This is only half of a World Heritage Site, Mexico City, even though it’s on the outskirts. Frankly it’s status is controversial. To the extent that it preserves the long cultural history of floating gardens and canals, then it deserves global recognition. Unfortunately, it’s also known as a place to get drunk with friends over the weekend on one of the colorful boats above. And the city has encroached on the area, overbuilding, developing, squatting, polluting and diverting the water. So, it’s at risk. Really the damage was mostly due to the Spanish who drained the lake to build a new city over the old Aztec city, so this is one of the few places directly linked to the extensive ancient Aztec canoe and irrigation canals. A few parts are preserved, some are threatened and many are gone. Restoration is difficult and expensive, but worth it in my view.
OK, it’s not a solar eclipse, but this 450+ year old World Heritage Site is impressive. Only about 25 miles from the pyramids of Teotihuacán, this 16th century Franciscan Aqueduct carried fresh water from a volcano 30 miles over the countryside, underground and over the Papalote (kite) ravine above, with 120+ arches overall. If you approach from Mex 88 outside Santiago Tepeyahualco, there’s a short gravel drive to a parking area watched by local police, where the aqueduct begins. It’s easy to walk down to see the 125’+ high arch in the center, and it’s cooler if you stay in the shade of the Roman design. I wouldn’t recommend trying to drive further on the “roads” nearby, which are more like cow paths. There is a small rail line and a creek flowing under at the bottom, with a footpath built into the bottom of the arch for hikers to cross. There are a few other sections, but this is the most impressive.
Santa Elena Canyon, like many of the sights here, is majestic with 1500’ cliffs, with Canyon Wren staccato song echoing back and forth, and elusive beavers hiding along the banks. The Rio Grande enters the park through here, departing through Boquillas Canyon. They don’t make it easy to get a river pass, apparently preferring guides. I wasn’t allowed to kayak without two PFD’s?!? But the views from the trail are spectacular.
The middle of the park is dominated by the chiseled Chisos Mountains which have impressive wildlife including bears, mountain lions and rare birds, challenging hikes and a good restaurant. And the views stretch for miles in all directions across desert, scrub, dry creeks, gullies, plateaus and rocky outcroppings of all shapes to more distant hills, mountains, mesas and empty space. Sunset is best from up here, and the lodge has a bar and large patio with a great view of the basin. There are some ranger activities each week, but mostly you’re on your own out here, with terrain, heat, wildlife and distances that make hiking potentially dangerous. So take care.
A trip here needs 3 days just to visit all four corners, and there’s only one electric campground (Rio Grande Village RV) which was booked solid. Still, I was determined to avoid burning carbon, so no guided tours. I charged outside the park at the classy Gage Hotel and in Terlingua, at a Juicebox behind a brick wall in a construction site that rents Jeeps. I spotted three other Teslas and a Volt in the park, but you need to be thoughtful about charging (and not forget your hotel key and have to drive back to return it). I needn’t have worried. Since the park speed limit is 45, my range was better than expected, especially after turning off the climate control and opening my windows.
People are seriously damaging nature, as seen in both the devastating 2019 Castalon Wildfire, which destroyed the historic visitor center and store, and the drastically reduced water volume of the Rio Grande. Large gas vehicles with bad mpg should be named “Chevy Smoker” or “Ford Smog” and their drivers need bumper stickers like “I ❤️ Wildfires” & “I ❤️ Hurricanes”, because that’s what they’re exacerbating. Folks who live in western communities with golf courses, water features and ornamental plants, should name their neighborhoods “Wildlife’s End” or “Extinction Junction”, because they’re diverting rivers from our public parks, destroying ecosystems. Too many folks live in denial of the Climate Crisis, while driving a ‘Denali’ and living in ‘Ocotillo’. If you’re still using wasting gas and water in the west, then you shouldn’t pretend you like nature. You obviously don’t care enough.
The Rio Pequeño (not grande with this low water) enters the Boquillas Canyon here and continues down to Amistad. Hiking into the canyon along the border, there are few signs of the modern world, and I suddenly felt like I was in a classic western movie when I heard horses approaching. Three horse riders offered handcrafted souvenirs and chicken tamales as they passed, and when one was crossing back to Boquillas Mexico on horseback, his horse had to bend down to knee level to drink from the middle of the river. Hardly worth crossing by rowboat at the port of entry, when folks were wading across the river. (Yeah, yeah rules, but no harm no foul with kids just playing in the water).
