From the eastern boundary of Big Bend National Park to its confluence with the Pecos River west of Del Rio, the Rio Grande is widely recognized as the single most remote stretch of river in the contiguous 48 United States. Langtry, Texas, an historic hamlet of less than 50 inhabitants, is the only "town" on the entire run, but it is one very impressive canyon wall above the river.

Few people know this section of our international boundary that the Mexicans call "la tierra despoblada" and the Americans call the "Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande".

From La Linda, Coahuila, the site of a former fluorspar mine operated by DuPont Chemicals, to the take-out near the Highway 90 "high bridge", the Rio Grande ranks among the most beautiful rivers on the planet.

And for those of us who value our solitude, thankfully almost nobody outside the small community of wilderness boaters knows that.

Less than a day’s drive from Laredo, one can find spectacular canyon walls which rise vertically well over a thousand feet from the Rio Grande’s riverbanks. But you’ll never see these awesome canyons from a car. The only way to experience this unknown corner of our world is to navigate the river in a canoe, kayak, or raft.

However, once you commit to the trip, you have no other recourse than to complete it since except for a few very primitive ranch roads which reach river, there is no river access for the entire 160 plus miles.

And the river is not without its obstacles.

This is a country inhabited by black bear, Mexican wolves, mountain lions, and poisonous snakes. Less threatening wildlife includes wild burros, beaver, raccoons, javalinas, and coyotes.

Another presence on the river is the occasional aggressive bull which you will find grazing the riverbanks. One night I was nearly stampeded when a bull charged my campfire. On other occasions, I have sweated it out in camp while an angry bull kicked and snorted at me, threatening to charge from across the shallow river.

On the river, you will encounter a number of whitewater hazards including the long Class IV whitewater rapid called Upper Madison Falls, a three stage rapid that drops precipitously through a maze of large boulders. Most boaters choose the grueling portage trail, which bypasses the most difficult sections of the long drop.

The Big Bend Historical Association publishes a river guide for the first half of the trip which cautions that running the Lower Canyons "would be a very arduous and miserable trip for the careless or ignorant adventurer." The same guidebook warns "Help is…days away" if one should need it.

Speaking from experience, I would urge all prospective river runners to heed such warnings. My first descent of the Lower Canyons was a textbook case in how not to run the river.

In March of ’92, I decided to satisfy years of curiosity about this uninhabited length of the river by exploring it by canoe with a close friend whom I studied with when I was in college in Canada. My friend flew down from Quebec and we undertook the trip without the benefit of a map or any other knowledge whatsoever of what awaited us over the next week.

We drove out to the Trans-Pecos country of west Texas, the wild country west of Del Rio which most closely fits the image of Texas portrayed in old Hollywood westerns, an unforgiving, mountainous terrain, home to cacti, vultures, and scorpions. We launched our canoe at La Linda to the amusement of the two Mexican customs who were sleeping when we arrived.

This began an odyssey, which changed my life forever.

On the second day we tipped the canoe by slamming an overhanging tree branch at the top end of a rapid. Luckily, we lost nothing. But two days later we capsized again at the end of the long rapid called Upper Madison Falls.

By the time I wrestled the overturned canoe to shore, we realized we had lost nearly all our food and just about everything else we had brought to sustain us for the long trip. Yet we were still more than one hundred miles to the take-out.

For two days we pushed down river, drinking water straight from the river to stay hydrated and rationing the little that remained of our food. When we were down to our last can of tuna, we came to a rutted ranch road which almost reached the river, and we decided to take our chances walking north in the direction of Highway 90.

Nine miles into our walk, we came upon a team of sheep shearers who were shaving hundreds of sheep inside a primitive corral. They fed us and drove us to the highway, but clearly every worker in the group was leery of us. Later they confided that the sight of two ravenous sunburned gringos appearing in the heart of the desert instilled fear in them.

One might expect such a misadventure would have cured my desire for further exploration of the Lower Canyons. However, I couldn’t wait to return.

That first trip was alternately the most fun, most scary, most difficult, and most educational week I had ever lived. Once we tipped the second time, we realized our lives depended on keeping the canoe, and one more tip or one inadvertent collision with a rock could spell our doom.

So at every rapid below Upper Madison Falls we elected to portage the boat. At one, we had to carry the boat along the canyon wall and then drop it by rope to the river shore at the bottom. Then we had to complete the dangerous descent of the canyon wall ourselves.

Although the river and the challenges it presented had humbled us at every turn, we emerged from the trip feeling invincible. Afterwards the struggles of daily life at home seemed tiny compared to the challenges of surviving that first tip.

On that first trip, we didn’t see a single human being. As each bend of the river inspired awe, we couldn’t believe others weren’t boating the magnificent canyons. Later we learned the river was running at a level over 2000 cubic feet per second, a level the National Weather Service classifies as "unrunnable" in a canoe due to high water.

In the years since our first descent of the river, the Lower Canyons have become a second home to me. I have made nearly twenty trips down the river, including five solo runs. If the drought which has parched the region since ’95 hadn’t reduced water flows so drastically, I’m certain I would have run the river many more times.

