The Rio Grande starts high in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. The river runs south for the length of New Mexico before defining the Texas/Mexico border for a thousand miles.
A decade ago, a friend and I unloaded my canoe on the dusty banks of the Rio Grande nearLajitas, Texas, on the upstream edge of Big Bend National Park. A border patrol agent pulled up.
His badge glistened in the January sunshine. He looked us over and smiled, trying to ease theconcern on our faces.
“Where’re y’all from?” he asked in a friendly Texan drawl.
“Utah.”
“How many days all y’all paddling?”
“Two days, one night.”
The conversation continued in this manner.
Eventually, I asked, “Do you have many people cross the border here?”
“No,” he said, “There’s no reason to cross here. We only get a handful per year—and most ofthem don’t make it across. The desert ‘round here is too harsh. Every living thing has spikes,thorns, stingers or fangs. I tell ya, it’s brutal.”
He wished us well and drove away. We ducked our chins and pulled our shirts up over our faces as the dust swirled past.
Our canoe was a bit overloaded, but we kept our craft butter-side up. Though each rapid is anew puzzle to solve, the features are familiar—smooth tongues of water, the danger and safety of eddy lines, the way currents twist and flow over and around rocks and push against walls.
We stalled on a shallow rock in Matadero Rapid. A curious fox paused to watch us roundanother corner. Downstream, a great blue heron flew elusively from one bank to the other,repeating this pattern in silence. Expecting a frosty night, we plucked firewood from a Mexican driftwood pile.
After eleven miles, we pulled ashore, just above limestone cliffs that define the entrance ofSanta Elena Canyon. The sun drooped low over the expansive Chihuahuan Desert. Shadowslengthened and the hues of light shifted and thickened. The temperature plummeted as the sunsunk into the horizon.
We fed the flames of our driftwood fire, marveling at the desolate beauty. Two owls hooted from opposite sides of the river and the Rio Grande did what it has done for millennia—filled the air with gentle sounds of moving water. Stars soon dominated the dark sky.
And there we were, on the ground in a vast wilderness—the only people for miles. We did not see another human for two full days. On a map, the river is an international border. Two separate landscapes exist in the same place—the political and the wild—and neither is aware of the other.
The Rio Grande River defines more than half of the US/Mexico border. The Big Bend sector is the largest border patrol region in the United States. It includes 26% of the border and accounts for only 1.3% of apprehensions. It has the lowest number of encounters with refugees of any southern border patrol sector.
Since 2016, locals have been on alert about the possibility of a border wall through Big Bend National Park, the adjacent state parks, and through hundreds of parcels of private land. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently waived dozens of environmental, cultural, and public lands protections to fast-track wall construction.
In January, a contractor began staging heavy equipment and placing survey markers. The DHS showed a planned wall on their website that, in effect, cedes private and public land along theRio Grande River to Mexico. Let that sink in for a moment.
Locals, armed with data, advocate that highway checkpoints, coupled with recent advanced technology—including more than 50 autonomous surveillance towers and two blimps—provide highly effective electronic reconnaissance of the border. Outfitters, ranchers, private landowners, business owners, and residents are all in agreement that a wall would have a catastrophic impact on the local economy and the environment. Local pressure may have turned the tide for now, but no one is resting easy.
Remarkably, every elected official in the six counties in the Big Bend sector—MAGA republican,republican, democrat, and independent—are all publicly opposed to constructing a wall in the Big Bend vicinity. This includes all six county sheriffs. That is rare common ground in our current political landscape. Additionally, judges from all fourteen Texas counties along the border sent letters to the DHS asking for consistent communication, transparency, and coordination with the
Big Bend border barrier. The whole concept of a wall in Big Bend is based on imaginary geography—a lack of understanding of the land, the economy, and the culture, and what actually happens (or doesn’t happen) in the desert here. Walling the river in, walling the river out, or constructing wall in the middle of the river, especially where 1,500-vertical-foot cliffs rise from the river on either side, are all equally absurd.
In the morning, after the sun burned the frost off our tents, we loaded the canoe and cast off—engulfed by the massive walls of Santa Elena Canyon. We paddled with reverence, watchingthe play of light as it reflected on the river, wondering what the future holds for this wildly complex and beautiful place.
Below Rockslide Rapid, a red-tailed hawk flew from one side of the river to the other and perched, unaware of both the political boundary it had crossed and the freedom it embodied.
I am Eric Newell and I am passionate about the integrity of our public lands and national parks.