The Climate Crisis is playing havoc with my plans. Not sure when I’ll get the kayak wet this trip. A few days ago, I was trudging through the snow in Zion, and here in winter the temperature hit over 100 degrees on the trail. Best to visit in February, and always bring plenty of water. Last year I just carried a water bottle, but now I use a 3L hydration pack with another 5 gallon container in my car. The heat is no joke; a hiker died here just a few days ago, one more of many.
Due to low water and logistics, I’m only exploring the river from the dusty trails and grand overlooks within Big Bend. The US and Mexico protect 200 miles of land alongside the river, including the canyon above, another at Santa Elena and a big reserve on the south bank opposite Big Bend. In particular, there’s a nature trail at Rio Grande Village, where I spotted a half dozen bird species in minutes, including a Great Blue Heron and my first sighting of a Black Phoebe flycatcher. It’s unfortunate that so many communities take most of the river water without considering the downstream impact on birds and other species. I know people pay extra for golf courses, ornamental plants and water features, but national nature reserves suffer directly as a result. Americans need to invest in solar desalination facilities and leave rivers alone.
Like most people who travel through the crossroads of Page, I paid $10, walked 3/4 of a mile and took a picture of Horseshoe Bend. It’s an easy photo, especially around 2:30 pm, with the sun shining down over your left shoulder onto the deep oxbow canyon below. On a clear day the blue sky reflects in the river, and the height of the overlook makes a photo idiot-proof, easily framing the river bend from cliff to cliff and from horizon to bottom’s edge. Even I, a mediocre photographer at best, got the shot I dreamed about. But instead, I decided to show you the uglier view above.
“a curious ensemble of wonderful features —carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon.”
John Wesley Powell, explorer
When John Wesley Powell first explored this canyon in 1869, he and his crew were amazed by the varied beauty of the place. Above all the impressive geologic features, they decided the best part of the canyon were the narrow green glens, teeming with specialized flowers, birds and animals. Less than 100 years later in 1963, the beautiful glens of Glen Canyon were drowned, and in a cruel irony, the temporary bathtub was named “Lake Powell” after the explorer & geologist who most loved the living glens.
In retrospect, Glen Canyon Dam should never have been built. Lake Powell, above the dam at right, is a sad collection of marooned boats with ramps and docks that don’t reach the water, so most of the fossil-fuel burning jet skis, power boats, fishing boats and houseboats can’t keep polluting here anymore. The “lake” is more of a stagnant segment of river with bleached canyon walls and a bathtub ring. Due to low water, neither the ferry at Hall’s Crossing nor the tour boats to Rainbow Bridge run anymore. When the water drops another 30 feet—later this year?—the massive hydroelectric towers above the dam to the left won’t have any electricity to deliver.
Engineers no doubt consider the dam to be a victim of its own success, drawing too many people to Arizona with cheap electricity and “plentiful” water. Economists likely consider the dam a fiasco, since all the expensive infrastructure is practically useless now, long before returning on the investment. Common sense says that dam or not, you can’t have your river and drink it too. Environmentalists, who opposed the dam from the beginning, say “we told you so”. Climate scientists say, “it’s going to get worse”.
After all the park is desert—mostly remote canyons in Utah—, and the river isn’t big enough for people to waste. I drive past a lot of busy car washes and gas stations with patches of grass, while the shiny vehicles burn carbon and diminish the mountain snowpack. On my way southeast, I drove through Gilbert, Chandler & Ocotillo neighborhoods near Phoenix. While riff-raff like me aren’t allowed past the walls, gates and guards, satellite maps show private golf courses, lakes, and homes on private islands, all in the desert. It’s tragic to see glimpses of all that water wasted, while our national recreation areas run dry.
For millennia people had been using this spring to live, grow crops and travel through, but then the Mormons built a fort and walled it off. 80% of the Kaibab Paiute population died off between 1490 and 1860, many from starvation. The Mormons also enslaved the natives, technically 20 years of indentured servitude, after purchasing them from native slavers, a practice the natives learned from the Spanish.
On this trip I saw both the Green River at Dinosaur and the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon explored by John Wesley Powell, who employed Kaibab Paiute guides. Years later when Powell became director of the US Geologic Survey in DC, a Mormon missionary, translator and expedition member named Jacob Hamblin wrote to his old friend about how the Kaibab Paiutes were dying of starvation.
