From A Half Mile Back By J.M. Stevens I returned to the place of my youth recently, for a High School reunion, and from that came the column on South Padre Island . As you all know, the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas is a world apart, a spot unlike any other I have ever visited.
Lush vegetation exists in a region of little rain.
Very little of the original biome still exists. Most of the landscape has been scraped clean and planted to crops desired by humans. I was fortunate. Near my home, there existed the Arroyo Colorado River . As a child, it was my playland, a place of mesquite and cactus, every plant with thorns or some other means of hurting you.