A Small Affair

This spring marked the one hundred and eighty-third anniversary of the Battle of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. That grisly event saw the demise of some six hundred Mexican troops and two hundred Texians, including one David Crockett, the forty-nine-year-old backwoodsman and former congressman from Tennessee. To those of us who’d caught Davy Crockett fever as kids in the 1950s, the Alamo was above all the place where the “King of the Wild Frontier” met his fighting end. At that small mission in a riparian outpost on the Texas savannah, Davy stopped living the American Dream.

Our hero of a young nation, as played in the Disney mini-series by Fess Parker in coonskin cap and homespun breeches, had gone to Texas after opposing Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. We kids who re-enacted his wild life on our suburban lawns and sidewalks didn’t know that about Davy yet, but we still grew up wanting to be him.

Maybe that urge played some part in my wanting to be a wilderness guide when I left high school. There were unseen sights and unknown rivers still to run, places even Davy had never gone.

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In 2014, I was asked to speak at the one hundred and sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Texas Grain and Feed Association in San Antonio. TGFA was looking for a river-related theme for their yearly convention, to help celebrate the city’s revitalized downtown along the river.

Ben Boerner, TGFA’s president at the time, had found my website online and read about my essay collection Reading Water: Lessons from the River. One night he emailed me after midnight; I rose early as usual and saw his friendly, insomniac’s message waiting in my inbox. He’d been pondering the idea of the river as teacher. Could it help us learn how to solve some of the challenges plaguing grain and feed growers — drought, economic downturns, mounting competition with other industries for water, energy, and beneficial legislation?

I demurred. Yes, I knew rivers, but what did I know of grain and feed? My agricultural career had consisted mostly of creek-related meetings with vintners and grape growers in the Sonoma Valley. True, I had shown up one day in the 1970s to pick daffodils at a farm in Humboldt County, but it was backbreaking labor and I hadn’t gone back. And, true, I’d planted more than one garden in California and Oregon, but I’d left them in the care of more devoted green-thumbers when river season came around.

Wouldn’t I be an impostor, speaking to men and women who’d grown up farming? Wouldn’t they see right through me — they who’d been raised supplying grain to ranches in and around Texas?

“Just talk to us about the river,” Ben said. “Tell us about some lessons you learned there.”

He understood my background as an environmentalist. He said that it might not matter, as long as I didn’t get into too many metaphors and literary references. If I did that, he said, my audience might head for the bar.

“If they do,” I emailed, “I’ll join them.”

He shot back a quick reply. “You’re hired.”

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Planning a visit to San Antonio renewed my interest in Davy. I hadn’t thought about him for many years, but as the TGFA conference approached, I started gathering all the reading material I could about him. A lot had come to light in the years since I’d venerated him daily. I couldn’t wait to get to the Alamo and read the latest information. The evening I arrived from California, I ducked out of happy hour to hurry down the long city blocks to where the old mission stood. I speed-walked the half-mile or so in the humid San Antone evening.

A celebration called Fiesta Month had begun in a plaza near the placid grounds of the historic battle. Crowds had gathered around food trucks and souvenir booths. Folks sat eating popcorn and hotdogs at the foot of the imposing marble memorial to the Alamo’s fallen defenders. As I stared at a carved, stone version of Davy, a US Air Force band entertained with covers of oldies. With “play that funky music ’til you die” and other directives to some “white boy” filling the air, I crossed the street to the Alamo.

The museum was already closed for the evening. I opted for circumnavigating the city block around the grounds. They were so small. The plastered, perimeter walls were no grander or higher than those surrounding today’s single-family adobes in towns like Santa Fe and Tucson. Still, the reconstructed, modern-day border was far more protection than had stood between the two opposing forces in March 1836: two hundred Texian combatants and fifteen hundred Mexican troops. During the weeklong siege, most of the slaughter occurred in the ninety-minute battle on March 6, when Santa Anna’s forces stormed the walls.

This tiny piece of open country was where our beloved Tennessean had breathed his last? What about this land they were defending had spoken to him so?

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As Ben and I corresponded, we stayed away from politics. Clearly I was a left-leaning liberal; he was an avowed conservative man. How to write a speech that didn’t put this bridge-builder at risk for hiring me? I’d have to reach across barriers myself. TGFA consisted of sophisticated family farmers and road-wise product vendors who had likely heard it all. As I researched them, I learned that some of the challenges the association was facing were familiar to those in arid California. The environment for grain production in Texas had long been too harsh and too dry. TGFA’s members, mostly family-owned businesses, had been grappling with the changing climate head-on, everyday, for years. Tornadoes were becoming more frequent. Precipitation had grown far less predictable. Temperature highs were soaring.

