Dark Water

As the Alumacraft crossed into the realm of Pasadena we seemed to be leaving the merely foul outer layers of hell and entering the Malebolge, where the damned are stewed in "pungent sauces," hurled into rivers of boiling tar, set ablaze by oil fires and punished with rashes. "It's grosser than I thought it would be," Helm said.

At the Washburn Tunnel we skated waters that had at one time been purged of fish for miles. In 1992, Mobil Mining and Minerals Company poisoned them with phosphoric acid and hydrated gypsum. Just downstream a fire last year at Superior Packing and Distribution released sodium hydroxide, ash and oil drilling mud into Hunting Bayou, prompting local officials to prohibit people from even touching it -- the first time they'd done such a thing in 20 years. And less than two miles down at Green's Bayou the contractors Williams Brothers dumped concrete and oil sludge into the water in 2002, then struck a deal with District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal to avoid conviction. Near the bayou's mouth rocks on the shore were still black. Helm spotted sea roaches.

The miles passed and the clock drew toward 5 p.m. and the trash grew to tricycles and televisions, the wake to graybeards.

The Coast Guard called. "We're kind of concerned for your safety because this is an industrial area," the captain said. Vessels much larger than barges were fast approaching, he added. "One of them draws 39 feet of water, so it's going to be throwing you around a lot."

We were exhausted but were suddenly paddling like crazy.

A half hour later we shoaled up to a beach under the span of Beltway 8 and dragged the boats into a flock of gulls just as the first cargo ship passed and sucked the water out like a giant wet vac. A comber thrust back up the foreshore. The swash rolled the sand with dozens of mud balls that looked like huge eggs from a vestigial elephant bird.

We'd reached the overgrown munitions dump and we searched for a campsite. As Helm scouted by kayak just downriver, I climbed a dirt bluff to cast about for a dry spot. Halfway up I noticed I was standing on a car-sized mound that was a fire ant pile. I bolted uphill furiously slapping my ankles and crashed into a brake where mosquitoes set upon me. After a moment Helm returned and led us under the bridge to a beach across from the Shell Oil refinery. "The approach is kind of disgusting," he said as we scrambled landward over dense wrack. "Once you get there it's all right."

The Coast Guard had never said we could camp here, or that we couldn't. I left a message that we'd pulled out and hoped they wouldn't call back. On the rise near the water where we'd stopped, Helm was stringing a jungle hammock from the thorny trunk of a prickly ash. He cut his finger. Kramer laid out a tent nearby amid Japanese yaupon and hackberry. Two armadillos ran up to him like they'd never seen a human, tussled playfully, and loped off again.

"I bet nobody ever comes out here," Helm said. "That's awesome."

No toilets or water spigots were around. (Hoping to avoid the fate of early settlers who succumbed to fevers, I visited the Water Purification Center at REI on Westheimer. A salesman claimed a $70 Hiker Pro water filter would render the dirtiest slop potable. "It's going to kill everything," he'd said. But apprised of our destination, he paused nervously, halfheartedly pitched the $145 MSR WaterWorks ES and finally conceded that I'd best lug in a few jugs from civilization).

A kitchen was assembled on the beach from the bounty of detritus. Helm laid a slab of plywood across a Dean Foods crate for a table and pulled up two stumps and a completely intact plastic lawn chair. A citronella candle, naked doll with punked hair and head of a teddy bear on a stake formed a shrine to ward off demons. "What's that garbage can for?" Kramer asked as Helm washed off the find. "Trash," Helm replied flatly. "I know, it kind of doesn't make sense."

Venison sausage and catfish hissed on a skillet. The tangled pipes of the refinery hissed, growled and blended with the whine of frogs and insects. The sun set; the dusk fell on the Channel, and lights began to glow along the shore. The bridge shone strongly across the mud flat. Lights and ships moved in the canal -- a great whisk of lights going up and going down. And on either side of us on the upper reaches of the bank were marked ominously on the sky, the glare of gas flares obliterating the stars.

Earlier that evening Helm and I had shambled down the bank past a strand of salt cedar and swashmarks laden with baseballs and tampon applicators and pondered the idea of swimming. In 1998, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group named the Ship Channel the sixth most polluted water body in America. It would have ranked much higher if the study had looked at the ratio of discharges to water volume (the Pacific Ocean placed second). Almost every feeder that we'd passed had funneled out poop from overflowing water treatment plants during recent floods.