The Rio Grande did not go dry today as we paddled through Albuquerque; it just became too shallow to float a canoe.  

It’s what locals told us would happen and probably why it was so hard to find someone to join us.   

But in Tomás Radcliffe we found a guy who did not mind a bit of walking and who had plenty to say about the cottonwood bosque that lines the river.  

In Albuquerque people obsess over the cottonwoods to the exclusion of almost all other species, Radcliffe said.  When the mayor proposed a San Antonio River Walk-style development along the Rio Grande, more than 500 people flooded a public meeting to express outrage. People will chain themselves to the cottonwoods here to stop them from being cut down.  

“I don’t think most people appreciate how nuanced the relationship is between people and species and the hydrograph and the changing climate,” Radcliffe said. “I think it would be useful if there was more than one species we focused on.” 

The challenge, which Radcliffe and others have explained, is that the cottonwoods are on their way out.  Most of them started growing after the big floods of the 1940s and the cottonwoods are now all in their mid-70s.  They rarely live past 100.  

“We have had the cottonwoods for several generations, so we think that is what it should look like,” Radcliffe said.  

But the long-term view shows that few landscapes are more dynamic than a flood-prone river valley.  Before the dams, jetty jacks, irrigation canals, drainage ditches and levies, the Rio Grande would resculpt its channel almost every year.  Grasslands and shrubs were much more common.  The water table was higher.  Cottonwoods were a major player, but they did not dominate to the exclusion of everything else.  

For Radcliffe, it makes the discussion of “saving the bosque,” much more complicated.    

What he does know is that while he spent most of his youth on baseball diamonds playing shortstop, the times with the most impact were when he and his dad went to the river.  When he had his first child, Adya, he wanted her to know the river.  She was learning how to bird by ear by the time she was 5.  Her favorite bird is the common yellowthroat.  She made a mask of one that hangs in the living room.  

For Radcliffe, who is 35, it is the yellow-breasted chat.  Every morning in the summer, he will walk to the river to find the dense thickets of willows the bird likes so he can listen to its song. 

For Radcliffe, even before he spent several hours walking and dragging a canoe across sandbars, the biggest issue is the water itself.  Nothing happens without it and there is less of it to go around. It’s a much harder discussion to have than stopping cottonwoods from being cut down, but he sees it as paramount.  

There was so little water that we ended up hauling the boats out of the river and launching into a drainage ditch with more water.  

It was there we met Colin Baugh and Max Havelka. We were all surprised to see each other.  

“There is not a lot of culture around it here,” Havelka said about people getting out on the Rio Grande.  “They assume it’s too shallow and there are dead bodies and bad people.”  

But the water in the ditch was moving, the folks walking, running and riding bikes along it were friendly and we were excited to finally start making miles again.   

One way or another, we are headed to the sea.  

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