My friend Buddy took this picture of me on the Sabine River in 2009. I hadn’t seen it in years, but I found it yesterday when going through files on my old computer. Here’s the story behind the photo—one of the weirder episodes from my first book, Running the River: Secrets of the Sabine.
About a mile from the boat ramp, we came upon a waterfall gurgling over a rocky ledge, into a sheltered green pool beside the river. The cavelike walls of the cove were painted green with moss. Sunlight reflected off the water and danced like currents of electricity through the shadows. I had never seen anything so pretty on the Sabine.
“We might have to go swimming later,” Buddy said, and I agreed.
Not far beyond the cove we came to a strange scene: an unmanned boat floating in the middle of the water. It sounded like the engine was running. When we came closer, we saw a long, white hose extending from the boat into the river. At one spot a few feet away, we noticed air steadily bubbling to the surface. Just then a man’s head bobbed up from the brown water, wearing a scuba mask, goggles, and a breathing apparatus.
“Looking for mussels?” I asked.
The man affirmed my question by lifting his bag of shells out of the water. But my camera and questions aroused his suspicion. “Are y’all from the FBI?”
We said no, and when we boated past, the diver sank beneath the water. We eased a little farther downriver, through frequent rapids where the flow quickened and the boat scraped over rocks and gravel, and we passed the many abandoned concrete and wooden oilfield structures that I had marveled at during my earlier trip with Jacob. I watched the shoreline for signs of hogs, but my attention soon began to wander, and I started to imagine the view of the riverbanks from two hundred years ago, when the first settlers arrived.
Today, East Texas is scrub country. What land has not been paved or plowed is choked with thorn vines and brush. But at one time, the forest canopy was so thick it blocked the sunlight from the undergrowth, and the smaller plants that did manage to survive in the dark forests were cleared by occasional fires, leaving trees so large and well established that early travelers called this place the Pine Barrens.
“They say the pine trees used to be so tall in East Texas, you could ride a horse for miles, fall asleep in the saddle, and never hit a tree limb,” I said to Buddy as we drifted downriver. “There used to be huge trees here on the river, too. Just think how much prettier all this would be if we hadn’t cut everything down.”
Buddy glanced up from the trolling motor and studied the brush on the bank. “You can’t think about it that way,” he said. “It’s still pretty. East Texas is still pretty. Just be thankful you get to see it the way it is, because someday all of this will be gone, too.” He had a point, but I hoped he was wrong. Growing up, I had never given a second thought to this wild river running through my hometown. Now that I had spent some time on the Sabine, I didn’t want to lose what remained.
Buddy and I never saw the hogs, so we turned back. The flow that had seemed so calm when we floated downstream was now a force we hadn’t reckoned with, and we spent most of the journey trudging through the water and fighting the current as we dragged the boat upstream. At times the water came only to my hips, sometimes up to my chest, but then I would step off a precipice and fall into a deeper channel. I learned to use my foot to feel for the firmness of the riverbed before committing my weight to a step forward. Before long, I forgot about my fear of being swept away by the river. As long as I stayed alert and moved slowly, I didn’t have to worry so much about drowning after all.
When we returned to the waterfall and the pretty little cove, we parked on some boulders at the entrance and jumped in. The water was cold and deep here and stunningly clear: I could see the bottom some eight feet below. Above us, the clearwater creek had worn the ground away to the eroded rock, cascading through a series of precipices, before tumbling into the cove. Buddy swam over to the waterfall and let it pound his back and shoulders. “It feels just like a back massage,” he said with glee. “You gotta try this.”
I did. It felt great. “Man, I could even bring a woman here,” I said.
This was the discovery of a lifetime, the kind of place that Buddy could enjoy with his wife and kids for years to come. We swam for a long while, then waded out of the cove and into the river. The water was much warmer here, around waist deep, brown, and muddy. Our toes sank into the silt.
When we returned to the cove a few minutes later, something had changed. “Wasn’t the waterfall a lot bigger when we first got here?” I asked. Instead of gushing over the ledge, the water had narrowed to a trickle. Then, as we watched with increasing horror, it began to grow again. Within minutes, the waterfall was surging at full strength. It was like someone had flushed an enormous toilet. Oh no, that was it! We were swimming in sewage—the discharge from the wastewater plant in Gladewater. No wonder the cove was so cool and clear. No wonder we kept smelling that faint odor of chlorine. I spit what I could out of my mouth.
