On paper, the Santa Elena Canyon sounds pretty damned impressive. Red rock cliffs rise up to 1,500 feet, straight into cloudless, blue sky; the clear, cool Rio Grande rushes along the canyon floor. One side is Texas and Big Bend National Park, the other Mexico. On both sides, nothingness. In some directions, for hours.
If this all sounds pretty great, that is because it kind of is. The real thing, though, is way better than you’re imagining. Describing it, well – it’s hard to know where to start. Standing on the banks of the narrow river as it flows out on to the plain, the only sounds are the occasional crunch of sneakers on dry riverbed, and maybe the odd sheep bell clanging from the otherwise silent herd that’s grazing over at the neighbors’. All sound seems to amplify as it drifts back into the canyon.
A trail leads up into the maw, then down and back; your fellow hikers appear like ants as they top out on the initial incline. The further you go, the quieter the trail, until you are nearly a mile and a half from where you started, deep inside the ever-narrower crevasse, to the point where it is just you on the river’s sodden, sandy banks, in extreme silence and almost terrifying solitude.
The canyon is, quite simply, one of the most impressive places that most Americans will never see. And it is precisely for that reason that I have come here.
When crowded trains, choked sidewalks and a shortage of light are the problem, the endless, sun-splashed nothingness of West Texas, I find – and quite specifically, the end-of-the-line Rio Grande – is the cure.
Granted, this isn’t the most obvious beauty spot; in the places where most humans observe it, the Rio Grande is often little more than a muddy ditch, the consequence of not only climate shifts, but also years of interference.
The river has been managed, dammed, diverted and polluted every which way you can imagine. Sometimes, it just gives out completely, dry as a bone until the next feeder flows in for replenishment duty. As if all this weren’t enough, now the river finds itself an unwitting political pawn, synonymous with the issue of illegal immigration and drug war drama. Along with all of that comes concertina wire, walls, cages and watchtowers, supplemented by dust spewing Border Patrol vehicles, speeding up and down the levees.
But no matter what man visits upon it, the Rio Grande still manages to impress. Maybe it’s the river’s intense importance to North American history, or maybe it is the extreme beauty, found in the generally fairly remote and always varied terrain one encounters along its 1,600 miles, beginning in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado, wandering through sleepy and historic New Mexico, down to bustling El Paso and into Big Bend, before emptying into the exotic, tropical Rio Grande Valley and out to the vastness of the blue-green Gulf.
For every fence or wall as it trickles through civilization, there are miles – tons of them – where the river is sublimely beautiful, as beautiful as any place in the Southwest, and with nobody there to bother you, either.
But first, you have to get there. To see the river at its best, particularly in Texas, you often have to be willing to drive for hours from the nearest place most people have heard of.
Getting to Santa Elena and the Big Bend region from New York means flying into either El Paso, Austin or San Antonio. This time, I had started out from the latter; consequently, it had been more than 7 hours in the car before I approached the dust-covered border town of Presidio, across from the Mexican city of Ojinaga, known to locals in the area –an area that includes the world-famous town of Marfa, a remote county seat ever-so-slightly livened up by the presence of a cliquish little arts community – as OJ. (Which, it should be mentioned, makes it sound a lot more fun than it actually is.)
To boot, it had been more than three hours since that freeway exit at Fort Stockton. There’s really no hurrying your trip down here. You need days. Lots of them. This being my first time along this section of the river, I began to wonder if I hadn’t made an epic blunder. The mountainous terrain around the river town of Presidio isn’t what you’d call ugly, but this is the Chihuahuan Desert, that grey/brown void which can be beautiful in its starkness, but sometimes just stark. Much like the town of Presidio itself.
It was hard to imagine world-class scenery – or, at the very least, scenery worth a 7 hour drive – anywhere in the general vicinity. But slowly, Presidio, with its discount shoe stores and dimly lit burrito parlors, shrivels up and disappears, and Highway 170 begins its winding journey into the canyons of the nearly 300,000-acre Big Bend State Park, the largest in Texas. Within a few miles or so, each hundred yards or so, you’re really tempted to pull over, just to sit there, in a somewhat vain attempt to commit the incredible scenery – steep inclines, gentle plains, sheer cliffs, the winding river itself – to memory.
With no traffic to speak of on this quiet winter morning – in nearly 50 miles of driving, I had seen just two other vehicles – I had been stopping the car suddenly and constantly, just to get a closer look at everything. At a certain point, it occurred to me that with nobody around, there was nothing stopping me from getting even closer to the river, which at times rushes right past you, just feet from the road.
Spying a particularly scenic spot down at the end of a dirt track, where the water was running clear and shallow, over and around a group of smooth rocks, making it easy to get into the river without having to fully commit – I pulled over, stripped down as much as one probably should in January, jumped in and forged across. Then it hit me: I think I just swam to Mexico.
Too late, I remembered the sign I’d seen further back – the one about a $5,000 fine for entering the country without going through an established checkpoint. Chastened, I moved over just a few feet, back on to home turf, hoped that nobody had seen me enter the United States illegally, sat down on the sun-warmed stone, closed my eyes and relaxed more deeply than at any time in recent memory.
