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.
3,737 responses to “A Sheltered Cove”
Right here is the right blog for anybody who really wants to understand this topic. You understand a whole lot its almost hard to argue with you (not that I really will need to…HaHa). You certainly put a new spin on a subject that’s been written about for decades. Excellent stuff, just excellent.
I truly love your site.. Pleasant colors & theme. Did you create this site yourself? Please reply back as I’m hoping to create my very own website and would love to learn where you got this from or exactly what the theme is called. Cheers.
This blog was… how do you say it? Relevant!! Finally I have found something that helped me. Thanks a lot!
Otherwise, it is futile to try and try to select stocks since you will not discover any good offers (different people would have already discovered them and bid up the stock’s price).
Digital currency helps to make an investment: Digital currency helps the trader who makes an investment in the market.
Cumberl, This institution is an equal opportunity provider Lebanon Family Health Providers is located within the Jeanne Donlevy Arnold Middle at 615.
Bancorp subsidiaries embody Oregon’s largest bank, U.S.
To eliminate packing, get engaging gift packing containers which can be equally elegant because the gifts Free Delivery You select the vacation spot, we ship swiftly.
Services may be interrupted by a weather occasion or other natural catastrophe, a power outage, gear failure or simply unscheduled downtime for repairs or upkeep.
Canine BRUSH- You should utilize nearly any brush on a French bulldog, but the best ones have versatile rubber bristles.
This signifies that both futures trading and options trading provide you the ability to manage the rate movement on additional of their essential assets than your money would frequently allow.
1980 Chevrolet Monte Carlo’s front end.
Nice i really enjoyed reading your blogs. Keep on posting. Thanks
Learn the way a lot these social media platform makes and ask yourself what’s my very own share of the profits?
Early IIs retained the unique Avanti’s modified Lark convertible body, however Studebaker V-8s had been gone by the point Newman and Altman started, in order that they adopted Studebaker’s own lead by adopting the identical 327-cubic-inch Chevrolet small-block in 300-horsepower Corvette tune.
Spot on with this write-up, I absolutely believe that this amazing site needs a great deal more attention. I’ll probably be back again to read through more, thanks for the information.
Why visitors still use to read news papers when in this technological globe the whole thing is presented on net?|
It’s hard to find well-informed people on this topic, but you seem like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
You’re so interesting! I don’t think I’ve read anything like that before. So wonderful to find another person with a few genuine thoughts on this subject matter. Really.. thanks for starting this up. This website is one thing that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality.
At this time, spray paint comes in enamels, stains, flats and glossies, and there are varieties designed for nearly any surface, together with wooden, metal, glass, plastic and masonry.
You’re so cool! I do not suppose I’ve truly read a single thing like that before. So wonderful to find another person with some original thoughts on this issue. Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This site is something that is required on the internet, someone with a little originality.
The corporate announced it might make major investments in its U.S.
However, according to Caixin, although the exchange officially announced that it would no longer set up an office in Mainland China, it still has a large number of R&D staff working in the region, including engineers, who continue to work for OKX in the form of third-party outsourcing companies.
It’s gone by way of a number of renovations and is at present the home of Governor J.B.
After doing this then look and compare all the other risk adjusted performance measures and further refine your selection.
Having read this I thought it was very informative. I appreciate you finding the time and effort to put this information together. I once again find myself spending a lot of time both reading and commenting. But so what, it was still worthwhile.
So before finalyzing the decor theme verify which will suits your poersonality.
Even if you don’t end up having to tap into that nest egg, you’ll be glad you have it in case an emergency comes up.
You really make it appear so easy with your presentation but I in finding this topic to be really something that I believe I’d by no means understand. It sort of feels too complex and extremely wide for me. I am looking forward on your next publish, I’ll attempt to get the hold of it!|
Everything is very open with a really clear description of the issues. It was truly informative. Your website is very useful. Thanks for sharing!
I’d like to thank you for the efforts you have put in writing this blog. I am hoping to check out the same high-grade blog posts from you later on as well. In fact, your creative writing abilities has motivated me to get my own, personal site now 😉
It’s nearly impossible to find educated people on this subject, however, you sound like you know what you’re talking about! Thanks
Additionally, the development these days has turn out to be to go for international locations and worldwide financial centers so that the enterprise is promoted to a large extent.
This bath’s design is unusually dynamic due to the sequence of repeated curves and squares balancing one another.
Ohno’s insights, though, are real, and are available both from his successes (he was a state champion swimmer at 13, and a nationwide speedskating champ at 14) and his failures.
pokra?ovat v tom, abyste vedli ostatní.|Byl jsem velmi š?astný, že jsem objevil tuto webovou stránku. Musím vám pod?kovat za váš ?as
In response to the Non-League Paper, Lawrie Sanchez, Nigel Worthington, Gary Waddock, Mickey Adams and John Askey were additionally in contention for the put up at Silverlake Stadium.” There may be an attention-grabbing article on Lincoln Vital Soccer which tells us what we had suspected; Alty have had a tough fixture record initially of this campaigmn. It says “So Who Has Had The Hardest Start?