Deep in the heart of Texas lies a little known stretch of the Rio Grande, the river that forms the border between Mexico and the United States.

Come float one of the most remote stretches of wild and scenic rivers in the country and journey along this hardworking river to where it runs dry.

The Living Peace Foundation is honored to provide funding support for Wild Rivers with Tillie supporting people and projects that creatively and courageously advance collaboration, compassion and living peace.

This series shares the passion that the Living Peace Foundation has for the health and connectedness of our planet and all who inhabit it.

I am veteran river guide and conservationist Tillie Walton.

Join me as I lead different groups down the great rivers of the American West.

Wow!

Wow!

It█s like so narrow.

We█re driving a houseboat.

We're here on an incredibly windy day at the mouth of Santa Elena Canyon and Big Bend National Park.

And here the river has come through three different states in the United States.

And Mexico is on the other side of the river.

And this river has so many different personalities.

So this river here is known as it's been called the river in a stone box.

And the Santa Elena Canyon is this gorgeous, dramatic canyon.

And then it flows out into the kind of flat, desolate plains of the desert.

As I'm looking down at the river, I notice footprints in the river.

So it's highly unusual to see a river that you have to walk through versus especially one that's one of the 20 largest rivers in North America.

The Rio Grande is almost 2000 miles long, and it's fed by rivers from both the United States and Mexico.

Even though it's the fifth longest river in the United States and the 20th in the world, it still runs dry.

Well, we█re at the mighty Rio Grande.

And it's basically dry.

There's nothing here.

And we're wheeling our canoe across the river here.

Watch out guys, big drop.

Oh.

It's kind of a profound thing to be at a river with no water.

Rivers like water.

Fish like water.

We like water.

I mean, this is a river that supports 6 million people.

It's come almost 2000 miles to get here.

And it has this.

We haven't left any water left for the river.

Let's try to get on the river.

Yeah.

Let's do it.

What we'll do is.

We'll get the canoes and the gear to about there, and we'll see if we can.

We can float it.

Last time I was here was when I was 19 years old, and I was on a three week kind of outward bound type of experiential education program.

And I was a city girl, and we came here and we camped out for three weeks.

We didn't have tents.

We planned all our own food, and we starved.

And this is where my point of origin is for falling in love with rivers.

And as I was being carried down river I looked up and I saw the canyon walls going by and something just clicked and just completely fell in love.

And I just knew I had to figure out a way to keep doing this.

The walls are really cool, actually.

This canyon back behind us is over 1500 feet tall, taller than the Empire State Building.

And a lot of this is all limestone.

And so at one time, this was a great ocean over 100,000 years ago.

And in the walls in this limestone are lots of fossils and evidence of of the marine life that once was here.

The canyon itself is about eight miles long.

And this river has carved through it.

Santa Elena Canyon is is one of the most beautiful stretches through Big Bend National Park.

We're in Santa Elena Canyon, Spanish for Saint Helen.

She's the patron saint of bad relationships, divorces and archeology.

Well, on top of all that, if we spread out a little bit, Leslie will be standing in Texas.

I'll stand in the middle.

Charlie can be in Mexico.

Where else can we be, like this far apart and probably each of us in a different country?

We're in the Big Bend right now.

The Big Bend is called that because of the Big Bend in the Rio Grande.

When you look at the state of Texas, it has that big loop there.

The section we're going to float, the Langtry Reach, is where it makes a little bit of a straight west to east run before it starts heading down to the Gulf of Mexico.

The mesa behind us, we call it, the American side, Mesa De Anguila.

We do just like the Mexicans.

They call the River the Rio Bravo, and we call it the Rio Grande and Gila Spanish for eel and eels.

The fish used to swim up here from the Gulf of Mexico.

970 miles to get here to spawn.

You mean eels like you find in the ocean?

Yep.

Yep.

The long eel fish and out of the Gulf of Mexico.

It's them all the way up here.

But when they built the Falcon Reservoir Dam and Lake Amistad Dams in the fifties, that prevented them from coming up here anymore.

