Nuts for the Nueces

Driving south from San Antonio on Interstate Highway 37, the first hint of the city of Corpus Christi is the gleaming profusion of refineries off in the distance: scaffolding and gas flares, storage tanks and distillation towers. At night, the lights look like a cityscape in their own right.

The refineries exist because of the Port of Corpus Christi -- the nation's sixth-busiest -- and the port exists because of the Nueces River.

Shortly after the refineries come into view, the interstate crosses the river. Here it is a slow, silt-laden stream crawling between muddy banks choked with mesquite, willow and scrubby oaks. Just downstream, the river meanders into spartina marsh before emptying into the shallow, reef-strewn reaches of Nueces Bay.

That's the Nueces I grew up with.

It is a distinctly different river some 300 miles upstream at the western edge of the Edwards Plateau. Uvalde, about 50 miles from the river's headwaters and a good four-hour drive from Corpus, is the only other town on the entire river with a population above three digits, and it boasts only around 17,000 souls.

Last weekend, with four friends, I set out to explore that difference, and the river that has long been calling to me.

Marc McCord, writing for SouthwestPaddler.com, reports that: "The spring-fed, crystal clear water flows through the limestone bluffs of the Edwards Plateau, and is one of the most scenic river trips in Texas."

McCord also reports that some 45 miles of the upper Nueces, from north of Barksdale to near Uvalde, are navigable nearly year-round.

Not so, said Marilyn Stoner. Marilyn and her husband Tom own Clear Creek Outfitters in Camp Wood. From the paddling shop-and-antique store on the main drag, they rent kayaks, provide shuttles and counsel kayakers on current river flows and conditions. The advice and help with route planning is free to all comers.

"There is a lot of outdated information on the Internet," Marilyn told me when we stopped in Friday. "I don't recognize some of the things I read about the Nueces. This river changes all the time."

Marilyn warned us that the river is shallow in many places and we'd probably end up dragging the boats part of the way.

"There are rocks in some of those rapids that will eat boats," she said.

Of course, the same is true of most Hill Country streams. The classic pool-and-drop configuration of these spring-fed rivers, with the hard, limestone bedrock of the Edwards Plateau, mandate carrying a strap or line with which to pull boats and decent footwear for the portions the paddler will be forced to walk in ankle-deep water.

On the Nueces, even more than some other Hill Country streams, rises can come quickly. The river's watershed is huge -- it drains something like 17,000 square miles -- and a downpour out of sight and sound beyond a ridgeline can translate into a sudden wall of water under bright sun and blue skies somewhere else minutes or hours later.

To my surprise, I found the portions of the Nueces we paddled -- at what Marilyn and Tom said is average or just below-average flows -- to be more easily navigated than most Hill Country streams farther east.

On one six-mile reach I was forced out of my boat exactly once, and then only because I chose the wrong channel at the head of a riffle.

There are few legal camping spots along the river bed, and an even smaller number of comfortable ones. But with frequent county road crossings between Camp Wood and Uvalde, daytrips with overnights in one of several private campgrounds in the area is a good strategy.

We chose Big Oak campground just south of Camp Wood, where tent camping sites include water, electricity, fire rings and grills.

A trip like this isn't all about the paddling, after all, or fishing, for that matter.

It's also about leaving workaday concerns behind. It's about the joy of watching a belted kingfisher hover above a riffle, dive and emerge with a minnow in its beak. It's about the play of light and water and limestone, and a flock of wild turkeys coming down to drink.

It's about good friends and good food and the lies guys tell around the campfire.

Vince (an old college buddy of like mind who I'm just now really getting to know) brought venison fajita meat -- and his Big Bend staple, Easy Cheese (I'm now a convert); Ken, my regular coastal paddling partner, provided a flask of apfelkorn. Danny -- my fishing partner of more than decade -- and Schu, another Houston friend, kept busy passing icey cans of Pearl Light around the fire.

After a full day of paddling -- and with well over 100 fish caught between us -- Saturday was an early night. After coffee and campfire eggs and sausage in the morning, we decided to break camp and enjoy the scenery on the way home rather than attempt the three-hour paddle we had planned for farther downstream.

For Vince and me, that meant heading 20-plus miles cross-country from Barksdale on an unpaved county road that wound through large ranches along the canyon carved by Bullhead Creek. That road connected to Ranch Road 336, which plunges south to Leakey.

From Leakey, it was left on my old friend FM 337 through Vanderpool and down to Medina.

Between Leakey and Vanderpool, Vince and I pulled off at a picnic area high atop a ridge to stretch our legs and grab a quick bite to eat. As we carved chunks of venison sausage onto saltines liberally spread with Easy Cheese, we heard a voice: "Good job! You're doing great! Just a little farther now ...."

