This incredible day may have been why I was destined to return to Big Bend National Park a fourth time.
We woke on New Year’s Day to frigid temperatures in our AirBnB camper. The heater had gone offline the night prior, and we couldn’t get it back on. Huddled under layers of blankets on either end of the RV, we talked about options for the day. The Rio Grande’s flow levels were so low (down 90% from the first time I visited which was already low). So no vendor would rent us canoes to run Santa Elena Canyon—one of the most spectacular features of Big Bend National Park—from west to east. Almost able to see our breaths in our trailer, we called one of the vendors at 8am and found a chipper Erin Little. Erin helped us load the canoe on our rental and told us if we were willing to portage a bit, we could probably canoe upstream to a famous natural formation and back out.
Wearing layers of thermal gear, we raced to the east end of the canyon and set off upstream. We paddled through still, lake-like stretches of what used to be a whitewater river. We pulled our canoe through frequent shallows. But in the chilly shadows of a canyon not yet fully warmed by a January sun, we had the tranquil place to ourselves
Two weeks before our trip, I listened to Sean Of The South’s incredible memoir, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? It was the best book of the 46 books I absorbed in 2023. In it, Sean Dietrich talks about the aftermath of his father’s suicide and about two encounters with herons that marked the journey of making peace with that loss and its consequences.
I’d been struggling to sense God’s presence on this trip, even though my heart typically brims with spiritual connection in wild places and during adventures. I told Jesus I wanted to meet him in this desert. Other than enjoying Aaron’s friendship, with only two days left in Big Bend, I was still waiting on that encounter.
Then we happened upon this heron. I’d never seen a heron in Santa Elena Canyon. It caught a fish right in front of us and held the fish in its mouth for minutes on end. It watched us and let us draw near several times. Then it kept flying 50 yards or so downstream and waiting for us to catch up.
I broke. Hot tears slid down my cheeks. I didn’t say anything to Aaron for a long time. I didn’t even turn around where he could see my liquid emotions.
I was about to return home for the final phase of releasing a book about losing my dad to a very different selfishness, and Jesus knew how to reveal his Good Father’s heart to me. He sent a heron, full of memories from my childhood on the Chesapeake Bay and with figurative meaning from a book that salved my heart.
In the front of that canoe, I now knew I would leave that desert with a nourished heart.
It was wild for me to see how much vegetation was growing in this canyon. For thousands of years, the river was held mostly by rock. With so much water being removed upstream, this section of the Rio Grande felt as much like the marshes of my youth as it did an intimidating desert refuge. What for friends of mine had been a harrowing whitewater journey was for us a slow meander up and down a gentle stream. (You’re looking at Mexico on the left and the United States on the right.)
Aaron had heard almost a dozen different folks from our shared church hype Santa Elena Canyon. A lot of that hype came from me. Both my face and my soul smiled for Aaron to get to experience these massive walls, this luxurious solitude, and even the unmistakable smells of this citadel. We had our heads on a swivel the whole time, marveling at the scale and details of the massive walls that held the river and our attention. I asked Aaron if I had oversold it and was relieved when he said I had not.
I don’t know if I’ll ever see Santa Elena Canyon again, but I’m at peace with that. Our New Years Day float proved the perfect encore to my previous two float trips there. It’s as if the loose ends of the story were tied into a bow.
As we pulled away from the canyon to return our canoe to the livery in Terlingua, I turned around to see the sun settling—settling into the canyon as if to hide there until the next morning. It was a chef’s kiss goodbye to a place where a number of my friendships have been enriched in shivering cold, wet mud, and unexpected adventures.
