The Tecate Journals: Seventy Days on the Rio Grande (Paperback)

by Keith Bowden (Author) "On a brightly sunny Sunday morning, I found Tony awaiting me in the shadow of a copper smelter, his mountain bike saddlebags already packed and..." (more)
Key Phrases: gringo wetback, first time all trip, accomplished canoeist, Rio Grande, Border Patrol, Lower Canyons (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"It's a simple and candid adventure story made complex by twenty-first-century geopolitics.." -- Texas Monthly

"Lighthearted but powerful tribute to the Great River." -- Dallas Morning News

"The Tecate Journals is an impressive memoir about one man's single-minded affection and respect for a river.." -- San Antonio Express News

"This is a well-written narrative of an epic journey by bike, canoe, and raft... Well worth the reader's time." -- The Oklahoma Observer

"Though constantly in harm's way, the author meets no real harm and offers a vicarious adventure that's a pleasure to join." -- The Sacramento Bee

"[Keith Bowden has a] knack for evoking extremity in spare yet vivid language." -- Austin American-Statesman

"[Keith Bowden] does a well-crafted job of documenting the complexities inherent in sharing a waterway with another country. More than a good adventure story, The Tecate Journals offers a concise, eyewitness account of the controversial border today...[Bowden's] voice overrides the noise of borderland jingoists with an honest, straightforward and enduring narrative...It is the good fortune of readers of classic Texas literature that the author has survived the crossing to tell the tale." -- Texas Parks & Wildlife Magazine

"Deft writing keeps the narrative moving at a brisk pace, and Bowden...is an astute observer.." -- Kirkus Book Review

"The Tecate Journal is so unflinchingly honest and balanced, readers should check in preconceived notions about the border.." -- Conexion Weekly, San Antonio TX

Product Description
A first work from a new voice that is parts gritty, elegant, and contemporary. The Rio Grande is simultaneously one of the most watched and least understood rivers in the world. Some stretches of the Rio pass for endless miles through remote wilderness, boxed in by canyons hundreds of feet high and inhabited by only the hardiest animals and humans. Other stretches go straight through the center of massive urban areas, all but ignored by the thousands of city folks above. It is a national border, a water source, a dangerous rapid with house-sized boulders, a nature refuge, a garbage dump, and a playground, depending on where you are on its 1885-mile course.

That's why journalist Keith Bowden decided to become the first person to travel the entire length of the Rio as it forms the border between America and Mexico. This is his fascinating account of the journey by bike, canoe, and raft along one of North America's most overlooked resources. From illegal immigrants and drug runners trying to make it into America to the border patrol working to stop them; from human coyotes-smugglers who help people navigate their way into the United States-to encounters with real coyotes, mountain lions, and other flora and fauna, Bowden reveals a side of America that few of us ever see. The border between the U.S. and Mexico is, in many ways, a country unto itself, where inhabitants share more in common with fellow riverside dwellers than they do with the rest of their countrymen.

With this isolated and colorful micro-world as his backdrop, Bowden not only explores his surroundings, but also tests his inner mettle along some of the most dangerous and remote riparian wilderness in North America.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 291 pages
• Publisher: Mountaineers Books (October 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594850771
• ISBN-13: 978-1594850776
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #453,233 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Down the Rio Bravo!, September 29, 2007

By	S. Foster "Caustic" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Keith Bowden's years of living, working (teaching) and playing (baseball in the Mexican league) out of Laredo have resulted in this first terrific first book, an account of his mostly solo canoe trip the entire navigable length of the Rio Grande to the sea. With the channel blocked upstream from Big Bend National Park by tamarisk/salt cedar and barbwire fence, Bowden and a buddy mountain-biked that stretch mostly on the Mexican side. Bowden's writing is classic clear journalistic exposition, no-frills straightforward depiction of events and experience. While history, allusion and analysis is kept to a minimum in favor of things done and things seen, the book does benefit from Bowden's life experience on the river and life-long interests especially in the Mexican side of the river. This opens up and supplements the day-to-day account of the trials of navigating rapids and man-made dangers (the Border Patrol, dams, slums, pollution, the threat of violence from drug smugglers, etc.) and provides useful perspective, balancing out the sensationalistic slaughter we've probably all read in newspapers (which is otherwise the only regular news from the border) with Bowden's encounters and affection for the ordinary working people attempting to live on or cross the border. That's the best thing about this fine book: Bowden's fresh and sort of fearless determination (proceeding apace in spite of his own misgivings at not being the best canoeist, along with all the bad news, all the gloom thrown his way by well-meaning friends and officious officials trying to discourage him from his trip) provides for a first-hand witness to the great natural glories of the region and the river (not all of which are confined to the national park, by any stretch) and the generous human spirit of people whose lives are divided along that line. Plus, if we're not up to the 1,300 mile river journey ourselves just yet, this book's the next best thing!