Ben’s people were facing harsher weather patterns in an already harsh regime. The farmers watched their resources dwindle and fought to stay in business despite competition with industries like oil and housing. Every year meant tougher conditions in an already trying growing regime.

As a former river guide and wilderness lover, I preferred to see water stay in its natural settings, nurturing fish and stream plants and waterfowl. They were communities whose needs were growing, too. How could I truthfully turn my focus toward the farmer’s woes?

I knew not to ask Ben too many questions. If I was supposedly so wise about the river, it was up to me to find what it brought to bear on the men and women of TGFA. I knuckled down and worked on my talk.

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The United States wasn’t behind the Texians’ stand against Mexico. The states had a treaty with our southern neighbor that precluded acts of war. The defenders of the Alamo had expected to be but were not reinforced by the surrounding communities. Davy and the others who chose to stand against terrific odds were called “freedom fighters,” but were mostly acting on behalf of a faction of Americans who wanted to settle in Texas.

“He was an opportunist,” my brother Jon, with a grim look, once said about my hero.

Davy had ridden from Tennessee to Texas to get in on the new frontier. Things in the states were getting too civilized — plus there was the murderous Jackson. Davy had famously said, when he wasn’t re-elected to Congress, “I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done; but if not, they might go to hell, and I would go to Texas.” He would start over down in the oak woodlands of the Hill Country.

He was a mixed figure, of course. He had (1) very nearly single-handedly cleared the nation’s forests of black bears (preferring to supply the men fighting the “Indian Wars” over playing a killing part), and (2) ended up at the Alamo mostly by chance rather than design. Parts of his story still inspire me, but most of what I admire in him is revisionist and impossible to justify through today’s lens.

And Jon put it this way: “Crockett and a lot of those guys were after land they thought could be easily taken from Mexico.”

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The morning of my mid-April presentation to TGFA dawned hot and grew hotter. I spent the early hours along the river, as I knew that walking there later might be too sweltering and crowded. The River Walk felt a bit like Disneyland, another built environment where visitors take refuge from the heat on artificial waterways. As I strolled the asphalt walk along cement-walled streambanks, I thought of the Pirates of the Caribbean cruise or Blue Bayou or Tom Sawyer’s boat ride.

River Walk had the same artful street signs. Bougainvillea hung in decorative baskets. A dewy feeling hovered over the fountains and hosed sidewalks. Gondola-like boats cruised shops and restaurants. You could stroll streamside walkways and sit on shaded patios and in misted bistros for hours, escaping the Texas sun.

Later, in the convention hall, I was given a place near the front of the room, at the VIP table. There I met TGFA’s officers and Jack Goldfield, the day’s Lone Star Award Winner. Jack and his family were long-time supporters of TGFA; he personally was honored that day as a standout in the agricultural feed business.

Ben stood up to introduce me. He read the words I’d given him, saying I knew less about grain and feed than anyone else in the room. Still, he said, I literally wrote a book subtitled “Lessons from the River.” A stream geologist and former Colorado River guide, I’ve spent my career studying rivers and how they relate to the flow of life.

I began my presentation. Purposefully, I did not bring slides. Sure, I could dazzle with photos of deep canyons and aqua streams, but I wanted to look these people in the eye and deliver the river’s message from the heart. I’d learned from Ben that TGFA had been suffering some internal strife over the past year, as all organizations do. There were competing factions in the crowd.

“The river is a tough place,” I said. “The heat and high water and remoteness are always trying to kill you.”

In the far left corner, a handful of women huddled together, giggling at a table. Ben wore a concerned look from his place among his family on the opposite side of the room.

I pushed on: the river team consists of a leader rowing the first boat and a sweep boat in the rear that carries emergency supplies and a satellite radio. There are three or four boats in the middle, all with solid crew, with one of them responsible for the beer and ice.

“You really want to keep the boatman with the cooler on your good side,” I said.

Ben relaxed a little as people chuckled. The women I now suspected to be drunk hadn’t missed a beat laughing behind their hands at their own private jokes. Or at me. The eyes of the people at the VIP table, though — especially Jack’s — were fastened on mine.