Where the river in the Big Bend.

It's almost all going through Limestone Canyon, such as this ancient seafloor, except for the Big Branch State Park, where it cuts through a lot of igneous and volcanic rock.

The Bofecillos Mountain Range is the center of Big Bend Ranch State Park, and it's all volcanic.

And it was about 12 to 20 million years ago.

It had all this activity and the Rio Grande cuts through all of that to Colorado Canyon along the River Road, which is considered one of the most scenic drives in North America, at least by Nat Geo.

Good hour long going through all the volcanic igneous rock.

It's andsite, rhyolite and a little bit of limestone here and their crops up.

For the most part it's all volcanic.

We're still seeing a lot of people here and there's not enough water for us to do our river trip here.

So we're going to go downstream and spend four days on the river where there is a little bit of water and we are not going to see a single soul.

This is the Chihuahua Desert.

The further down we get, it starts meeting up with the Tamaulipan scrubland, as it's called, which is a zone in the Mexico US Texas border, about 35 miles of dusty dirt road.

Maybe not quite that many miles, but yeah, quite a bit.

And another 5 hours on the pavement to get here.

This closest town is Dryden, population 20, probably.

There is a 75 mile an hour speed limit sign.

If you can go 7.5 miles an hour, you're doing good.

And the one in Mexico I don't know if it's accurate the distance to Mexico, but if it is, they probably just did it on Google Earth.

We're going to try to do this trip in four days.

We have some strong headwinds I think we can do.

We've got a good, strong crew here.

So I feel confident that we can do the 54 mile split up more or less evenly over four days.

Our head guide, Charlie Angell, has put together a diverse group of river experts to brave the headwinds and remote waters.

I think will make it, but it'll require a lot of effort.

This is the international border with the US and Mexico.

The boundary is the center of the water column there.

And through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo from 1848, both countries are allowed to have free access, use enjoyment for commerce and pleasure and recreation.

There's no roads that access the river for...

I mean, some places 100 miles.

It's a very isolated place.

From the sense of being one of the most remote stretches in the United States, this is one of the wildest stretches of river that we can go on, not in the sense of big, huge rapids, but in the sense of complete isolation in the middle of nowhere.

If you've got a problem, you're on your own, really, so to speak.

There's no cell phones, certainly no Internet service, but really no one to come help you.

It's really a... a big adventure that very few people get to do.

Normally, most of our river adventures we get to do in rafts and this one we're doing in a canoe because it's really the best craft for this, because we need to have a boat that can cut through the wind.

We're in Martin Canyon, which is in the lower canyons of the Wild and Scenic Rio Grande.

It headwaters in two places.

The Rio Grande is two rivers.

In the United States, it headwaters in Colorado, around Creede, Colorado is where it rises and the river flows through southern Colorado drains New Mexico that reach of the Rio Grande more or less ends in El Paso.

All of the water that's in it is is pretty much used up by then.

And then there's a second reach of the Rio that is called the Rio Conchos that heads in Mexico.

The river has got this nice turquoise color.

It's mostly because there are so many springs that are feeding in from the limestone.

But when we get flash floods in the rainy season, July, August, September, it will turn muddy chocolate brown like a Yoohoo drink or something.

Well, this is a really special place.

Wild and Scenic is a really good name for the designation.

It's definitely a wilderness.

It seems maybe sparse compared to other places, but compared to the rest of the desert here, I think it's very lush and beautiful this far down the river.

There isn't like some big change from the middle of the river each way.

It's it's all one ecosystem.

It█s all one environment.

And it's it's really beautiful that the border here is a river and not fenced or walled or guarded, so a lot of animals that go back and forth constantly.

it's definitely meditative, not just because of the surroundings and the scenery, but just the act of paddling and really smoothly.

It feels very graceful.

You're moving under your own power when there isn't a lot of current, and that feels very, very zen and meditative.

Cliff swallows here.

It's their it's their mating and nesting time.

So they're building their little mud ness on the cliffs along the river, and they're teaching their little ones that have already hatched how to fly.

