Up and across, into the wind

Monday dawned cold and breezy. A flurry of last-minute packing, a quick web update and hurried goodbyes to innkeeper Chris de Diesbach filled our last minutes ashore.

This was it: go, or no-go. A last-minute, three-way gut check and we hopped in the boats and started paddling northwest across the “mama lagoon,” as Dean dubbed it.

We were accompanied across the bay by the incessant drone of a seismographic survey team’s airboats. The water was a milky shade of green, and with the wind on the nose we simply concentrated on making mileage.

Paddle stroke after paddle stroke. About 80 every tenth of a mile, per the GPS. Eight hundred each mile. More than 9,000 dips of the blades before landfall. With nothing to do but put water behind the boat, one has plenty of time for such calculations.

It’s true the Laguna Madre is shallow, averaging some three feet over its vast basin, but it’s also …. vast. Getting back to dry land sooner rather than later, for me, became an exercise in bladder control. Sure, I could have hopped over the side of the boat in thigh-deep water, but why paddle completely wet?

Cullen House, on a peninsula jutting out from the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, slowly emerged from the horizon and made for an easy navigational landmark.

Laguna Atascosa is an internationally known birding destination and is allegedly the last U.S. refuge for the elusive ocelot, a beautifully spotted wild cat about twice the size of a typical house cat.

Ocelots are native to much of the tropical and sub-tropical Americas. The destruction and cultivation of vast swathes of Tamaulipan brushland, as well as flood control measures that have confined a sometimes feeble Rio Grande to a single channel rather than its historical, widespread delta, have reduced the amount of suitable habitat for the secretive ocelot and another small wild cat, the jaguarundi.

I write that the refuge is “allegedly” the last home of the ocelot north of the border because reports of the elusive cats trickle in from other pockets along the coast.

I’ve heard of ocelot sightings near my hometown of Rockport, on the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, and I was even blessed to catch a glimpse of the distinctive jaguarundi – also known as the “otter cat,” – there once.

The presence of both animals is documented to the south of the Brownsville Ship Channel, in the strip of land between the port and the river. Thoughts of wild cats and the pressures of agricultural development were simply musings as we paddled this wild shoreline Monday.

More pressing: where to make camp for the night? As we neared Primero and Medio Islands, on either side of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, our considerations turned to things like where we could pitch tents where they would catch enough breeze to keep the mosquitos at bay, but not so much we’d be blown away during the night.

And could we find enough driftwood for a fire?

We settled at last on a likely looking spoil island with a wide beach and some high ground. What we couldn’t see from the water was that, with the cold front-assisted low tide, we’d be traversing 30 yards of sticky mud to get our boats ashore.

Doing that once, dragging a fully-loaded 16-foot kayak, is powerful inducement to stay put for the night. We quickly scouted the island, unloaded our boats and set-up camp.

With a fire crackling cheerfully behind a windbreak, Dean cooked fajitas and Ken cracked open the three celebratory beers we’d brought with us.

The sunset was pure South Texas … brilliant crimsons and oranges behind a screen of silhouetted mesquite and yuccas.

As the last brilliant colors turned to pastels in the western sky, lagniappe: wave after wave of ducks, probably redheads, making their way north behind the island and, then, over our heads.

I honestly felt – for a moment -- like I was standing in a Herb Booth painting.

Later, we watched a still-big waning moon rise over the Laguna Madre as bright Jupiter hung low in the west.

We marveled at the splash of brilliant stars, and slept early, lulled by the singing of coyotes.