“You have to go with the flow,” I said. “You have to work together to get through the tough passages. We all have our stories of what it means to work together and play your parts, like guides on a river trip.”

People’s stories usually recalled what got them downstream, I said. They were stories about survival. Immediately Jack raised his hand.

He stood and, eyes still on mine, said he’d been a pilot in the Vietnam War. He’d made many dangerous flights over deep jungles and strange country. It was often terrifying, and it was extremely difficult work. It was easy to lose your way. At the end of each foray, though, if he’d done things right, his flight concluded near a river. The shining water was the signal he was approaching base. The river told him he’d lived another day, that he and his crew were safe. He’d never forget the sight.

The women in the corner stopped giggling. The crowd stood to applaud Jack’s sharing and then turned to me, still clapping. I glanced at Ben, who had a big smile on his face. His anxiety was gone. He looked proud — and perhaps a little like, “I knew this would work.”

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The new sources of information that have come out about Davy in the five decades since the Disney mini-series include the discovery and translation of a diary kept by a soldier who fought in the Mexican army. José Enrique de la Peña recorded his own observations about General Santa Anna’s campaign to drive Texians from Mexican-ruled land. The diary has been analyzed and proven authentic to the era. Pages of it are on display online at the Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

The de la Peña diary notes that Davy and a few others actually survived the thirteen-day siege and battle of the Alamo. The diary claims that seven or so men surrendered and were put to death soon afterward, although they were unarmed. That claim corroborates both Sam Houston’s account of the battle (though he hadn’t been part of it) and the notes of Santa Anna’s own personal secretary. It has been said that such accounts, which elevated the already-popular Davy as an even more heroic figure, were written mostly by Santa Anna’s detractors. Other historians doubt that de la Peña could have accurately distinguished any of the frontiersman who fought at the Alamo, as he claimed.

From the Alamo exhibits, I learned that even that small outpost had its river story, as enacted in a reprisal to Mexico:

After the battle — which Santa Anna described as “a small affair” — Mexican troops continued their march to the Texian settlements while rebel forces retreated toward Louisiana.

By April 21, Texian General Sam Houston noticed Santa Anna had split his forces and backed himself into a corner along Buffalo Bayou near present-day Houston. Houston seized the opportunity and attacked, surprising the larger Mexican force. In a bloody, eighteen-minute battle, Texian forces defeated the Mexican troops, captured Santa Anna, and achieved independence to the cries of “Remember the Alamo!”

That battle was called San Jacinto, for the river along which the forces clashed. It was a vulnerable location to fight, exposed and marshy. Colonel Pedro Delgado, one of Santa Anna’s officers, claimed, “… the camping ground of His Excellency’s selection was in all respects against military rules. Any youngster would have done better.”

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My trip to Texas ended much more happily than Davy’s. Ben wrote me this in an email the week after the convention:

“I have always believed God has a way of putting people together for a reason and this time it looked pretty obvious!! It all came together, and your thoughtful ending was the final note for a year that we all struggled with — we all left San Antonio and our year on a high note! Please stay in touch and see you next time!”

Ben also told me the disagreements among members of TGFA were much greater than he’d let on before the conference. The factionalization he’d referred to had in fact threatened to tear apart the organization. What a relief that their land-based worlds and my river-based philosophies had united in historic San Antone.

Sadly, Ben died of heart attack only months later. I was living in Canada and out of touch with most people back home. Only as I write this have I learned belatedly of his passing. TGFA’s new president, Tara Arthro, wrote me back after I offered my much-overdue condolences. Ben’s death had been “very sudden and we struggled to transition ‘smoothly,’ but we made it through …” Three years into the job, she’s got her feet under her and writes, with enthusiasm that might have come from Ben himself, “We’re on to the next challenge!”

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Not even Davy’s storied presence could carry the day in Texas in 1836. Fighting over ground we considered “ours” proved costly, inconclusive, and divisive. The implications carry on to this day; battles over arid lands may be more heated and fully felt than those where water and resources are less scarce. The Alamo’s example has its lessons, no different from the river’s, or Jack’s, Ben’s, and Tara’s: we’re in this together. Building bridges and finding what unites us sure beats building and fighting over walls.

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Fluvial geologist and former Colorado River guide Rebecca Lawton is the author of The Oasis This Time: Living and Dying with Water in the West (Torrey House Press, 2019) and other books. She directs PLAYA, a residency program for artists and scientists in the Oregon Outback. Find her at beccalawton.com.