We turned to see a young boy -- probably only 9 or 10 -- coast to a stop on his bicycle. Behind him came a man on a triple-seater, two younger children behind him.
I was amazed they had all pedaled up the hill we would soon coast down in my truck. Iwas even more amazed when the man told me they had come all the way from Medina, and their destination that evening was Camp Wood.

A Team Cyclone support trailer pulled in a few minutes later, so I guess they probably knew what they were doing. But still. Wow.

Closer to home, a quick stop at a top-secret fossil hunting site yielded the most numerous and perfect clam casts I have yet seen, as well as a handful of fossilized sea urchins. Family obligations kept us from lingering long, but we plan to take the kids back Saturday.

It's a fine coincidence that Sunday is one of two "Fossil ID Days" UT hosts each year. Look for a report on that expedition here after the weekend.

[The Nueces at LaBonte Park, alongside IH-37 just north of Corpus Christi. Note the dead crab in the foreground; still life with boats on the Nueces River near Big Oak River Camp; this view of Ken's right foot gives a pretty good idea of both the water depth and quality in the upper Nueces (photo courtesy KendalLarsonPhotography.com); Schu and Danny negotiate a snag in a tight bend on the upper Nueces below Camp Wood; A nice Rio Grande perch, the only cichlid native to Texas; Danny, Ken and Vince show-off a largemouth bass triple-header; Vince admires a nice Nueces River Guadalupe bass; Ken goes for broke with the Easy Cheese; sitting around the campfire; You never know what you might see on the roads through the Hill Country. Here, two camels kiss; Five tired but happy bikers at the top of the ridge between Vanderpool and Leakey ; even if you don't paddle, or fish, the trip to Camp Wood is worth it for the amazing scenery. We figure the more warning signs, the better the drive (photo courtesy Vince Terracina, TAG Marketing).]

Roughing it, sorta; evolution and observation

Tuesday morning I was reminded why – at nearing 40 – I don’t camp as much as I used to. The tent and sleeping bag provided by the fine folks at Cabela’s notwithstanding, I woke up stiff and sore.

We boiled-up some fresh coffee, breakfasted on fruit and granola bars, and prepared to hit the watery trail. Tuesday was a fish hunt … that was the menu for the night’s dinner, and, well … how hard could it be to scratch up a redfish or two in the Laguna Madre?

On a low tide and on the heels of two quickfire cold fronts, pretty damned hard, as it turned out.

We saw three spooky reds and began considering the culinary possibilities inherent in the Atlantic stingray. They, at least, were plentiful.

Several times we turned to paddle toward working terns and white pelicans, only to find them gorging on fish too small to eat a plastic lure or provide much in the way of nourishment. The trout and redfish that feeding birds often signal seemed to be notably absent.

Finally, after making a bit more than 11 miles northing, we picked an island – with an apparently firmer beach – and set up camp for the night. Dean, a Scout leader for years, pulled a couple of surprises from his dry bag: dehydrated soups and stews and – wonder of wonders – apple cobbler.

One of the great joys of this leg of my journey was paddling with two friends whose skills and experience complimented my own. Each of us, I think, contributed materially to safely and enjoyably covering 45 miles of mostly remote water.

Even more than the practical contributions, I appreciated my paddling partners’ keen observations of the natural world, and their humor. In camp Tuesday night, I made the startling discovery that someone had left the cutlery behind.

That would be me, I guess. The oversight was accepted without comment, but later I looked up to see Ken whittling a water bottle into the fire.

“You’re too cool to just burn the bottle whole?” I asked him, somewhat archly. “Dude,” he replied. “I’m making a spoon.”

This led to a rather lengthy back-and-forth about evolutionary principles and how, perhaps, the monkeys that learned to use tools – the early adopters (or is it “adapters?”) were destined to reproduce more successfully and eventually became the dominant race ….It was all very unsound, scientifically, but amusing to three tired paddlers.

Ingeniously, I thought, I fashioned my own spoon out of a tortilla. After using it to mop my mug of soup, I popped my spoon into my mouth, chewed and swallowed. Dean and Ken broke into guffaws, exclaiming that the monkey ate his tool. And pointing out that we hadn’t made it to dessert yet.

Thus the moniker “Monkey-tool Island” was born, along with a nagging suspicion that my progeny are doomed.

Tuesday night, an hour or so after dark, a jet aircraft with no lights showing roared low and slow down the Intracoastal. We wondered whether it was the good guys or the bad guys. Smuggling – mostly of drugs, but also of illegal immigrants – is a somewhat common endeavor in this part of the world.

A couple of hours after that, we had our answer. In the channel, we heard a boat approach and could see starlight reflected on gleaming surfaces here and there. The boat, sans running lights, idled for a time just off our campsite.

Finally, wanting to know who was eyeballing our tents and campfire, we walked to the water’s edge and shined our lights on the boat. It was a Coast Guard patrol boat out of South Padre Island … the high-speed kind with a .50 caliber machine gun mount on the bow.

