On a recent temperate morning, a motley crew of individuals gathered by a truckload of canoes in a Lowe’s parking lot in Presidio, Texas. There were seven of us: Big Bend Sentinel journalist Sam Karas, archaeologist David Keller, river outfitter Charlie Angell, river guide Billy Miller, a reporter/photographer duo for the Washington Post, and me. This supergroup had assembled for what I was repeatedly told would be an unusual river trip. We were set to boat on La Junta de Los Rios – the meeting of the Rio Conchos and the Rio Grande. We’d be right on the stretch of river running between Presidio and Ojinaga, and we’d travel under the International Bridge – the thoroughfare officially connecting the U.S. and Mexico. While traveling this part of the river is perfectly legal, it's not often done, as it’s a distinctly non-commercial, non-touristy route.
Despite living in Far West Texas for most of my adult life, I’d never boated the river before (this is mainly due to my aversion to planning). For my first expedition on the Rio Grande, I was told multiple times this was an especially odd choice of route. Karas, also an experienced guide (who has written about the river for this very newsletter), hadn’t been on this part either.
“Don’t judge the river by this trip,” said David Keller, a Big Bend archeologist who’s studied the area extensively for the last two decades. The idea of judging the river was funny to me, like judging the sky or the moon, deciding if this enormous thing that is so much bigger than any of us is pretty, fun, worthwhile, or any other adjective one could think of.
But the comment was prescient, particularly at this moment. As of late, the river is being evaluated in ways that have nothing to do with the wildlife it supports or the communities it connects. The river is being judged for its goodness as a border, and assessed for optimization of its border-ness.
You’ve been hearing more about it, I’m sure, since the Trump administration announced their plan to build border walls through Big Bend (Karas and The Big Bend Sentinel broke this story in mid-February). You may have also been seeing photos of the river accompanying news stories and social media posts, depicting locations that would have been impacted by the initial proposal of physical border walls: the rocky outcroppings of Big Bend National Park and the burbling waters around Hoodoos. These scenic images appear alongside digital maps, strangely blank and anonymous in contrast to the land they claim to represent. The map version of this region is made up of greige swaths of land, thin lines marking borders and new, thicker lines marking the proposed plan for wall projects, plans which have been changing without explanation.
I’ve been thinking a lot about maps lately, spurred by a recent reading of a book by Lucy Lippard called ‘The Lure of the Local.’ Lippard writes:
“The ‘naturalization’ of maps – the myth that maps show the world the way it really is – veils the fact that maps are cultural and even individual creations that embody points of view. They map only what the authors or their employers want to show; resistance is difficult. They are powerful precisely to the extent that the author disappears.”
I bring this up to point out that these official maps tend to reveal nothing of the land we are actually on, missing the qualities, communities, and languages of the borderlands that make it such a singular place. Maps are narratives imposed upon land, and that land might tell a different story. This trip was an exercise in juxtaposing exactly that: the land and the lines drawn across it. The river trip group was there to be on the water, sure, but also to check out the extent of a concertina (or razor) wire fence, quietly erected on the banks by the federal government back in October, using eminent domain to wind the fence through private properties along the river.
“ People that work in a state park and national park and other locals that live in town don't even know that there's any of this razor wire on the river,” said Billy Miller.
As we approached our destination, it was clear why they may not. Razor wire is so oddly translucent and mirage-like, and it took a second for the expanse of it to come into view: a seemingly endless fence of spiraling razor wire came into focus, sun glinting off the thin curls of metal, held up by dark metal posts. Approaching the fence, I was reminded of what a friend of mine once called razor wire — menacing spaghetti. Indeed, it is a curly tangle of noodle-like wire that wraps around and punctures whatever draws near (Karas lent me some clothes she said she wouldn’t mind having torn up if push came to shove. Luckily, that wasn’t an issue).
We parked and tumbled out of our trucks as Angell and co. pulled the canoes through a patch of dry brushy foliage, then down to the river. It was a blur of smooth canoe and pointy plant life, and before I knew it I was gracelessly flopping myself into a boat and we were off, Karas heroically paddling while I tried not to drop my equipment in the water.
The river was unusually high, so we floated easily downstream. As I was warned, the usual landscapes one might associate with the river were not present. We were surrounded only by dense walls of Arundo donax – an invasive cane – which softened the sound of four-wheelers buzzing by the banks.
“Rivers make terrible boundaries, terrible borders,” said Keller, paddling forward. “Rivers are places where people congregate. They come together to celebrate. To put a boundary there in the first place was bad, and to enforce that ever more stringently…” Keller pauses. “It just creates more chaos and more pain for the people who live here.”
