Terlingua Woman Pt. 4: Survival Skills

She knows the river and she knows the desert. Her calloused, thick fingers say she knows how to use all the tools in her garage too.

The desert, she reminds us, is danger. "If you're hiking and need to pee, jus' turn and pee. Don't wander off the trail looking for privacy because there ain't nothin' out there tall enough to give you privacy anyway and it all looks the same. You'll never find the trail again and we may never find you either. We lost our survivalist last week."

She rents us two canoes for the price of one — "The water's too low for you guys to share" — and drives us to the put-in. She'll pick us up in three days. If we're late, she'll wait. If we're early, we'll wait. A tiny canyon wren fills the rocks with his song as time slips by like the Rio Grande itself.

Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

{Get 151 word stories on Twitter}