I notice that apart from the occasional algae and maybe a little moss, there’s no life here. No vegetation has laid claim to the canyon’s floor, and no animals seem to be around, either. Just like the population that lives near the river, nature is getting a chance to start over in this canyon. The slate has been wiped clean, so to speak, and now we’ll get a chance to see the exact process that nature follows to populate new ground. There’s so much potential here, in the face of so much destruction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls the area, has closed the canyon to the general public until it can decide what its long-term plans for it are. It will most likely become a restricted nature preserve, like Honey Creek near Guadalupe River state park, accessible only with a guide. As I scale another sheer cliff of loose rock, I can see why this is a necessary step.
Water is absolutely amazing. What other force could bring about so much destruction, yet leave such astonishing beauty in its wake? Growing up, I felt a bond with the river – I spent countless summer days fishing on its banks, or swimming around with my friends looking for crawfish under the rocks that littered its bed. Even today, I can tell you exactly what the contours of the riverbed look like from my house upstream to Canyon Dam. The Guadalupe was more than a home to me – it was a friend, a companion, a refuge from the worries of the rest of the world. I knew that I was lucky to live there, and enjoyed every moment. When I came back from Montana last summer in a pouring rainstorm at the end of June, all I wanted to do was come home so I could watch the fireflies, meet my old neighbors at the annual Fourth of July party, and eat barbecue and shoot off fireworks in the soft, silver-blue light of early evening as the fog rolled off the river. Instead, my family was ordered, along with the rest of the neighborhood, to evacuate on July 4. I went to sleep that night knowing that water was coming over the spillway, listening to the sounds of a violent thunderstorm, and hoping for the best. Not only did I not get my barbecue, I missed out on my fireworks, the fireflies, my neighbors, and everything else that I value about summer evenings on the river’s banks. And when I saw the river 6 feet high in my house, I didn’t know what to believe. How could the bubbling childhood companion that was such an important part of my life do this to me? What the hell is going on?
As I continue my trek down the canyon and across another ledge near the halfway point, I look down and see a hundred foot long pool of emerald water, probably 20 feet deep, shining in the seclusion of the canyon like an oversized jewel. In one end, the walls are curved inward toward the top, creating a small cave-like indention just big enough for a person to stand in. As the wind ripples the water’s surface, reflections of the sun scatter across the roof of the cave, the same way they scatter across the roof of my room in late afternoon, when the sun reaches the right point in the sky and bounces its rays off the river and through my window. It is a comforting sight, one that reminds me that the beauty that was swept out of my mind by muddy brown floodwaters last summer is still there, and in fact, has been there all along.
It is not long before I reach the bottom of the canyon, where I can see the huge earthen berm that forms the new bridge on South Access Rd. The road was reopened only 2 weeks ago, and traffic slows to a crawl as drivers crane their necks to see the new canyon that they’ve been hearing about. I just smile and begin my climb back to the top, happy once again to call Canyon Lake my home.