On the banks in Ojinaga, there are small pathways where the brush has been cleared out. Someone asked if the pathways were for people trying to cross over from Mexico. Angell informed us that they were for cattle. Sure enough, as if on cue, a cow ambled its way from the top of the riverbank down to the edge, and took a long drink.
“We've got 800 years of history of people living and coming together along this river,” said Keller. "Where's the fear? I mean, what's the scary thing? Where are the hordes? They're just not here. The numbers can't justify it.”
The numbers show that the Big Bend sector has historically been one of the least-trafficked areas of the Southern border. As Marfa Public Radio has reported, apprehensions of people crossing the border illegally fell 74% from 2023 to 2025, according to CBP data.
We docked our canoes under the International Bridge, the whoosh of cars making the journey from Presidio to Ojinaga and back overhead through the port of entry. The razor wire fence runs directly underneath.
“ For this to happen here. It's insulting. Presidio is like a suburb of Ojinaga,” said Keller. “I know that some Americans wouldn't want to hear this, but I mean, Ojinaga is the biggest town in the Big Bend, you know?”
On its face, a fence directly under an official border crossing appears to be a redundancy at the very least.
“ I think that for people who are, are afraid, or people who think that security's needed, they really need to come down here and see that that's not the case,” said Keller. “And also what we stand to lose, because it's tremendous. This is a national treasure culturally and landscape-wise, ecologically. God, it just goes on and on.”
We all got back into our boats and continued downstream. Our canoes slid past one another, oblong boats edging ahead, then falling back. Keller, Angell and their passengers floated upstream, while Karas, Miller and I hung back.
I’d been treating my audio equipment in a risky manner, taking it on the river. I watched the sound bars go up and down, wondering exactly what I’d documented. I picked up a paddle and at last offered to help Karas, who had been singlehandedly propelling us forward.
We stopped on the banks a couple times to see if it was possible to get off the river, but the wire fence ran long and continuous, and thwarted our efforts to end the trip. For a moment, the group contemplated boating all the way to Redford. As we paddled for longer than expected, everyone got quiet. Two blue herons sat on the banks ahead of us – a good luck charm for river guides.
At last, we found a stopping place, dragged our canoes out and up to the road, where they were strapped back into their racks for the journey back into town. The group was suntouched and tired. In Study Butte, about 60 miles east, a protest against the proposed physical wall was just wrapping up.
The maps depicting plans for a physical border wall projects have changed quite a bit since my trip just over a week ago. While I was on the river, plans for steel walls along the entire Big Bend border were still very much on the table, and occupied much of our conversation. A few days after the trip, the maps changed, showing "detection technology" projects planned in Big Bend National Park and areas further east, instead of physical walls as initially depicted online. Many people take this as a win, though others are skeptical it’s a diversion tactic, or that the change won’t stick and the maps will shift again.
So much is still up in the air: local contractors have been approached, and landowners have received right of entry letters from CBP in recent weeks. Those conversations and documents did not magically disappear when the lines of the map changed.
As of now, plans persist for physical border wall construction. A 175-mile project that CBP map describes as a “primary border wall system” is still planned to run through Presidio, Jeff Davis, and Hudspeth counties – along the very stretch my group rafted, on the border between Ojinaga and Presidio. So much of the talk about a wall has been about what it would look like winding through the wilds of the borderlands, but I wonder what a 30 ft. tall wall would look like running between two border towns, and how it would change the shape of life.
Cartography has never been my strong suit. On my computer, I zoom in and out. It is all blandly official, but I find myself wondering who changed the color of the line that represents both the river and the border on their computer? Who set up the Smart Wall Map page, chose the colors for the legend, or fiddled with the scale? Who dragged and dropped the shadowy geometric shapes meant to evoke the imposing mountains? Who is the disappearing author?
I returned to the tape I got on the trip, to see what I could say. In my house, I slipped on my headphones, closed my eyes.
As someone who works in sound, I’m often struck by how a recorder reveals the truth of the world around me. Recording devices, unlike our ears, are somewhat indiscriminate. I use a shotgun microphone, which picks up whatever sound is closest to the end of it. I’m always trying to find a good angle for clarity, often profusely apologizing for sticking a mic awfully close to someone’s face, asking for humming refrigerators to be unplugged, and generally being a fidelity-seeking nuisance.
On this trip down the river, I had no choice but to surrender to the sound of water. There was no moment in which the river was not present, no moment in which I could ask it to be quiet, unplug itself, stop talking. In the canoe, paddling often drowned out whatever answer to a question I was trying to get. Voices were scattered in the wind, lost in the steady flow of the water. I recorded everything (maybe too much, I usually do), and what I ultimately got was just the river, showing itself to me over and over again. As I listened, I marveled at the fact that this waterway is so much bigger than us, than we could ever be. Even alongside well-traveled roads, under a bustling port of entry, people chattering on its surface – the river dominated.
