Thirty-five miles down from what seems more like an endless desert trail leading to your doom than a weekend away. Random washouts, massive holes, and lots of dust. If we passed another vehicle, we all silently hoped that it wasn’t federales, or worse. Rolling hills, desert valleys, a few dirt roads peeking out of the sagebrush, and the occasional rancho casita. Desolation, simply put. Although it’s only thirty-five miles, it takes an hour and a half to travel it. Finally, the blue gate! We pull in, shut the gate behind us, and breathe a sigh of relief both physically and figuratively. From here, the road is worse, but no one can approach us quickly or unknowingly. We roll the windows down, crank the music up, and slowly let go of anxiety like deer corn on a dirt road. There are still another eight miles of travel, but we’ve started washing our worries away, knowing the beauty and fun that awaits us. With a generator as reliable as a coin toss, collecting firewood along the way is essential. The land rolls along with peaks and valleys covered in prickly pear cactus, sagebrush, and Huisache (wee-sash) grass, with an occasional group of dying mesquite trees. Everything has to be hardy to survive the endless drought conditions. We pass a few old settlements, but time and erosion have taken a toll, leaving only your imagination to fill in the blanks. By now, we can see the two hilltop peaks that gave this ranch its name. As we make our way through the second gate, you can see the Rio Grande in the distance getting a little closer with each sighting. Around 2:00 pm, we push around the last bend, hugging the rocky hillside and up towards the peak. We’ve made it! Standing on the hillside looking down, you can see three small casitas, a large metal building, an exterior patio covered with Saltillo tiles, a ranch hand shack, and a hand-poured concrete staircase leading down to the Rio Grande River. Gazing at this, you might feel as if you were in a scene from a Coen Brothers western movie. Almost immediately, you wonder how in the hell this is possible in such a remote area. We unpack feverishly as the feeling of absolute and almost childish excitement sets in. From here, we can see miles both up and down the famous Rio Grande. Behind us is the endless desert of Coahuila, Mexico, and across the river, the outskirts of Del Rio, Texas. In the distance, you can see Lake Amistad, and in the other direction, stand the mountains of Maderas Del Carmen. This place would give a child a feeling similar to having a theme park all to themselves. All the food, the rides, and games, just for you! In this case, all the unexplored, the fishing, hunting, and starry night skies, JUST for us!
Las Cuatas (The Twins). Named after the area’s two largest hilltops that sit as a sort of barrier between Mexico and the Rio Grande. How did we get to this point? How do you even find a place like this? Who do you trust? All good questions. Denise and I were headed to Del Rio for a fishing trip one weekend, and before leaving Boerne, we got a call from Ethan Budnick. “Hey, Jed, how spontaneous are ya?” I said, “Pretty damn spontaneous, shoot!” Ethan described the opportunity in Mexico and the amenities it provided. Sounded pretty good to Denise and me. But the only catch was that no one had actually seen it yet. So after a bass tournament on Lake Amistad, Denise and I met an acquaintance and made our way over the border and into Mexico to check the place out. The Budnicks – Ethan, Kendall, Boone, Crockett, and Britt – no matter what adventure you could possibly come up with, they will do it. No matter what challenges may come up along the way, they will help you overcome them. Resourceful, kind, trustworthy, loving human beings. The shoe fit, so we committed to this adventure together. On our first trip together, we had made an arrangement to meet the Mexican Army and a broker at the border to legally enter with our rifles and ammunition, get Mexican hunting licenses, and learn the ropes of crossing and dealing with firearms and ammo. Short story, we met and made the deal. There is a much longer and scarier story in between for another time. On one trip, about halfway down Windmill Road, the rough road conditions had broken both of my front brake lines. Fluid was everywhere. With my foot to the floor, the truck wasn’t stopping… We had no brakes. Ethan and I clamped the front lines closed with vise grips, used baling wire to tie the broken lines out of the way, and refilled the brake fluid. This was enough to limp us through the finish line. Although we would wind up getting into an accident together in downtown Acuña as we headed to cross the border two days later.
Bringing new guests was always challenging but exciting. It takes a pretty adventurous and apparently spontaneous type of person to make this trek, so our guest list was pretty short. Some would really embrace it, and some would end up with an early departure. Didn’t matter to us; we were living in the moment, as my wife would say. One guest harvested an almost 200-class free-range white tail. Another ate the heart right out of a fresh kill. Both of those were a first for me to witness. We met some ranch hands who drank only lake water and survived completely by themselves for months at a time. I am not sure what they ate to survive, but it’s probably better we never knew the answer to that. “Willie” and his wife, on the other hand, were more civilized. They came from Ciudad Acuña, just on the other side of the bridge that separates the two nations. He treated my family with an unforgettable amount of love and respect, and I did my best to return the favor. I can’t remember his wife’s name, but she was nothing short of surprising and heartwarming. Sometimes she would have a homemade breakfast waiting in the mornings with coffee, and often we would return from the field with everything cleaned up and organized. Although they spoke almost no English, they would stay up at night and join us by the fire for hours. We did our best to communicate, but it was more about just enjoying the moment together. We trusted them, and they did the same. We made a friendship, and it was respected and appreciated evenly, both ways. I learned a lot about perspective from being on the other side of the border’s edge. The kind you cannot get when you visit a tourist city deep in Mexico. The border is a very unique and special place, and you would only paint yourself as a fool if you spoke heavily opinionated without having spent significant time on both sides.
Our days together were spent like Spaniards exploring the new land. We dropped into caves with ropes and ratchet straps, hiked from hilltop to hilltop, and gazed across the border with a different perspective. We hunted on foot, hiding only behind the distance between them and us. We cooked our meals and warmed our bones over a fire together. Days filled with adventure and nights filled with fellowship, with random excursions into the unknown and telling stories till the early hours, and a lot of heart-filled laughter. I remember the feeling I had when we last left. It reminded me of how I felt as a child leaving the farm in Nebraska in late summer. I was ready to go. But I knew I needed to return, it just might be a while… And when we do, we will be welcomed. I don’t think it’s the place that makes you yearn to return. It’s the state of mind you can achieve while being there. It’s who you share it with. A desolate desert ranch in Mexico or a secluded beach in Costa Rica, it doesn’t matter. I think about that place often, and I think about that lonely Ocotillo…
From the Texas outdoors: remote water has a way of finding the men who deserve it. For another account of a river that doesn’t give anything easy, read The Mighty Pecos and The Singing Shaman. And for a float that pushed its own limits, Devils In The Fall is a worthy companion.