And it looks like they're having a good year.

So this is a mesquite tree, a honey mesquite, and it's known as the Tree of Life by many Native American tribes.

It's a native to the desert.

It has tap roots that go extremely deep into the ground.

It is adapted to the native system, whereas on the other side of the trail over here, this is non-native and it's an invasive plant called arundo or sugar cane.

And it comes in.

It's a huge fire hazard.

It drinks a lot of water.

And normally what we would have had pre dam would have been things more like the mesquite and some cottonwood and willow.

We got some bamboo coming up behind you.

You need to duck.

Hang on.

Hang on.

Yeah, you're good.

I'll get us through it.

One of the many challenges on the Rio Grande.

I would say for anybody as a first timer out here, take a look, soak it in and realize this is one of the last unspoiled bits of America or North America, for that matter.

It's an awesome place, but like anything out in the wild, you got to respect it.

You never know what's around the next corner.

Maybe easy, maybe a physical or mental challenge, which is why sometimes if the water levels are different and you've even run it before, you need to get out, walk it, scout it, the rocks will move, but the water level will really change the river.

I was in the military for 25 years in the army, loved the water because after being in the desert for so long, I felt like I'd been in the desert longer than Moses.

All along the river will be evidence of places where people cross over from Mexico into the United States.

Discarded backpacks, footprints.

Several locations on the river.

You can see where people have crossed.

A rope that is strung across the river to me signifies several things.

One crossing that's heavily used.

You'll also it's lots of people.

It also indicates to me that it's all ages, adults, we█ve got both males and females.

You also have young children, probably have a lot of people that are non swimmers, which is another reason to have that rope Seen water jugs that are pre-positioned along the river.

It's the only river that I have ever paddled or rafted or been on in the United States where you have a different country or a different nationality on the other side of the river.

It's historically been a place where people have actually had more in common than than different.

There are families who live on both sides of the border, have for centuries.

A treaty that was signed between the United States and Mexico in 1944.

And I think it was called the Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

It provides for the sharing of the waters of the Rio Grande.

In very few places do we actually get to say that we're going to camp in between two different countries?

So sometimes we'll be camping on the banks of what is the United States, and other times we'll be finding a campsite on the side of the river that belongs to Mexico and sometimes camp in the middle on an island.

The thing that the treaty didn't really take into account was what might happen if the climate change or if there were sustained periods of drought.

And that is what seems to be happening.

And so the ways that we're sharing water are good and the relations, I think, have been mostly surprisingly harmonious.

Right.

There's that saying that whiskey's for drinking and water is for fighting.

This section of the Rio Grande is still under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

It's designated a Wild and Scenic river, which ostensibly there will be no other obstructions put on it, no more dams, nothing else.

And all of that has a really problematic impact on the eco hydrology of the river, as it makes the embankments much steeper than they might normally be.

So that's something that's a little bit problematic.

when we use the river almost like an irrigation canal.

I went to school for geography.

One thing we're mapping is rapids, so we know when we're getting to them.

Another thing we're mapping is campsites so we know how far we need to get in a day.

And also mapping cultural and physical geological sites, different things to look at.

Today we're dealing with the dreaded W wind.

Paddling through the wind, trying to move the canoe down river.

It's the big W that typically you wouldn't even want to say that word because it makes it windier.

It's probably one of our biggest challenges out here, the elements in general.

And while a lot of people may think of it as a international border, it's so much more than that.

It█s important for agriculture.. and wildlife... and humans as well.

So like a lot of other rivers that are commercially run, you would see boaters like as far as you can see that way, as far as you can see that way.

Whereas out here you probably won't see anybody for the entire length of our trip.

Out here on a multi day canoe expedition, your room for error is not nearly as much.

When you get a lot of rain, the river levels will rise and sometimes quite suddenly.

There's a canoe up there in the rock that must have washed up in the big October flash flood.

It was the highest record of flash flood through Boquillas Canyon in the Big Bend National Park that they've ever hit on the gauges.

