(Rob Benigno art)
July 31, 2024
By Steve Ramirez
One of the aspects I love about any adventure is that we never know what we will learn along the way about the universe and our place in the universe. Teachers and lessons come in many forms. Sometimes they are the fish we connect with, or the ones we never come to know. Sometimes they are the people we are fishing with, and the way they reflect our own journey—or contrast with it.
Sometimes lessons are hidden in the songs of birds, or in the way the evening sunlight touches and transforms the landscape. But in this case, my teacher was the river itself with its winding ways and the push and pull of its circuitous currents.
The Llano River is born among the limestone springs of the far western Texas Hill Country . It meanders across the Llano Uplift where pink granite, feldspar, and quartz of volcanic origin prevail, and red-winged blackbirds sing from the cattails and fenceposts. This place, like all places on planet Earth, is both wild and feral. It contains hints of what once was before the arrival of humans, and glimpses of the ghosts of living beings that have vanished—both human and not.
As I’m drifting down this living river, the memories and mementos of past lives who once called this place home remind me that there truly is gold in these hills. It comes in the form of sunsets and autumn leaves and the way the evening light glows among the bending grass and winding waters. It lives beside the white-tailed deer whose ancestors once browsed among herds of bison and kept a wary eye for Mexican wolves, mountain lions, and jaguars. As my dear friend Cari Ray and I launched her raft into the Llano River, all I could think of was one word: home.
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As we began our float, I was having fun dropping big clunky bass bugs wherever I wanted them to go, and I managed to land a few Guadalupe bass, a decent-sized largemouth bass, and a couple of chunky sunfish along the way. I wanted Cari to have a chance to fish and offered to row, but she dropped anchor instead and we both began casting and catching in likely spots around the boat. It was a perfect day in the best of company.
Still, I’m not sure Cari quite trusted me to row her boat—which was probably wise. Perhaps I have a reckless gleam in my wild-man eyes. I sure hope so.
So we continued onward with me casting and catching as Cari rowed and we reminisced about our many memories of feeling truly alive on the Llano. Rivers are like that. They remind you of the moments that were filled with birdsong and the plop, plop, plop of turtles sliding off logs or the way the evening sunlight shimmered as a plain-bellied water snake swam effortlessly across the current. They cause your mind to flash back to images of laughter and love and the time it was too cold to fish so you sat on a low bridge drinking wine and listening to the sound of the cold, clear water.
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We landed on a large granite island and fished together, each cheering for the other as we brought bass and sunfish to wet hands and then watched as they swam away free—taking us with them. And that’s about the time that Cari pointed to a floating tree limb that had all of its bark chewed off and said, “Look! It’s beaver wood!”
And I said, “I’ve been walking these shorelines and fishing these rivers for decades, and although I know we do have beavers here, I’ve yet to ever see one.” Cari and I have both seen many beavers in the wild, just not in our Texas homewaters. Rivers are like that. They leave you wondering what comes next—just like life.
At regular intervals the river would divide into several possible pathways, and we held in place long enough to watch the way it moved through each potential passage. We listened for the sounds that the river made and took notice of overhanging trees, submerged rocks and roots, and braided shallows where we might have to get out and drag the boat. But in the end, we made our best guess and adapted to whatever reality awaited us—again, just like life.
At one such fork in the river Cari dropped anchor, and we looked at the left and right passages and considered what the river had to teach us. We listened to the sound of the rapids but couldn’t tell where it was coming from—left, right, or both. We noticed the speed of the water flowing into each river path and the locations of gravel bars, and after careful consideration we chose the left branch and were soon rounding the corner through the currents and eddies until we found what awaited us. It was a waterfall, and there was no turning back.
Sometimes, no matter what we do, we are given a challenge. It could be asthma, heart disease, or cancer. It could be night terrors and the lingering anxiety of post-traumatic stress. It could be a crumbling of community or the erosion of empathy. It could be the increasingly probable collapse of our global environment. But whatever we face, we can face it better when we do so together with open minds, willing hearts, and a vast undefeated attitude.
We guided the boat by working together with bow and stern ropes from the safety of the shoreline. In the end our little vessel made it over the series of cascades, and we continued our journey down this living river, together. Inside every challenge there is a gift in the form of a lesson and an opportunity to grow and thrive. I am not a survivor—I am a thriver. How about you?
The next stretch of river was gentle with us, and we drifted and cast toward likely banks and plunge pools, picking up a bass or sunfish here and there while enjoying both conversation and silence. Cari and I often seek riverside wisdom when we fish together. We speak of life and death and everything in between. We speak of the people we love and who love us, and of those who for whatever reason have vanished. We share our impressions about the difficulties and opportunities in life’s many transitions and unexpected outcomes. And we consider how brave it is to give your heart to a person or a river, knowing that one might drift away and the other might dry up—and there’s little we can do about either eventuality.
Love is the most painful and powerful thing I know—and the most beautiful. I will never forgo love in a foolish attempt to avoid loss. Love and courage are symbiotic. You can’t have one without the other.
Every journey has its beginning and its ending—although exactly where these moments reside is up for interpretation. In temporal terms we were coming toward the end of our float. We had arrived at our final choice of which path was our true path.
The river split into three distinct pathways, and in each case due to the topography and vegetation we could not see what awaited us around each turn. So we paused to consider the things we could control and went with our gut from there—we chose the right turn. As Cari began to row us into the current and around the bend we braced for whatever lay ahead. True adventure is about adapting to the unknown once it becomes known, and this was a true adventure. Just around the bend we came to a fast-moving narrow with overhanging mesquite trees on one side and shoulder-high bunchgrasses on the other. We could see where the river was opening up just ahead, so we held on tight as the currents and Cari’s rowing moved us under tree limbs and over submerged rocks. That was about the time the magic happened. A puff of gravel and sand exploded into the streamside currents and at the end of that cloud of debris was the largest beaver I had ever seen, and the first one I’ve ever met in my home state of Texas.
I was beyond thrilled to see him, and we seemed to be communicating with each other as we made eye contact and recognized each other’s aliveness. At one point the beaver crawled up on the riverbank and just sat there with not even a rod’s length between us—me looking into his eyes and him looking into mine. It was obvious that we were connecting on some primal level, and in the connection we both felt at home.
For a while he swam just in front of us as we cast our lines in the hope of catching and releasing a few more fish before the takeout. But I really didn’t need to catch any more fish. We had chosen wisely, and the currents of the river or the kindness of the universe had given me the gift of this brief but poignant introduction. In that moment two lives sharing the river became three. A chance encounter or a passing word can change the direction of a lifetime. We never truly know the ripple effect of our choices. Life and learning are intertwined. Without growth, there is only death. I for one want to live—authentically.
We must all run our own races, envision our own dreams, and cast our own lines forever forward. And if we do so together with the same core values of gratitude, kindness, empathy, respect, and childlike curiosity, we will create beauty—first in our imaginations and then in our realities. Love and courage conquer any challenging current we may encounter. And this, my friends, is what the rivers of life have to teach us. Our perspective is reflective of our choices, and our choices are reflective of our chosen perspective. It’s all connected. It’s all a circle. It’s how we live a life worth living. No matter what comes around any bend . . . just keep rowing.
Steve Ramirez is a Texas master naturalist, poet, and Marine Corps veteran. He is the author of Casting Forward, Casting Onward, and Casting Seaward. The fourth book in the series, Casting Homeward, will be available from Lyons Press in September 2024.