July Thirtieth, Twenty-sixteen
This Saturday's trip was weeks in planning with my brother. Right before the trip I came down with a strong cold. I did not miss any work that week but I sure contemplated staying home a couple mornings! Thursday evening I felt I was strong enough to make the trip. Friday was good and I planned to sleep an hour late Saturday morning, all the way to...
Five O'Clock in the Morning...
...an alarm clock jars me from sleep. It's dark outside at my urban homestead in Houston, Texas. Forty-five minutes later my brother Todd arrives from Deer Park. We load the 300 pound canoe rack (made of treated 2 X 4s) into the bed of my sixteen year old Chevy truck. Next went the Wenonah Spirit II canoe, paddles, life jackets, coolers, water, food etc. etc. With the canoe and gear secured we hit the road. Right now is the predicted low temperature of the day, a balmy 81 degrees. The high is forecast at 99. Breakfast is Whataburger. Our next destination is the river bridge near Altair, Texas and the Colorado River.
Many times I've made this river trip, always with a canoe, but years and years ago. We did it as children with Mom and Dad and as young men on our own with our friends.
My Dad, Todd, my son Cole and I camped on Tate Bend on June 2014. Dad and Todd made the Altair to Tate Bend run. That morning my eighteen year old son and I launched from the historic Beason's Park just east of Columbus, Texas. We went fifteen miles downstream...
...and met the other canoe party at the locally famous Tate Bend. There are two sand bars on Tate Bend. We camped on the lower part of that bend. The shade giving willow trees we knew and enjoyed in the past were gone. We endured summer heat in the small shade of 9' square awning. It was too small for our two canoe party of four campers to keep out of the afternoon sun.
Today, Todd and I have a goal, a recon of the upper sand bar of Tate Bend. Our ambition is to paddle about 6.5 miles up the Texas Colorado from the Altair bridge to the Upper Tate Bend. We plan to land the canoe there and survey of that upper sand bar. I wanted to verify that trees revealed by satellite images are suitable for shade for future camping trips.
This Texas Colorado River is not what your contemporary interweb searches pull up for
canoeing images. I grew up with this river though, and love it. You know you are there when you see graffiti under the bridge proclaiming "SKI NEKKED!" Today at the LCRA (Lower Colorado River Authority) boat ramp next to the bridge, bits of foam are drifting down the river. The Colorado is on the rise!
Todd and I discussed the options. "The river's on the rise." said Todd. We watched the river glide by for a moment. I did not say anything. We studied the river. There were no trees powering down the river. I took that as a good thing.
"Well, if we can't make it around the first bend we can turn around. We can load back up and visit Mom and Dad." I said. Todd watched the water. No other trucks were parked under the bridge, no boat trailers.
"All right. Let's do it." Todd said. So we slathered on the sunscreen and I backed the truck down the narrow concrete escarpment.
We wet loaded the canoe, meaning we waded out and loaded the canoe while it floated. Todd held the canoe while I drove back under the bridge and parked the truck. Some people worry about leaving a vehicle under bridges. Todd asked me how I felt leaving my truck under the bridge. "That's one reason I like old pick up trucks." I said. "Plus, its paid for." I like to remind people of that last part.
Ten O'Clock in the Morning
On the river we progress well and forget all about turning back. At first we take advantage of the back eddies on the deep side of the river. Not only do we capitalize on the backward flowing current, this also limits our exposure to the wind and sun. Experienced rivermen, we maneuver the Spirit in and out of these alternating currents, switching sides of the river to combat the steady current. The excitement of paddling up a rising river and being in a limited wilderness dulls my awareness of the sublime. I notice the beauty of the woods but it soaks into me slowly. The thinning tendrils of my cold and medicines pull at me yet, even as tall sycamore, cotton woods and an occasional oak grow up from the riverbanks. Now and again a cypress tree graces the river. Limestone outcroppings dot the banks for the first two miles.
I power the canoe bow of the canoe, Todd the stern. At 6'-1" and a muscular 215 pounds I am large for the bow of a canoe, but my "little brother" is 6'-8" and 310 pounds...so. Even though I am older, its pretty much been this way since I was six.
Todd spots a snag! In the deep side of the river about thirty yards upstream. I had not seen it. The skeletal tree part puzzled me. It had not been there before. As bowman my responsibility is to spot barely submerged stumps, rocks and snags. (Snags are trees that have fallen or swept into the river and died. Their branches snag drifting tree limbs, foam, plastic trash, car bodies and drowned livestock. On most overnight river trips there is a bloated bovine somewhere in the river.) I know what I am doing. It is not never, but especially on a big swell the largest pieces of river trash almost never hang in the deep, fast side of the river.
