ROUGH WATER
We drive up the canyon into a thunderstorm, a bank of cobalt clouds lying over the mountains and grumbling. The road veers from the interstate amid scrubby, high-desert juniper forest and hillsides scored with red bluffs, then traverses the village of Pecos, which doesn’t roll out a lot of fanfare for visitors; just a couple of gas stations and one spot to snag a decent burrito. Outside town, the road swivels up the Pecos River canyon, cut into the southern edge of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains as they run themselves out in New Mexico. The yellow center lines are mostly worn through, then disappear entirely near Tererro, which used to have a convenience store but now just has a big, spray-painted plywood sign that declares, “Closed.”
Along the way, the Pecos River dips in and out of view. The canyon bottom is a patchwork of private cabins and public land. In some places, people can snug a vehicle onto the shoulder, hop the guardrail, and step into the river in moments. But barbed-wire fences, “No Trespassing,” and “No Hunting or Fishing” signs also rim the road for long stretches. Some strings of barbed wire cross the river or are replaced with thick cables hung with “No Trespassing” signs, one dipping low enough to tilt in the current.
As soon as Garrett VeneKlasen and I left Pecos, VeneKlasen started pointing out places he’d fished as a kid five decades ago, but where fences or locked gates have since barred entry. “We always talk about this idea of them being rivers and waterways, but there’s no difference in my mind between them being rivers and BLM land,” said VeneKlasen, who dismayed his parents by using his college degree to work in fly shops and guide fishing trips, often internationally. When development erased some beloved destinations, he saw just how quickly a place can be lost, and turned to conservation work, currently with New Mexico Wild. “It’s a dangerous mistake to assume that just because the land is wet, it means something different. It’s one and the same—it’s public property. It’s actually the dirt under the water that’s the real question.”
“IT’S A DANGEROUS MISTAKE TO ASSUME THAT JUST BECAUSE THE LAND IS WET, IT MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT. IT’S ONE AND THE SAME—IT’S PUBLIC PROPERTY.”
That question is now headed to New Mexico’s Supreme Court. The West is no stranger to this debate—over who has a right to fish where. State laws vary widely about how to handle public access to streams and rivers, and whether the public property of the water itself and the fish swimming in it make the ground beneath it public as well. These
