Disappearing Rio Grande

When I started out today from Candelaria, I had 48 miles of pavement to cover before I reached Presidio and the end of the Forgotten Reach. 

I gave myself three days.   

After 13 miles of walking, my whole lower body hurt and no matter how many breaks I took, my energy would not recover. Usually just the setting of the desert is enough. But it was hard to enjoy the distant mountains or the quiet with trucks passing by at 55 mph or more. 

The river was a mud ditch with a damp bottom. This is why this reach is called forgotten and why I am still on foot.

Then a ride appeared. A friend of a friend picked me up, and he had a friend who was going my way. I rode for 20 miles with Polo Perez in the luxury of his air-conditioned pickup.  

Perez’s grandfather used to run goats from Big Bend to Juarez. His father was a farmer in a small town just downriver of Presidio. He told stories of when he was a boy. He would swim in the river during floods to gather firewood as it floated by.  

He farmed and ranched for a while, too. But he ran into too many problems with droughts, stolen cattle and being accused by law enforcement of bringing livestock across the river illegally. He has worked construction for the last 20 years. It pays the bills, but it is not what he loves.   

I hope to catch up with him in Presidio later this week. He said he would show me the fields he used to work. They were some of the oldest working farmland in Texas. Now the mesquite and cedar have taken over.  

It takes constant work to maintain a field. What is the point if there is no water?  

So the field sits and rests until the water returns.   

I’m going to do the same.  I only have one day of walking left.

To comment on this post or ask a question, please visit the expedition's Facebook page.