current didn’t allow the anchor to find a hold along the rocky bottom, but it soon did and then all hell broke loose. Our canoe capsized in a split second, figuratively dumping us into the arms of god, with all of my loose gear flowing downstream. The PFD I sat on, instead of wearing, was gone, my two oars were gone, my tackle box was gone, but that was not the worst of it. In a panic, having the camera around my neck, I felt something pulling me down, so I reached for the camera strap and quickly slid it over my head, dropping it to the river bottom. My son was extremely scared as he watched me struggle to cut the rope that attached the anchor to the boat and attempt to swim the boat to the opposite shore, 30 yards away. We both had fishing lures stuck to our bodies, he a wooly bugger in his thigh, me two top-waters with treble hooks on my torso. Jason, seeing that we had flipped hurriedly made his way to our rescue. By the time he reached us I was exhausted and only halfway to shore, so he arrived just in time. He quickly threw me a line and pulled us to shore, about 200 yards downstream from our camp, which thankfully wasn’t still stored in our canoe. He then paddled down stream to recover what gear of mine he could, while my son and I recovered our composure. In all I ended up losing a camera, my tackle box and a hat. I also lost a bit of confidence in myself, but gained a new understanding of the importance of wearing a PFD and lashing all gear to a canoe. In the absence of idiotic mistakes, which for me can come all too often, you never really know what can happen on a river, thus the need to follow the old Boy Scout motto, “always be prepared”. I would add only to that motto, “always be prepared for anything”. That night, after making our way back to camp and quickly cooking dinner over hot mesquite coals as the sun went down, another front moved through, this time bringing with it magnificent displays of lightning and accompanying claps of thunder and blowing wind that almost took Jason’s tent with it. It began to sprinkle a little bit sending us to our tents for shelter, but soon passed and left us dry for the night, although the distant thunder left a nagging worry in the back of my mind about a middle of the night downpour which prevented restful sleep. Soon after the storm passed us, I grew uncomfortably hot due to the fact that our campsite had been baking in the July sun all day leaving heat that radiated from the ground for hours after dark. The heat drove me outside of the tent to gaze up at the stars, being far more visible several miles from the city, which peaked through the remaining cloud cover. In the morning we woke early to muggy dawn. A stroll down to the river, which had receded over night leaving behind a muddy walk to the bank, brought a fantastic display of fat-lipped carp slurping tiny, white mayfly spinners off the water surface. The mayflies where so thick, they appeared to be a mist hovering over the river. After breakfast, we soon broke camp and began our nervous trip, for me and my son anyway, to our takeout at a place called Dick’s, the only company providing shuttle service on this stretch of the Brazos. We said our goodbyes as we loaded up our gear with promises of future, albeit safer, trips some time in the near future. My son is still terrified of a return to canoe travel, but since our move to the Texas Panhandle, I have been longing for another trip. Jason keeps me up to date on his travels, while I yearn for a return to the river I have grown to love.
