Water Rats
Freelance writer and former Texas Monthly intern Stayton Bonner, assistant managing editor Stacy Hollister, editorial director Christopher Keyes, and new-media director Charlie Llewellin talk about exploring the state’s rivers for this month’s cover story.
texasmonthly.com: Where did the idea for a cover story on rivers originate?
Stayton Bonner: I don’t know.
Stacy Hollister: Well, I’m not too sure about the particulars (although I’d bet much of the credit goes to outdoorsman–editorial director Christopher Keyes), but service pieces are a big part of what we do around here, with get-out-and-explore-the-outdoors pieces being one of our biggest themes.
Christopher Keyes: Everyone knows how brutal the Texas summer can be, but if you look at a map of the state, where more than twenty rivers thread the landscape, you can start to imagine the place as a giant water park. We thought a feature story on rivers would offer great ways to escape the heat while exploring the state in June, July, and August.
Charlie Llewellin: I think it was [editorial director] Chris Keyes’ idea or maybe it was [editor] Evan Smith’s idea. The state parks story was well received, and prior to that, the “Escape!” and “Jump in!” cover stories. This just seemed like a good extension of that franchise.
texasmonthly.com: How did you end up picking the particular rivers that you wrote about?
SB: I picked the tubing rivers according to their overall popularity and the Pedernales because it’s off the beaten track. I selected the fly-fishing rivers because they’re also popular destinations and have good public access points.
SH: First off, we had to narrow our list. We took our cues from the Texas Monthly staff members, who had suggested many great ways to have fun on Texas’s rivers, and from the mounds of research we had compiled. Once we had our finalists, we divided up the state and each took a region to “report.”
CK: We thought less about specific rivers and more about activities—where are the best places to fish, which waterways have great rapids, where can you put your tube in and just float? Once we had a list of things to do, we simply picked the best twenty adventures we had.
CL: Chris and I talked about it a lot and came up with the list. We wanted to make sure that we covered the state and not give too much prominence to the Hill Country, which has some of the most famous rivers—the Guadalupe and the Frio are so classic. We also wanted to make sure that a full range of activities was covered. But in the end, that’s a little artificial, since you can basically fish where you can kayak or tube. And you know, I was in a Wal-Mart in East Texas getting a flat fixed, talking to the mechanics, and one guy told me about this trip on the Neches that he does every year with his buddies. Every Texas river has its charms, and people have their favorite rivers, their places to go. This is such a small sample.
texasmonthly.com: How much time did you spend working on this story?
SB: Days and days of fun research.
SH: Well, if you call swimming and picnicking and boating and lounging about in a cabin “work,” then I got to spread my “work” out over a couple of months.
CK: I suppose you could say a year. We started planning this series of stories in the spring of 2004.
CL: Well, I talked on the phone to lots of people, getting ideas, then did the Sabine trip in January at the same time as I did the reporting for the issue on drives. I had gone fishing down the Colorado, east of Austin, a couple of years ago when I did a fly-fishing piece and have always wanted to write about that stretch of the river. I live right by there, in Manor, so it is home turf for me. And I have been to Colorado Bend many times. The others I did in a long weekend, driving all across the state.
texasmonthly.com: How much research did you do before going out to the rivers?
SB: A pretty good amount. In addition to some Internet surfing, I read Ben Nolen and Bob Narramore’s guidebook River and Rapids, as well as the Texas Hill Country Fly Fishing Guide.
SH: A lot of the research came via word-of-mouth recommendations. Everyone seems to have his or her favorite nook and cranny on one of Texas’s rivers. When you couple that with everyone’s favorite ways to enjoy those nooks and crannies, you find yourself with a lot of “research.” And Texas is a much-explored place, so we supplemented the personal recommendations with the written ones from magazines, newspapers, books, outfitters, and the like.
CL: Oh, tons—asking people, reading stuff, researching online.
texasmonthly.com: What had been your experience with rivers before this?
SB: I’ve been tubing since I started drinking beer and fly-fishing since I could throw a line.
SH: Mostly as a summertime river rat—lots of tubing and a good bit of swimming on the Hill Country rivers.
CK: I grew up in Oregon and spent a few summers as a fly-fishing guide on the Deschutes River. I’ve taken rafting trips all over the West: the Green River in Utah, the Middle Fork of the Salmon in Idaho, and the Snake River in Wyoming. There is really no better way to spend a summer vacation than floating through a great western canyon.
CL: I fell in one once. That’s a joke. I grew up by a river, but a big one, an estuary, and we would go fishing and sailing all the time.
texasmonthly.com: What’s your favorite thing to do on a river? Why?
SB: Fly-fishing. It puts my mind at peace.
SH: Tubing—I think it suits my inner bum.
CK: I love to fly-fish, but really I could care less about catching anything. The attraction is the peace of being on a river and what you see and hear around you.
CL: Apart from just floating? I think kayaking. You can relax, but you can explore too. And you can go into secret places.
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