ON THE RIVER, OUT OF REACH Where to unwind, on the Rio Grande’s quiet side
Few – if any – towns on the Mexican side of the border have been untouched by the drug wars; neither have the towns on the Texas side, for that matter, though they do remain very safe, with a ton of law-enforcement hanging around every developed area. Once you get out into the wilderness though, there’s nobody and nothing on either side of the border; things are pretty much as they have always been. From the old villages south of El Paso on down to the Gulf, here are a few stops that show the region at it’s most interesting – and relaxing.
#1 San Elizario This half-abandoned town along the river just south of El Paso is, if you ask locally, anyway, as important to American history as Plymouth, Massachusetts. It’s here that Don Juan de Oñate crossed over into what’s now the United States, on his way to establish the capital of New Spain (PS, that’s Santa Fe, New Mexico.) Ask the staff at the small but concise museum – across from the immaculate chapel, last re-constructed back in the 1800s – to tell you all about the First Thanksgiving, celebrated by Oñate and his men right here in 1598 (visitelpasomissiontrail.com).
#2 Contrabando This ghost town inside Big Bend Ranch State Park was never actually occupied, unless you count Hollywood stars as people. Constructed in the ’80’s for a forgettable western/comedy – Uphill All The Way, starring Roy Clark, Glen Campbell and Burl Ives – Contrabando was popular for a time with film crews; today it’s a good place to access the river for a bit of rock-hopping. Important: Crossing into Mexico is basically legal; it’s crossing back into the United States without going through a border checkpoint that’s against the law. A good rule of thumb is to stay in the river and avoid climbing onto dry land on the other side. Nobody’s going to bust you for swimming out here, but they may ask questions – that is, if anyone sees you down here (atlasobscura.com/place/contrabando).
#3 Lajitas Not so much a town as it is a resort built to look like one, Lajitas is one of those places that would be a lot better if it had any real competition within, say, hundreds of miles. But it doesn’t, and while it’s excellent for golf (the course, designed by Lanny Watkins, makes many a duffer weak in the knees) and equestrian activities, it needs an infusion of capital and a team with some vision to make it the world-class retreat it was built to be. For now, it’s a comfortable spot to spend a night and shake the dust off your feet after a day or two in the wilds of the Big Bend parks (lajitasgolfresort.com).
#4 Santa Elena Canyon It’s just one of many beauty spots within the vast Big Bend National Park (the least visited in the system, if you didn’t know), but if you have time for one stop, this is she. Visiting’s easy; you park right at the foot of the canyon and make the 1.5-mile trek in; to get more involved, plan a float trip with with one of the outfitters serving the park; Far Flung Outdoor Center (bigbendfarflung.com) can handle all your needs, including lodging in their cool little casitas (with cable and wireless, yet) located just next to their HQ in Terlingua, a settlement of cantankerous old hippies and other assorted loose screws, near the park’s western gate (nps.gov/bibe).
#5 Los Ebanos In many parts of Texas these days, what with the drug wars and all, crossing the border tends to happen strictly on an as-needed basis. Then, of course, there are the out-of-the-way spots where it’s like nothing is out of the ordinary, spots like this Rio Grande Valley settlement that’s home to the only hand-pulled ferry operating on the river. The ferry takes three cars and about a dozen foot passengers, the trip takes about eight minutes. Once you get over to the other side, it’s nothing but open fields – the nearest town, and not much of one, is about four miles away. Your best bet – either hitch a ride in with someone coming off the ferry, or take a short walk before turning around and heading back. Remember – passports are now required to reenter the United States.
#6 Sabal Palm Grove Audubon Center and Sanctuary This 557-acre nature preserve along the river just past the bustle of downtown Brownsville hasn’t had it easy – it never seems to have enough money on hand to stay up and running, for starters. Then, to make matters worse, comes the locally-hated border wall, which has been rammed mercilessly through many a Rio Grande community. When it came Brownsville’s turn, the sanctuary ended up on the Mexican side, deterring passersby who weren’t even sure if they were supposed to be crossing through the gap in the wall to get in. It’s all legal, swears the center; an infusion of cash is keeping the property open for birders and aficionados of the Rio Grande Valley’s tropical flora. A secluded gazebo located at the end of one of the trails sits suspended above the river, so close to Mexico you could pass notes to the other side (audubon.org).
#7 Boca Chica State Park Where the river meets the Gulf of Mexico, just a short drive past Brownsville, you’ll find a peaceful, undeveloped beach that’s popular with vehicle traffic, which makes it more of a spot for a drive along the ocean (very fun) than a quiet swim; if you’ve a mind to do that, cleaner and prettier South Padre Island is just a short drive to the north. Scores of local fishermen put in their lines out here, hoping for the big catch. At the southern end of the beach, with no warning whatsoever, the Rio Grande pops out from behind the dunes, making its final push out into the gulf. Many unusual-to-the-Northeastern-eye birds like to hang out around here; at peak times, the bino-toting birders who love to ogle them are a beach staple (brownsville.org).