We could only guess at what had transpired, but a good bet is that the aircraft was also Uncle Sam’s and infrared had picked out our campfire and the three man-shapes and Big Brother sent a boat for further investigation. It’s nice to know someone’s keeping an eye on things, I guess.

On the other hand … if you can’t be truly alone halfway between Boca Chica and Port Mansfield, is there anyplace left where law-abiding citizens can recreate in peace?

Polar bears

One day a baby polar bear approaches his mother with a confused expression on his face and says, "Mom? Am I a polar bear?"

I arrived at the campground to find my only child sprawled on the ground, surrounded by a gaggle of 7-year-olds, his sneakers smoldering.

As I carefully removed his charred socks and then applied a rag soaked in icewater to the blisters on his ankles, he sobbed out the story.

Apparently he and three of his friends had been playing by the lake shore when they saw a large depression filled with grey powder. It looked interesting -- or maybe something on the other side did -- so they waded right through it, Patrick in the lead.

Later he said he thought the stuff drifting off the top was dust stirred-up by the wind. I suppose smoke might look like wind-blown dust. Or ash.

Either way, it was the last time he was truly warm the entire weekend.

"Well of course son!"
The cub replied, "You're sure I'm not a panda bear or a black bear?"

"Pack 20 Polar Bear Campout." The title of the event alone should have warned me away.

By sundown the wind whipping off the lake was truly cutting. The "observatory," which for some reason I had imagined as a heated, domed building with a sliding roof -- maybe with an open bar and a fireplace -- turned out to be a bunch of telescopes set up in a field at the top of a hill.

Brrr.

Later, after the campfire had been lit, various adults repeatedly warned the 70-some-odd elementary kids not to stray inside the logs laid around the fire. You could see that it was probably warmer in there, but you couldn't get quite close enough to tell for sure.

"No, of course not. Now run outside and play."
But the baby polar bear is still confused so he approaches his father.
The cub asks, "Dad, am I a polar bear?"

By 9 p.m., the wine was gone and there was nothing left to do but go to bed. Suddenly the "0-degree" sleeping bags Cabela's sent me looked inviting.

I tried for a few minutes to read by flashlight, but to do that I also had to leave my arms outside the bag. No good.

"Why of course son!" the papa polar bear gruffly replies.
The cub continues, "I don't have any grizzly bear or Koala bear in my bloodlines?"

10:30: I've inadvertently unzipped my bag in my restless sleep, and the cold is flooding in across my left ass cheek. I zip the bag up again and roll over.

11:23: I awake to the wailing of some Cub Scout's little brother, somewhere on the other side of the camp. The banshee-like screams continue until 11:47.

12:13: Patrick has rolled into the tent pole and I awake with a layer of nylon across my face. Our breath has condensed and formed ice on the inside of the tent.

2:21: I awake again and realize that I have to pee. I ponder this until about 2:29, when I decide it's just not worth it.

3:40: I really have to pee. I struggle out of my sleeping bag, don my hiking boots and jacket, and unzip the tent. It's freezing, probably because the evening's cloud cover has blown away. A million stars spangle the night sky. I hear something clattering on the ground as I go about my business. I'm pretty sure it's my urine, turning to ice.

4:17: Patrick rolls over and says: "I always wake up at this time when we're camping." Patrick, I say, it's 4:17 in the morning. "Oh," he replies. The diffused starlight through the top of the tent, refracted by the ice that has again formed there, looked like the gray light of dawn.

5:10: I awake from a nightmare in which the surgeon who performed my back surgery in June is standing over me, frowning and wagging his finger. I roll over and try to ease the ache that's spreading from my lower back into my thighs.

"No son. I'm a polar bear, your mother is a polar bear, and by god you too are one hundred percent purebred polar bear!! Why in the world do you ask?"
"Because I'm freezing my BUTT off!"

6:30: I wake-up again, and hear the voices of kids running across the campground. Maybe, I think, someone has coffee on. I stumble out of the tent and head across the campground. Still rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I stop and stare at the dad who apparently is standing in the fire. Sparks swirl and dance around him. I push through the two ranks of sleepy campers who are toasting their hands over the flames and ask him if there's room for two.

7:05: Sitting in my truck with the heat on high, trying to gather the courage to get back out and pack up.

7:27: Packing sleeping bags and the tent one-handed, as I desparetly clutch a cup of hot coffee in the other. Nick, the Cub Scout pack's grand poobah, walks over and hands Patrick a patch.

The patch shows three polar bears walking across an ice flow with the words: "It froze in Texas."

What?! These guys knew it was gonna do this? They knew far enough in advance to have patches made?

That's it.

For the second time in my life I'm quitting Cub Scouts. After I take a hot shower. And a nap.

Photos courtesy Pack 20.