An underwater snag too!
Confounded we watch it rise nearly two foot out of the water then slowly descend and disappear into the muddy Colorado. It seems to be turning. We imagine it is a giant 30' diameter root base of a waterlogged cypress tree cartwheeling across the riverbed, the outer roots breaking the surface now and then. An eerie Ferris wheel of sorts, and a canoe wrecker if it caught you. If I think about it too long it gives me the creeps, imagining what lies on the river bed we glide over.
Within a mile of the bridge the scat of slob outdoorsmen, empty beer cans, punctuate the scene. Like the graffiti on the bridge it's an eyesore but I understand why people sit on the shady bank, watch the river slide by and drink beer. The river is for all of us.
We take a break on a thin sand bar. Some willows hang over it and make a spot of shade large enough for us to stand, snack and drink water. The tops of cocklebur weeds float just beneath the water. We figure the river is up two or three feet above normal. The muddy currents obscure the weed tops a few inches below.
In the bow of the canoe, out on the river, I peer into the water. I feel like I am in a dirigible looking down on the tops of clouds. Instead of blossoming cumulonimbus, the underwater clouds are billowing silt.
One O'Clock in the Afternoon
At 1:00 we stop and get out about 4-1/2 miles upstream from the put in point. We are on the sand bar we had all camped together on in June of 2014. The Lower Tate Bend. Still strong, Todd and I are no longer morning fresh. Three hours of fighting the current and the rising heat took a toll on us. Later we realized our breakfast had been too small. I soak in the surroundings as I relish our accomplishment.
The sandbar is pristine and clean. The view is not much different than it was five hundred years ago. The Karankawa first people and the Spaniards might not discern a difference of the scene I was gazing over. The Spaniards were the first Europeans to explore and map Texas, which is why all or nearly all Texas rivers have Spanish names.
Twice this year the Colorado flooded. Sometimes floods leave a lot of river trash like mud and tree debris. Sometimes they rub the topsoil off along with established trees, fences, houses, brush, grass and ground cover. This second flood cleared many snags out of the river bed and washed the mud and weeds off the sandbars and bluffs. Whether a flood leaves trash or blasts it out, they always cut the bluffs a little deeper. A river is ever changing, moving thousands of acres about as it pleases. The river takes from a pecan grove here, a cow pasture there and drops the sediment downstream somewhere and makes a sandbar. Above and behind me an immense insect choir lulls away my city stress with a continual serenade. I could doze in the warm Texas summer day.
The droning sound of a motor boat announces this 2016, not the 16th century. There are no Karankawa people or Conquistadors about. "Maybe it wont come this far up river." says Todd. We drank the water and finished our snacks. By and by a pontoon boat emerges around a bend. Todd quickly named the boat"Thunder River." Thunder River and its party of three passes from downstream and beaches fifty yards above us on the same sandbar. They lite their smokes, open their drinks and we exchange pleasantries. Its amazing how far you smell burnt tobacco and cigarette paper in the woods. I reminded Todd they were polite enough and gave us plenty of room, they were good folks. True, I wanted to keep the moment to myself, but it could be worse.
Two-Twenty in the Afternoon
The Upper Tate Bend beckons me. We are nearly there. We launched. About an hour later we achieve our destination. Ever so slightly the river rises.
Our recon confirms the satellite images, there are trees at the upper elevations of this high sandbar. They are stunted by drought and wrecked by flood but the birds do not mind. A resolute woodsman, (that is a minimalist, an enterprising backwoodsman who does need much or ask much from society) could be happy draping a tarp over a rope stretched between two of these ruined trees and make shade.
Mission accomplished I turned around, back to the river, Todd and the canoe.
Then from the 12' elevation of the sandbar I look across the now 100 yard wide Colorado.
On the other side river foam marks the action of a 40' swirl. Even from here I can feel the suck hole pull on me. "I bet there is a big yellowcat at the bottom of that thing." I might have said it out loud. I half dared myself to paddle the canoe to its edge or across it but I don't. There is a silent, sure, slow power in the river. It never stops, never tires, it just keeps going. Most things, cars, plants, thunderstorms, hurricanes and animals run directly or on converted solar energy. The whirlpool is driven by a more direct force, a force that is the origin of light. This is a gravity powered, perhaps perpetual machine. Maybe a 90 pound Yellowcat King skulls at the bottom of the swirl, waiting for small animals to wear out and fall through the bottom of that funnel. There the Yellowcat King waits and swallows them whole and alive...another trip, some throw lines and...
