{"id":33941,"date":"2024-09-10T10:00:39","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T17:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/?p=33941"},"modified":"2024-08-27T23:02:41","modified_gmt":"2024-08-28T06:02:41","slug":"thirty-six-exposures-along-the-rio-grande","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2024\/09\/10\/thirty-six-exposures-along-the-rio-grande\/","title":{"rendered":"Thirty-Six Exposures Along the Rio Grande"},"content":{"rendered":"

After the lashing, tying, distributing, and re-distributing of dry bags, paddles, tables, chairs, paco pads, and coolers, we\u2019re ten writers, three guides, and one distinguished poet sitting two to a canoe on the Rio Grande. The prospect of writing and paddling for six days along the Rio Grande has drawn us from all corners of the country\u2014Oregon, Montana, Massachusetts\u2014to the very last few trailing feet of this country.<\/p>\n

The river is flowing at 60 cubic feet per second, our guide Sierra tells us. And dropping. October heat. Time to get a move on. We push off into brown silt.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not my first time meeting the waters of the Rio Grande. What I remember about this land is cholla, creosote, mesquite, ocotillo. The Chisos Mountains looming in the distance. Five years ago, I ran through the mouth of Boquillas Canyon at dusk, dipped myself in purple waters, and lay on the sand to watch the last light of day pull itself back into shadow.<\/p>\n

But moving with the river is an entirely different story. I didn\u2019t grow up around rivers. The only water I saw in my Southern California childhood was the crowded surf of the Pacific Ocean; families of tourists, packs of teenagers, couples, all teeming alongside the flashing lights and ringing carnival bells of the Santa Monica Pier. And the trickling creeks in the San Gabriel Mountains, where I spent weekends hiking with my mother, which had often dried to dust by late August.<\/p>\n

Five years after that trail run, we enter the canyon and float through the small mouth at high noon. This year\u2019s hikers leave footprints on the sandy banks. I look for my younger self, but we pass quickly, and I don\u2019t see her.<\/p>\n