The Gila

View from the river

The Gila

Going home

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

 

             Grandma Lewis was sitting against the river bank just 15 feet downstream from me.

It was in the days before a drivers license when I would gladly walk two miles in order to drive two hundred yards. We had driven from Aunt Ellen’s house not a quarter mile away and Grandma had called a halt to try our luck. We carried our rods, a stringer, and a can of worms to the river’s edge. She declared we would fish right where we hit the water. I had disagreed with her expectation any fish would be there. There was no hole and the water was running swiftly against the bank under the alders and cottonwoods.

She baited her hook and stripped the old style Dacron line from her old casting reel with its steel rod and ran her baited hook right down against the bank. I did one better and cast my Zebco 33 with its Heddon fiberglass rod out into the middle of the riffle. I expected it to be a futile wait, but, within a minute, Grandma hooked the first of two catfish she snaked out from against the bank.

I never got a bite.

Within 15 minutes, she struggled to her feet and declared we would move. At the next spot where the river was again cutting under the trees, she caught another fish within minutes.

I never got a bite.

With the next move, I was convinced she had some trick that was worth learning. It took awhile, but she caught another fish, and, if memory serves me correctly, it was the best of the four. She declared we had enough fish “for a mess” and it was time to go.

“Go?”

I followed her on our backtrack watching her walk in her normal attire of long sleeved dress, hose, and those sturdy laced black shoes with a medium heel. She walked in stooped fashion with her head and shoulders completely covered under a big bonnet. We got to the pickup parked just south from the old steel bridge, and, shortly, we were back in Aunt Ellen’s front yard.

“That didn’t take long,” Nana observed.

“Looks like we’ll fry fish,” Aunt Ellen followed.

“Nothing like fresh catfish”, their mother, the fisherman, Grandma Lewis, concluded, but … I wasn’t sure I had even gotten to drive much less to fish.

 The Gila 

 If there is a worldly place called home, it is Cliff and the Gila River. It was there I lived in my early childhood and it remains to this day a tugging draw on my life. So many enduring memories centered on “the river”. Christmas, Easter, weekends, summer, and every opportunity to be there was the normal routine. Nana got to the point of asking me just to come in the house to visit, but my interest was mostly outside.

Each year ushered an expanded horizon of the river and its watershed. Now, generations removed from those childhood days, the upper Gila serves as the foundation of my life. From the headwaters to just above the lower Redrock box, the smells and the feel of the river are locked within me.

It is interesting what you remember.

At the extreme headwaters of the Gila River under the northwest slope of Mogollon Baldy, two things come to mind. The first was the gurgling little trickle of water and my intention to get off and get a drink. The second was the pair of mule deer bucks that we jumped simultaneously. One stands out with a peculiar growth on his neck much akin to a waddle cut in an old Texas steer. As he tilted away, it bounced with his movement. The bucks were in velvet.

The entire upper basin from that point is shrouded in past wilderness glory. The no graze, no logging, no thinning, no control burning, and no nothing management of the commons doctrine of the United States Forest Service has resulted in tree growth regimes 50’ in the air and or scolding burns that leaves fragile alpine soils void of organic material. Havoc has been wreaked in the relic stands of fir and spruce and the presence of the wolf-dog hybrids howling is subsidized by truckloads of horse meat sausages hauled across the border from Mexico.

Memories of what it was, therefore … are important.

A trip down river memory lane

The feel of 1200 pounds of erupting horse from a shot of adrenaline inevitably sends a similar surge of same stuff through the rider.

That was what I felt the day Hugh and I were coming off Cub Creek Mesa into White Creek and Ron White came loping out of the timber from of miles of nowhere yelling, “Hello, boys!”.

He found it humorous as we fought to keep our seats. Alone, we would have cussed. With other riders, it was obligatory cheerfulness and friendly exchanges. We fished together that evening and fried trout for supper at the cabin. Our horses ate together in the big stanchion in the corral and were turned out into the trap for the night. Many other nights were spent similarly at that place.

The falls below the cabin were always good for enough fish for supper. They weren’t big, but the trout at the mouth of McKenna Creek on below were the stuff of legend. Hugh and I were in the water when one came up through the current by us that looked bigger than anybody would believe. We, alone, will bear witness to what we saw.

The group of Coues bucks alongside the trail in Hell’s Hole was no different. They stood in a tangle of horns that were simply magnificent. The morning sun made those eyes and horns gleam in brilliance.

The long stretch of bottom below Hell’s Hole was usually spent in serious travel. Hugh could lift Snooper into a collected canter and the mules would never break out of trot. We would alternate back to a trot to a walk and back into the canter and cover miles in a hurry. We stopped to drink when the horses wanted to stop and drink. We never took a lunch. We ate and drank when the horses ate and drank.

At Gila Center we grew from boys into young men. We were introduced to many things by Tuffy Nunn.

Below the forks, we were again horseback. Alum Camp was a landmark along with the last of the Wilderness residents, the George brothers, Marion and Delbert. They rode good horses and one in particular, the line back dun gelding, was the object of serious claims. The day Hugh and I found Marion dead immediately broke into an active debate on who would take the horse. That was cut short when Marion came to and spit flies out of his open mouth.

The corral at the trail head going out onto Granny Mountain was the next landmark. Dusty and I camped there when we hunted Granny. We had been successful like we were in other places along the river trail and the immense drainage.

The Sapillo and the drift fence across the river were the next points of reference. The story of the cowboy riding north from Cliff on a moonless night reaching out to open the gate only to grab the hand of another cowboy riding south reaching for the same gate always makes me smile.

Hugh and I spent a sleepless night near there on a sandbar under a pack tarp. It rained all night and we were cold and wet. We hustled on down the river because Hugh had to report to his first day of classes at NMSU. Our lives were never the same.

From there south to the mouth of Turkey Creek was historic Shelley country. That “First Family of American Wilderness” modern day patriarch, Terrell Shelley, talks about how a single man could work that whole stretch of country by himself. The river bottom is narrow enough and the watershed out of the bottom is so rough, the cattle could be picked up and would drift down the river by the presence of the man and his voice.

I only made the ride from the mouth of Turkey Creek on into the Cliff Valley and civilization one time. That was the day I rode from Little Creek Cabin to my grandparents on Bell Canyon. It was just me and that grand old red mule, Red.

The valley at Cliff was a wondrous place, but the most interesting treks of river adventures continued from the mouth of the Mangus south through the Gila Box to Redrock. Nana talked about riding to Redrock for dances. They’d dance all night and then ride home the next morning to do chores. Those who know the immensity of such a trek can’t fathom that ride today.

The Gila Box had a mystique all its own. So many days were spent hunting and fishing with Uncle Hap. Great places like Telegraph and Foxtail, Moonhull and Davis, and the Fairground were made for the imagination of young cowboys.

Older cowboys, too, were drawn to the life’s work of legends of that country. We loved Tom and Marie McCauley and the water system development by Fred McCauley was the foundation of my own efforts in water development.

Epilogue

At the end of Anderson Road just above the lower Redrock Box, is the home of the departed ranchers, Charlie and Ruth Anderson.  It was there, just before Ruth’s death, that Walt showed me the museum room in their home. We looked at pictures, old spurs, books, and ranching paraphernalia for part of an afternoon. I had never been in that house or in that room. Many of the names were familiar, some of the stories known, but I was home. That was revealed in more familiar terms when we stepped outside. We could hear the river to the north and we could smell that smell that makes the Gila so distinctive.

Indeed, the Gila tugs at me and part of me will be there … forever.

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “The management of the Gila lands is infinitely more interesting where people staked their lives and put themselves at risk … their life work is also more enduring.”