We climbed out of the cove and then ascended a steep, grassy bank to see where the creek led. We came to an even bigger waterfall and then a series of smaller ones. We walked as far as we could through a leafy forest to a barbed-wire fence, then returned to the river and stood for a moment on the big gray rocks beside the beautiful cove.
“I don’t even care,” Buddy said. “It might be sewage, but they treated it first.”
We jumped back in. At one point, Buddy even swam under the waterfall, where he indulged in another back massage.
Excerpted from Running the River: Secrets of the Sabine by Wes Ferguson and Jacob Botter and published by Texas A&M University Press.
3,743 responses to “A Sheltered Cove”
Porn site
Sex
Scam
This will be a great blog, could you be involved in doing an interview regarding how you developed it? If so e-mail me!
Viagra
Porn
Porn site
Scam
Buy Drugs
Sex
Porn
Buy Drugs
Viagra
Pornstar
Buy Drugs
Scam
of course like your web-site but you have to check the spelling on several of your posts. Many of them are rife with spelling issues and I find it very bothersome to tell the truth nevertheless I will definitely come back again.
I’m not that much of a internet reader to be honest but your sites really nice, keep it up! I’ll go ahead and bookmark your website to come back later on. All the best
Porn
Scam
Buy Drugs
It¦s really a nice and helpful piece of info. I¦m glad that you simply shared this helpful information with us. Please keep us up to date like this. Thanks for sharing.
I like what you guys are up too. Such clever work and reporting! Keep up the superb works guys I have incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it will improve the value of my site 🙂
I’ve been browsing online more than three hours these days, yet I by no means discovered any interesting article like yours. It is lovely price sufficient for me. In my view, if all site owners and bloggers made excellent content material as you probably did, the web might be a lot more helpful than ever before. “A winner never whines.” by Paul Brown.
This really answered my problem, thanks!
Spot on with this write-up, I truly think this website wants rather more consideration. I?ll in all probability be once more to learn much more, thanks for that info.
Buy Drugs
Viagra
I was very pleased to find this web-site.I wanted to thanks for your time for this wonderful read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you blog post.
We’re a group of volunteers and opening a new scheme in our community. Your website provided us with valuable information to work on. You’ve done an impressive job and our whole community will be grateful to you.
F*ckin? tremendous things here. I am very glad to see your post. Thanks a lot and i am looking forward to contact you. Will you please drop me a e-mail?
One more issue is that video games are usually serious anyway with the primary focus on studying rather than fun. Although, there is an entertainment feature to keep the kids engaged, every game is often designed to work on a specific set of skills or area, such as mathematics or scientific discipline. Thanks for your posting.
The very next time I read a blog, Hopefully it doesn’t fail me just as much as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to read, but I genuinely believed you’d have something helpful to talk about. All I hear is a bunch of whining about something that you can fix if you were not too busy seeking attention.
What i don’t realize is if truth be told how you’re now not actually a lot more smartly-favored than you might be right now. You are so intelligent. You know therefore significantly in terms of this matter, produced me for my part imagine it from a lot of various angles. Its like men and women are not fascinated unless it is something to accomplish with Lady gaga! Your individual stuffs nice. At all times handle it up!
I found your blog web site on google and check a couple of of your early posts. Continue to maintain up the very good operate. I just additional up your RSS feed to my MSN Information Reader. In search of forward to studying extra from you afterward!?
Can I just say what a aid to find someone who really knows what theyre talking about on the internet. You positively know the way to convey a problem to mild and make it important. Extra people must learn this and perceive this facet of the story. I cant consider youre not more well-liked since you definitely have the gift.
Thank you, I’ve recently been looking for info about this topic for ages and yours is the greatest I have discovered so far. But, what about the bottom line? Are you sure about the source?
Viagra
Buy Drugs
Porn
Scam
Porn
Porn
Porn site
Sex
I’ve been absent for a while, but now I remember why I used to love this web site. Thanks , I will try and check back more often. How frequently you update your website?
Your home is valueble for me. Thanks!?
Thank you for another magnificent article. Where else could anyone get that type of information in such a perfect way of writing? I’ve a presentation next week, and I’m on the look for such info.
Pornstar
Porn site