I think it had close to a 30 foot vertical rise, and that all happened in the course of about 10 hours.

This is a classic Texas River.

I love how you can you see red tail hawks flying overhead.

You see cactus on the side.

You see see plenty of bulls and cows and horses roaming on the sides.

So long before we ever made up states and boundaries and borders, there were people who lived here, as are evidenced by all of the incredible pictographs and wall paintings along the river.

We're going to take a little side hike up a small canyon.

We understand there's some Native American rock art, some pictographs... probably two or 3000 years old.

The Trans-Pecos region of Texas, which we're in, is has some more archaic rock art than almost anywhere in the world.

I'd say the red ink is usually it was ground up cinnabar rock, which is very deep red.

They would grind that up into a powder and mix.

Generally, animal fat was the binding agent to make it into oil paint.

This is the most Native American artwork that I have personally ever seen in any location, ever.

And it would be archaic peoples that didn't have a name, really.

In fact, the ones that were around here when the Spaniards first arrived, they refer to them as humans because the Indians called themselves like humans.

And so Humano was what the Spaniards call them.

Most rapids that have a name, a person's name, it usually means somebody really ate it hard on that rapid and or died.

Yeah.

There's a dead cow.

I'm not sure.

Probably somebody on the Mexican side went down to the river to get a drink in.

The bank is very dry, but as soon as you get that first 12 inches of water, it can be four foot deep of just like quicksand muck But every stretch in the Rio Grande is completely different.

Water color is different, the scenery is different.

What you're seeing on this trip, very few people have been able to see and had the good fortune to look at it.

Absolutely huge fajita day, huge...

The biggest fajita night ever...

In Mexico, baby!

Right here!

The skies are dark at night.

You can see so many stars.

The best and worst cup of coffee you've ever had Day four, getting some coffee in me.

It was a rough one, having to go out to those raccoons all night.

They got into our our stash of hot dogs, but they were already cooked and we weren't going to eat them anyway.

So I suppose we just kept the ecosystem going here but scared them off and greeted the morning by a wild turkey.

A lot of people are moving away from snow states, they're moving to the sun states.

And so that's causing pushing a lot of population growth on top of the natural patterns.

And we need water.

Mexico and the United States have both constructed significant numbers of dams on these branches of the Rio Grande.

And so the water, for instance, that's in this reach of the river has to come primarily from the springs.

There are groundwater contributions and those springs, they usually come from rainfall that's happened hundreds of miles away.

And then the water flows through this coarse, topography, these these rocks, and then eventually finds its way to the river.

It's important to think about where our water comes from, what we do to it while we're using it and where it's going.

Who█s downstream?

Who█s upstream?

In a watershed that is this vast for 1600 miles in the United States, that's a vast area.

I think it█s some 325,000 square miles or something.

And so maybe difficult to have a sense of connection to a river when you're you might live somewhere in the basin that's so far from it.

It still does its job.

It still transports the water from the mountains to the ocean.

It's, you know, has a hard time doing that.

It's hard to be a river when you don't have water.

We've seen the Rio Grande, of which 6 million people in two different countries rely upon.

It creates the border for the United States and Mexico.

And even though it flows through such desolate places, the fate of this river actually matters for all of us.

Because when a river does not have water, we don't have water.

And the one thing that we can't live without is water.

This is the only place you can take out or, unless you know, someone who owns the land privately, which we do.

We are towing on our boats up this steep 45 degree embankment.

We haven't tried this method yet, but very confident it's a sound, works on general principles.

So we'll see.

Hopefully nothing breaks.

Hey, another thing we want to move the canoes too.

So something does break that canoe doesn█t come down and bash another boat.

The Living Peace Foundation is honored to provide funding support for Wild Rivers with Tillie supporting people and projects that creatively and courageously advance collaboration, compassion and living peace.

This series shares the passion that the Living Peace Foundation has for the health and connectedness of our planet and all who inhabit it.

I invite you to visit us at: wildriverswithtillie dot org or: wildriverswithtillie dot com