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Aurora's Journal, 1981
By Aurora Garcia
| The Sun is shining warm on me on top of Apache. It feels so good
to just sit here, with the Rio Grande glittering and shimmering far below.
I can hear it and the wind, like voices whispering. |
| Dan, Melinda, Brooks, Mike and I drove here Monday night, that is, we
left Houston about 3:00pm and drove to Fayetteville to Mike’s.
Reloaded the van, including the canoe and piled into the big silver box about 8:00pm,
just like last year except Brooks is on the outside. |
| We drove to the Bon Ton in La Grange for a buffet chicken fried steak
dinner and then Mike took the first shift and drove to San Antonio.
We talked to Mauricio on the phone, wish he could have made it this year but
just couldn’t. I drove next, to Del Rio from midnight to 3:00am.
We stopped for gas, donuts and coffee, then switched places with Mel
and Dan and they drove all the way to Marathon. We got there with
the sunrise. |
| After breakfast at a café in Marathon, I held Brooks in the front seat
and Mike drove us to Panther Junction. We got permits, drove to
Santa Elena, loaded the canoe with all the heavy bulky stuff (including a
baby corral) and Mike took the canoe downstream to Rio Vista. Back
at the Castolon store parking lot we met up with Jim Cunningham (whom
I’d met here last year) and Mark & Beth (whom we’d met at the
fireworks stand just outside of San Antonio). We got our backpacks on
(Brooks riding in his on Mel’s back) and walked down the river road to
camp at Rio Vista. |
| Andre and Maggie and Ben and Jim Rice had arrived two days earlier and
they look quiet pleased. So right now we have at camp: Andre,
Maggie, Melinda, Dan, Brooks, Ben, Jim Rice, Jim Cunningham, Beth, Mark,
Mike and me, and are expecting (either tonight or tomorrow) Chris, Glenn,
Dale and Jeff Grey, the mythical patron of Rio Vista whose shoe is still
up in the big mesquite tree at camp, but in the five years I’ve been
coming here I haven’t seen yet. |
| Mike and the Rice brothers are planning an overnight trip to the top of
the ridge across the river tomorrow. A trip across an international
border, but they have to tell you that story. All I’ll say is that
we saw them from
camp through the telescope that Chris brought and they were standing on
top of the Terlingua fault. We saw Halley’s comet too.
1981 was a very good year.
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