“The foothills that yielded hundreds of acres of sunflowers which produced quantities of rich seed, the grass also that grew so luxuriantly… the seed of which was gathered with little labor, and many other plants that produced food for the natives is all eat out by stock.”
Hamblin to Powell, 1880
Eventually, the US government intervened and gave the Kaibab Paiutes rights to 1/3 of the water, along with 1/3 to the perpetrators who were using the fort as a hideout for ‘plural families’, and 1/3 to the federal government. Like many wrongdoers, the Mormons at the time tried to justify their killing of the natives by saying that some natives had killed two Mormons, that they were bringing civilization to the natives and that they were more productive. I wasn’t interested in the Mormon pioneer fort or the old self-serving justifications, but the historic conflict over marriage rights seemed ironic, given the 2008 Mormon campaign against gay marriage in California. In any case, the native history is fascinating and helps explain why Utah is 1% Native American and over 2/3 Mormon. There’s a garden run by the local tribe that grows the three sisters (corn, beans & squash) along with Amaranth, which was a beautiful deep purple.
Overall, Utah does an exceptionally good job in managing its remarkable natural resources, but the climate crisis allows no time for delays. Today the spring above is full of toxic algal mats that can release deadly Cyanobacteria neurotoxins, which appears to be spreading as the climate warms. Civilization is destroying life on earth, via carbon pollution, so it hardly deserves the name.
The Canadian River flows from the Colorado/ New Mexico border through Texas and joins the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma, but a dam here creates Lake Meredith. I had planned to kayak here next year, but I think I’ve decided against it. Most of the water craft are loud, fast, gas-guzzling powerboats, the lake has shrunk dramatically due to water diversion to cities, and Spring Canyon where the park service once had wildlife paddling tours is now more of a separate small pond.
When Congress sets aside these areas for recreation, there’s some effort made to protect the natural beauty, but it’s mostly done for the benefit of only one species: us. There’s a garden in this NRA for the monarch butterfly migration at the visitor center for the neighboring Alibates Flint Quarries, but it is ridiculously tiny. I can’t see how migrating birds could use the lake with all the motorboats. The lake is more of an artificial water park, rather than a wildlife refuge. On the interstates, I see signs for “wildlife parks”, which are basically zoos. But once animals are locked up in cages and fed, they are no longer wildlife.
I don’t think people understand (or care) that once the real wildlife is gone, it will be gone forever. Our government needs to prioritize saving species, due to the climate crisis, and that requires leadership to make significant changes right now. There should be a cabinet-level biologist directing policies across government to make sure we maximize the chances for species to survive. Water parks and zoos can be built anywhere with recycled water, but natural ecosystems need to be protected, especially along our western rivers.
The skinny shrub reaching up in front of the cactus is Ocotillo, just beginning to bloom.
The ranger asked good questions. Given that we live in the Anthropocene or Human epoch, what exactly does wilderness mean to us now?
There’s a tiny endemic fish living in a corner of this park near the Mexican border. But because groundwater levels are now dropping sharply, the Quitobaquito pupfish’s natural habitat could disappear within a few years.
Some local school kids helped build a pond behind the visitor center to try to save the pupfish. The park service is re-lining the original Quitobaquito Springs to try to retain more water, but the springs are shrinking. People have been impacting the environment here for over 10,000 years, and, whether we like it or not, the little fish is now dependent on whether we choose to save it.
Ranger Kate asked the campers what we should do. The most common questions were about whether the Mexicans were at fault by siphoning off “our” water. They are actually on a different aquifer south of the Sonoyta River. And that jingoistic attitude really misses the point of being in an International Biosphere, next to the Pinacate y Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve in Mexico. We’re supposed to be sister parks working together to save an internationally important natural area.
One suggestion was to “relocate the fish to a more viable habitat”. But if you take the pupfish out of Quitobaquito, are they still really Quitobaquito pupfish? Zoos don’t really prevent extinction in the wild.
I voted to add water to maintain the habitat. People think nothing of draining a river for a new golf course community and destroying ecosystems by burning fossil fuels. So why not reverse that destructive and short-sighted attitude and take this one chance to spend a few dollars to save a species?
Zero Carbon Travel 