“You’re not lost, if you don’t care where you are.”
By this point, we were some 20 miles from the last little outpost of a town that we’d been through. But theoretically, at least, we were about to come to another. Jerry had the best available maps of the area loaded onto his GPS. But it only told us where we were relative to whatever data it was loaded with. The adage, “garbage in, garbage out,” came to mind and was soon followed by the vision of a web page that simply said, “no data available.”
Canoeing and rafting down the Rio Grande through Boquillas Canyon.
The third time I floated the Rio Grande River through Boquillas Canyon, things went smoother than they had on the first two. That simple fact was especially good since it was my first time leading a group into the backcountry. On that trip, our group of twelve included ten teenage boys, and we were paddling two per aluminum canoe. We made the 33-mile excursion down the river on the east side of Big Bend National Park over three days, with two nights spent camping out along the way. The trip was a big success. Many in the group experienced wild and scenic backcountry for the first time, there were only a couple of minor technical canoeing problems, and everyone learned that all drinking water doesn’t come out of faucets. Other than dealing with a certain amount of teenager chaos, I mostly just went with the flow, gazed out at the mighty Sierra del Carmen mountains rising off to the southeast, and pondered the majesty and complexities of the massive cliff walls surrounding us.
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