On the first night, Fernando introduced me to Ty Stonecipher, a resource and environmental science graduate student at Texas State and environmental interpreter at the Texas State Meadows Center. Stonecipher has an extensive knowledge of all things Texas and is an experienced tour guide at various wildlife attractions around San Marcos, including the Meadows Center and Wonder World Cave Park. Stonecipher’s expertise and charming wit was refreshingly fun — and even helped me learn a few things.
The next few days were spent exploring some of the natural attractions across San Marcos. On Monday we brought tubes and beer down to the river and floated for an hour or two. It reminded me of floating on the Chattahoochee River, except there was a larger variety of wild animals running around along the way. Near the start, someone spotted a water moccasin swimming along the shore and further down a raccoon swam across the river directly in front of us as we drifted.
Anytime someone saw something that they didn’t recognize or just couldn’t remember they would say something like, “Wait where’s Ty? He would know.”
Fernando asked if the water moccasins were poisonous snakes, and Stonecipher explained that they were venomous. “Venom has to be injected. Poison is ingested,” he said.
We spent a good portion of the day gathering materials and trying to coordinate where to meet before we finally made it to the river. I laid back in a tube, put my feet in the water and watched the sun go down over us with a cigarette and a cheap beer in my hand.
“The river is an integral part of the town,” Stonecipher said. “Everyone interacts with it in one way or another. Whether it is tubing, fishing, canoeing, kayaking, stand-up paddle boarding, snorkeling, scuba diving, free diving, swimming, grilling, chilling or even commuting to work on it — everyone loves that river. It is one of the cleanest in Texas.”
The river isn’t just a fun place to cool off, its a natural and cultural mainstay that affects all aspects of the San Marcos community.
“Even people who don’t visit the river or swim in it are affected. This area is the flash flood capital of the United States. All of the rain that falls to the west in the hill country gets channelized by the hills and valleys and washes down through town.”
Near the end of our float we came up to some small rapids that were basically a natural waterslide built into the river. Each member of the five people we had tied together in our group of rafts detached themselves from the circle one by one as we got closer and closer to the initial drop.
I decided to hang on and give it a go — because screw it, why not? I stayed attached to the only other one of Fernando’s friends who decided to head down in tandem along with the cooler and our plastic bag full of cigarettes, instead of going rogue. We braced ourselves before the drop and almost hit a meandering child who ducked out of the way just in time.
I held on tight and tried not to lose my hat as we struck the water. The wave from the impact went completely over my head. When I turned around Rachel was treading water alongside her raft with the cooler floating upside down and other random objects we had failed to hold onto spread out across the river. It looked like we were in a combat boat during Vietnam and someone hiding in the trees just hit us with a with a rocket propelled grenade.
When we found some footing on shore, everyone was spread out across the area. No one had their phones so it took some time before we managed to regroup and drag our scattered belongings into a heap so we could go find the cars.
The sun had just fallen beneath the horizon once we got back to Fernando’s car and it seemed like a fitting way to end that particular adventure. Then, it was time to shower and prepare for a night of excessive drinking and merriment until the next excursion.
