Riata
Inn
Book Review by Steve Anderson
Hwy 67 N. • Presidio
Swimming pool
Wireless internet
Large rooms
King size beds
432.229.2528
Music To Your Ears
CDs • DVDs • Vinyl
Games • Special Orders
Tue - Sat 10-6
203 E Holland Ave, Alpine
432.837.1055
ringtailrecords@sbcglobal.net
2407 East Holland Ave
432.837.5711
100% non-smoking
Fitness center
Free Wi-Fi
50’s theme diner
24 hour breakfast
Daily specials
2407 East Holland Ave
432.837.5711
18
Cenizo
By David Baxter and Laurence Parent
132 pages, 90 color photos, 1 map
University of Texas Press, $39.95 hardcover
The University of Texas
Press is bringing us a nice new
book on the Rio Grande
called, simply, Big River, Rio
Grande. It’s got pictures by
Laurent Parent, a prolific
nature photographer who’s
based in Austin, and text by
David Baxter who, for
27 years, was editor of
the Texas Parks & Wildlife
Magazine.
Big River is the 63rd
volume in UT’s Corrie
Herring Hooks Series,
which specializes in
books on natural history
and includes such
admirable titles as Birds
of the Trans Pecos, Wild
Orchids of Texas and
Cactuses of the Big Bend.
As far as I’m con-
cerned, we can’t have
enough books that tell us
about the natural won-
ders of this special place
we live and also remind
us of how fragile it all is.
On both counts, Big River is a
success.
I first laid eyes on the Rio
Grande crossing to Nuevo
Laredo in the summer of
1965. I was 16 years old and
riding shotgun in a Sunbeam
Tiger convertible with my
older brother, John, on the way
from West Point, New York to
Guatemala City (with a brief
stop-over at our hometown in
North Texas).
On some level, I knew that
crossing this river was porten-
tous, but I scarcely imagined
the wonders to come. Even if
the Rio Grande had no other
claim to fame, and it has many,
no other river on Earth sepa-
rates such starkly different
worlds.
Third Quarter 2009
Over the next 20 years, I
floated all the canyons, from
the Colorado north of Lajitas,
all the way through the lower
canyons to the Texaco sign on
Dudley Harrison’s ranch,
southeast of Sanderson. And,
in 1993, I had the good
fortune to cross the river at
Boquillas and ride horses into
the Sierra Del Carmen for a
week with a group led by
Marcos Paredes that included
such luminaries as Glen
Perkins and Molly Ivins.
These trips on and over the
“Big River” included encoun-
ters with rattlers, skunks, badg-
ers, coyotes (of both varieties),
bandoliered wax smugglers
and a flash flood in the lower
canyons that almost wiped out
a whole patrol of bright-eyed
Outward Bound students. I
saw careers and love affairs
begin and end on the river
(sometimes on the same trip),
and I saw a few ghosts. All in
all, even if I’d never had an
adventure anywhere else, I
would have counted it a life
well lived, and, for that alone, I
love the Rio Grande.
That’s why, though Big River,
Rio Grande is a well-executed
and absolutely necessary book,
for anyone who loves the river
and knew it before its present
degraded state, it’s also
sad read.
Part journalism and
part photographic essay,
Baxter and Parent have
basically conducted a
survey on the current
state of the Rio Grande,
and it’s not pretty
(although Parent’s pic-
tures are, a dichotomy
noted
by
Baxter).
Fortunately, they also tell
the stories of all the peo-
ple who are devoting a
good part of their lives
trying to turn things
around.
The authors start
their journey at the
mouth of the river, near
Brownsville, and work their
way north and west, through
the Valley, the Big Bend and
the “forgotten” (and basically
non-existent)
stretches
between Presidio and El Paso;
then through New Mexico to
the headwaters in the San Juan
Mountains of
southern
Colorado – about 1,900 miles,
all told. There’s also an
excursion in Mexico to the
headwaters of the lower Rio
Grande’s main tributary, the
Rio Conchos.
Along the way they stop to
talk with a wide variety of
people, who are struggling,
often against seemingly
continued on page 23