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two Worlds and One World, November 28, 2007

By	Roger C. Brown (Dripping Springs, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Keith Bowden's account of his 1260-mile journey down the Rio Grande is remarkable on at least two counts. First is simply that he undertook this adventure, the dangers and difficulties of which the typical reader will grow to understand only gradually as the details accumulate. Traveling by bicycle along the shallow, rocky upper reaches of the river then switching to canoe as soon as possible, Bowden spent seventy days making his way down the entire Texas-Mexico border, beginning at El Paso, where the river is a toxic trickle, proceeding southeastward through numerous hazardous rapids and uncharted weir dams, through the forbidding Big Bend country and the deceptive expanses of Lakes Amistad and Falcon, finally passing Brownsville into the broad estuary where the river meets the Gulf of Mexico. Bowden does not belabor the point, but the reader comes to realize that just surviving the river is an accomplishment, especially through many a sparsely populated region where no one would be likely to come across an injured or immobilized canoeist. Despite Bowden's sometimes self-deprecating narration, clearly the journey is harrowing at points and could have ended prematurely and badly.

In addition to negotiating the river, however, Bowden must also deal with the occasional humans, who, of one nationality or the other, yet come in a variety of ethnicities, intentions, and attitudes--from the many Mexican villagers who wish to be helpful, to probable smugglers who come uncomfortably close, to Mexicans who cross the river in both directions with little if any sense of national boundaries, to the U.S. Border Patrol agents who may on occasion be officious but who mostly are friendly and solicitous.

Bowden's second major accomplishment is to have written so illuminating and powerful a book. The journey itself was part of a personal odyssey undertaken for reasons that, fortunately, Bowden is not too reticent to explain, for they are moving and they resonate throughout the book. Through most of The Tecate Journals, however, Bowden's writing style is reportorial and frequently admirably understated. He does not commit attempted sociology or political commentary. Worthwhile insights, however, are implicit throughout the book. One might note, for example, that Bowden himself violates the border innumerable times, as he camps nightly on whichever side of the river offers the better site (or, frequently, on islands of indeterminate nationality), as he often treks into Mexican villages for supplies, and as he often lands on Mexican soil just to pass the time of day with people he sees there. Nor does he have difficulty entering U.S. towns from the river. He offers no conclusions about his own conduct, and the book as a whole makes such considerations seem silly. From his excursions, however, flow numerous vignettes, usually understated but often laden with humor and humanity, of the people he encounters and their varying attitudes toward the river as barrier, boundary, gateway, and the central feature of the international community on the border.

As an account of genuine intrepidity of body and spirit, The Tecate Journals is simply first-rate. And for its implicit insights into the nature of the border, in this season of fence-building, Bowden's book offers far more through its honest anecdotes than will a year's worth of political rhetoric.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adventure on the Border, November 4, 2007

By	Sue Rickels (Austin TX) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Keith Bowden's "The Tecate Journals" narrates an archetypal journey on the Rio Grande from El Paso to the Gulf of Mexico. Bowden, an avid river rafter, pits his skills against a river filled with unknown boulders, rock slides, weir dams, steep rapids. The weather, replenishing supplies, finding a place to camp each night present other challenges. "The Tecate Journals" is a quick and easy read that flows like the river.

As a denizen of the border for twenty years, I learned a few things I didn't know. The infamous salt cedars along the banks suck up 300 gallons of water a day. And the Mariscal Canyon at the tip of the Big Bend has rock walls 1600 feet high, as high as two Empire State Buildings. Most of all, Bowden has captured what the border itself is like, not just the violence, the illegal immigration, the rawness, but the beauty of the Big Bend, the hospitality of the Mexican peasants in remote areas, the helpfulness of our Border Patrol.

I often refer to la frontera as the Twilight Zone, the worst of both countries. The Mexican Border is a karmic place which tests what a person really is and what he or she can become. Bowden's journey is not just classic "man vs. nature," and potentially "man vs. man," but truly "man vs. himself." As the journey progresses, the Rio draws Bowden into a meditative state, a oneness with the world much like the Buddhist nirvana. "The Tecate Journals" is an adventurous narrative, a must read for anyone who canoes and rafts. Most of all, Bowden understands our southern border, its culture and its people, a world that all Americans need to know.