Captures the bends of the river, but not its soul

books:


	• The Tecate Journals: Seventy Days on the Rio Grande Keith Bowden Mountaineers Books, 2007 - 291 pages average customer review:based on 8 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A CLEAR EYED STORY OF ADVENTURE AND INTROSPECTION

The Tecate Journals is well reviewed here and I'll try to avoid repetition of the other thoughtful and articulate reviews. An easy read not muddled by pomposity.

Bowden's writing is clear and direct, offering humble insights. He and his journey are presented honestly. Bowden feels no need to inflate his experiences or his observations. It's through this relative simplicity and honesty that you get a true feel for his adventure and life along the river. I appreciated this book because of Bowden's interesting choice for a journey (incredible that it hasn't been done before) and the frankness of his reporting.

May I suggest two other great paddling books - Sleeping Island by Prentice Downes and Reading the River by John Hildebrand. The Tecate Journals joins these two other books in my list of quality paddling adventure books.

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Great book !!

This was a great book about the river and all of its inhabitants. It made me look forward to every bend in the river and the adventures that were ahead. As a person who has traveled to most of the border towns for business, it gave me an even deeper appreciation for the area and the river. It was hard to put down.

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Rio Bravo Adventure

This nonfiction account of the author's journey down the Rio Grande is an exciting page turner. He bikes, rafts, and canoes from both sides of the border. Although he is joined by friends a few times, it is truly a solitary journey. It was a dangerous trip on many levels; the natural elements in winter, drug smugglers and Anglo haters. The Border Patrol agents turn out to be his guardian angels. This is one of those books I could easily visualize, even though my Texas River experience is limited to inner tubes. (That time we zigzagged down the Guadalupe and I was repeatedly whacked by the canoe as I clung to a rock in the rushing, freezing water doesn't count.)

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Captures the bends of the river, but not its soul

Seventy days on the Rio Grande! Violence! Smuggling! And on top of it all, natural beauty!
It sounds compelling.
Unfortunately, this is a very slow-moving adventure. The author meets people, but avoids talking to them if they look dangerous--or interesting. If he does talk to them, he discusses superficial items rather than deeper concerns. Much of the narrative reads like a daily diary: Today I woke up, it was cold, I saw some people, I waved to them, I paddled the river, I stopped at a village and looked for a store selling food and beer, I looked for a good place to camp.
The weather, the appearance of the opposite shores, the character of the river are well described. The author traveled the river, but never got to know its soul--or its people.

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Two Worlds and One World

Keith Bowden's account of his 1260-mile journey down the Rio Grande is remarkable on at least two counts. First is simply that he undertook this adventure, the dangers and difficulties of which the typical reader will grow to understand only gradually as the details accumulate. Traveling by bicycle along the shallow, rocky upper reaches of the river then switching to canoe as soon as possible, Bowden spent seventy days making his way down the entire Texas-Mexico border, beginning at El Paso, where the river is a toxic trickle, proceeding southeastward through numerous hazardous rapids and uncharted weir dams, through the forbidding Big Bend country and the deceptive expanses of Lakes Amistad and Falcon, finally passing Brownsville into the broad estuary where the river meets the Gulf of Mexico. Bowden does not belabor the point, but the reader comes to realize that just surviving the river is an accomplishment, especially through many a sparsely populated region where no one would be likely to come across an injured or immobilized canoeist. Despite Bowden's sometimes self-deprecating narration, clearly the journey is harrowing at points and could have ended prematurely and badly.

In addition to negotiating the river, however, Bowden must also deal with the occasional humans, who, of one nationality or the other, yet come in a variety of ethnicities, intentions, and attitudes--from the many Mexican villagers who wish to be helpful, to probable smugglers who come uncomfortably close, to Mexicans who cross the river in both directions with little if any sense of national boundaries, to the U.S. Border Patrol agents who may on occasion be officious but who mostly are friendly and solicitous.

Bowden's second major accomplishment is to have written so illuminating and powerful a book. The journey itself was part of a personal odyssey undertaken for reasons that, fortunately, Bowden is not too reticent to explain, for they are moving and they resonate throughout the book. Through most of The Tecate Journals, however, Bowden's writing style is reportorial and frequently admirably understated. He does not commit attempted sociology or political commentary. Worthwhile insights, however, are implicit throughout the book. One might note, for example, that Bowden himself violates the border innumerable times, as he camps nightly on whichever side of the river offers the better site (or, frequently, on islands of indeterminate nationality), as he often treks into Mexican villages for supplies, and as he often lands on Mexican soil just to pass the time of day with people he sees there. Nor does he have difficulty entering U.S. towns from the river. He offers no conclusions about his own conduct, and the book as a whole makes such considerations seem silly. From his excursions, however, flow numerous vignettes, usually understated but often laden with humor and humanity, of the people he encounters and their varying attitudes toward the river as barrier, boundary, gateway, and the central feature of the international community on the border.

As an account of genuine intrepidity of body and spirit, The Tecate Journals is simply first-rate. And for its implicit insights into the nature of the border, in this season of fence-building, Bowden's book offers far more through its honest anecdotes than will a year's worth of political rhetoric.

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reviews: page 1, 2

A first work from a new voice that is parts gritty, elegant, and contemporary. The Rio Grande is simultaneously one of the most watched and least understood rivers in the world. Some stretches of the Rio pass for endless miles through remote wilderness, boxed in by canyons hundreds of feet high and inhabited by only the hardiest animals and humans. Other stretches go straight through the center of massive urban areas, all but ignored by the thousands of city folks above. It is a national border, a water source, a dangerous rapid with house-sized boulders, a nature refuge, a garbage dump, and a playground, depending on where you are on its 1885-mile course.

That's why journalist Keith Bowden decided to become the first person to travel the entire length of the Rio as it forms the border between America and Mexico. This is his fascinating account of the journey by bike, canoe, and raft along one of North America's most overlooked resources. From illegal immigrants and drug runners trying to make it into America to the border patrol working to stop them; from human coyotes-smugglers who help people navigate their way into the United States-to encounters with real coyotes, mountain lions, and other flora and fauna, Bowden reveals a side of America that few of us ever see. The border between the U.S. and Mexico is, in many ways, a country unto itself, where inhabitants share more in common with fellow riverside dwellers than they do with the rest of their countrymen.

With this isolated and colorful micro-world as his backdrop, Bowden not only explores his surroundings, but also tests his inner mettle along some of the most dangerous and remote riparian wilderness in North America.

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