...we'll need live bait, window weights, a camp to rest and to run the lines at night. Blue cats might get bigger, but only the yellow cat only eats live animals. We have caught yellow cats with copper head snakes and cardinal birds in their stomachs. Another trip. Yes. Back at the canoe I got two waters and snacks. I am tired now.
Todd and I walked a couple three hundred yards in the wet sand to the shade. By now the dry sand is too hot to walk barefoot. We took a longer rest here, drinking water and eating candy bars and granola bars. On bare sand I sat in the sycamore and cottonwood shade. I was careful to avoid the prominent poison ivy.
Todd and I talked about past river trips, the Chestnut canoe and the 100 mile river trips we used to make. It felt good to stretch my eyes across an expanse and feel small in a big place.
When I closed my eyes I could hear the waxy cottonwood leaves rattle in the breeze, and then I was on the same river in another time. I could almost hear the silt sliding downstream. The Colorado, and the Brazos too, are just a runny, muddy glaciers that never freeze. My fatigue deepens into my bones and a headache blooms. The food and water do not settle as well as I liked.
Again Thunder River, that ponderous pontoon boat slowly plows up from downstream. It passes by the top of the suckhole without their notice. Upstream the laboring sound of the little 70 horsepower outboard engine carries in the thin, hot summer air. Thunder River slows to a near stall. Fatigue alters our perception. We are puzzled by the sound of the engine slowing down even though we can hear the throttle yawning wide open. Thunder River struggles on.
With that we gather up and launch. I want to see Big Island. Pushing upstream by degrees we figured out what stalled Thunder River: Terrible swift current. This is the source of the swirl below us. We push through to the other side of the haystacking fast water, but we are done now and we know it. To me, haystacking water is a little dreadful. It is a high volume of swift water confused by big obstacles on the riverbed. Watching it, the water is alive, changing shape and form. These unpredictable waters are difficult to navigate. Now this is not a class II rapid, but that isn't saying it is not an awesome treacherous power; its no place to turn a canoe around. We get ahead of it, that is upstream, and turn the canoe around in "clean water." Hundreds of yards upstream Thunder River has completely stalled or grounded at the bottom of Big Island. It does not seem intentional. There is no concern of hazard or danger but if a power boat can't progress we are not questioning the possibilities in a canoe. We turn downstream and go.
I call it Big Island because, for a river the size of the Texas Colorado...it is a big island. Its about 500 yards long, a little more than a quarter mile. I wanted to see the island, but we were out of time and energy. I hoped we would make better time on the way back. It was...
...Three O'Clock in the Afternoon
We made it back to the bridge in two hours. We conserved our remaining energy; letting the current carry us down a couple of the swifter places.
We dodged the wakes of two or three power boats. Some of them passed us two or three times. They neither slowed or gave us berth and were piloted by overweight men nekked but for a pair of shorts and sunglasses in the blazing Texas sun. Looking at their red skin I figured them nudist when it came to sunscreen. "They are going to feel that for a couple days," I told Todd. To these men we were part of the environment, obstacles in their path. I put myself in their spot, and imagined, remembered, believing in those fast tight circles, that they would actually lead to a destination, a stopping point. Their boating practices were probably the same as their daily lives, loud, fast and dizzy. Maybe their path lead to a bucket list. I escaped that world years ago. As I pondered the contrast of lifestyles I found my brother and I had canoed into sublime thin space. There are adrenaline rushes, cliches, shifting bottom lines, deadlines, milestones and other measurements of success and life in both worlds but I prefer those of the river. The circles on the river are slower and larger than those in the city.
The river is a spiritual plane of natural beauty that is indifferent to man. It is a confluence of congruent arcs. It is not easy to to reach, and admittance is expensive. It cost your energy, strength and time but it is worthwhile. It washes you like a rising river over an old sandbar.
Five O'Clock in the Evening
We reloaded under an near empty river bridge. No one bothered us.
With everything secure we head back to Houston in a truck with no radio or air conditioning. There is less of me now than at the start of this trip. What the river took from me will wash out to Matagorda Bay. The river takes and the river gives. The river took my stress and angst and gave me peace and place. These things I take with me where ever I go.
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