Except during December and January, the water flow in this section of the river is unpredictable, and often there is enough water to run the river after substantial rains have fallen in Chihuahua or west Texas. Most of the water comes from the Rio Conchos, which flows north through Chihuahua and empties into the Rio Grande at Presidio, Texas.

Guidebooks recommend running the Lower Canyons in the spring or the fall, warning prospective river runners that the canyons are too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. However, water flows at those times of the year often force boaters to cancel their trips.

Call me contrary, but my favorite times to float the river are Christmas and the dead of summer. I spend three weeks making the rip every Christmas break, and rarely do I see other people then. The biggest challenge at that time of the year is finding enough firewood to stay warm during the long winter nights.

The summer trips are the most challenging. Temperatures often exceed 110 and the hot nights can make sleeping difficult. Flash flooding is a constant concern in the summer, the rainy season out there. Because the river drains an enormous area, the water level can rise meteorically in a matter of minutes. And due to the constriction of the canyons, large volumes of water create some nasty hydraulics in the river. At very high water levels, the hydraulics include whirlpools, pillows, and boils which can literally eat boats by sucking them under water and spitting them out a few yards down river.

In the summer, you have to camp at least 20 vertical feet above the river due to the possibility of rising water. I’ve tried cheating that rule a few times, and I learned the hard way by being washed out of camp in the middle of the night, a terrifying prospect. As if boating on a rising river in pitch blackness weren’t bad enough, you will have to ward off thousands of bats which feed on the insects which hover above the water.

And then once you scramble into a new camp you’ll have to comb the site to make sure you don’t upset any copperheads, rattle snakes, or scorpions, all common in the summer and all active at night.

The only other people I ever seen out there during there during the summer are four personas sin papeles whom I rescued one steamy day in July. They had reached the river with the intention to wade across but they found the river in flood due to upstream rains. When I happened along, already they were into their second day without food, and they were trapped by their isolation. It was too far to return, yet they couldn’t get across the river. I gave them a day’s supply of food and ferried them across the river.

But wintertime is my favorite time to be on the river. Although the nights are nearly always very cold, the majority of afternoons are pleasant. Precipitation, whether it is rain, sleet, or snow, is usually light and rarely falls for more than a couple hours.

During a typical three week winter trip, you can expect to endure two blue northers when day time temperatures may not reach 45 degrees for several days and nights can be well below freezing. The winds which bring in these cold fronts usually make boating a futile exercise since for almost half the trip the Rio Grande is flowing northeast, often directly into the wind.

When a norther hits you’re better off finding a grove of mesquite or catclaw for firewood and setting up camp for a long stay.

During the winter the canyons are eerily silent and due to the acoustics of being in a sheer rock theater, you can hear even the smallest sounds from hundreds of yards away. Your sense of hearing becomes so heightened that when you get off the river, the noises of civilization seem deafening.

However, the price of such acute hearing is an increase in paranoia. You wonder about each sound and prepare to stand guard against an invading animal. Since we carry no weapons out there, self defense requires more strategy than simply loading and firing.

Since wildlife has a more difficult time gathering food in winter, animals are easily drawn to camp by the smell of supper cooking.

You can expect face to face encounters with anything from a black bear right down to a raccoon.

One year we were charged by a dozen javalinas. Another time I tried to chase three wolves out of camp, but we ended up being the ones who had to evacuate.

Due to the very real threat of wildlife, I have never elected to make the trip alone in winter. Fortunately, my best river companion, Hayesy from north of Boston, has accompanied me on six of the seven long trips, and we always leaned on each other to help us through our most difficult times out there.

Boating alone is universally regarded as a fool’s pursuit. Nearly everyone I know has tried to talk me out of going solo.

A psychologist once asked me why –given the clear arguments against running whitewater river alone- I continue to boat by myself. My reply to her was that "I can’t figure out how to go without me."

This year however Hayesy will not be coming. My second choice for a river companion is playing winter league baseball in Mexico and cannot make the trip. I don’t have a third choice because I’ve learned over the years that choosing the wrong partner is far worse than having no partners at all, a truth which no doubt extends to many arenas other than boating.

So this year I plan to make the trip alone, a 22-day trip which is certain to test my physical endurance and psychological resolve. Barring an appendicitis attack, I expect to survive the journey and return to Laredo renewed. Then I’ll spend the next month extracting cacti spines from all areas of my body, in awe not of what I’ve done but of where I’ve been.

A friend of mine –a novelist- once wrote that a man is not a man unless he can travel alone. I’m not sure I agree but I suspect what my friend would learn in the Lower Canyons is that being a "man" isn’t particularly significant. Out there in a natural world hostile to man on every level, the proof of one’s manhood is in the preservation of it. Out there, you’re doomed from the moment you try to prove anything.

However, such is the grandeur and stark beauty of the Lower Canyons that risking one’s very survival is a price worth paying.