Here on the river’s edge as the water, like time, slips past. Here is the promise of the long view and the close look.

Most mornings, usually before the sun is fully up, I drive to Arturo Benavides Park, a couple blocks north of Clark Boulevard, and pull on running shoes, stretch a bit, and set the GPS on my watch. Then, I trot down the narrow asphalt track past the now-quiet skateboard ramps and rails. On the south end, I leave the park, turn onto the smooth concrete of Chacon Creek Trail, and as I trudge through mesquite-lined bends, keep my eyes open for whatever wonder awaits me around the next turn.

A few minutes later, I cross under Clark and then climb a short grade to the highest part of the trail overlooking the creek. Here, as pinks and reds smear the horizon, I often find slender white herons standing knee deep near the shore, a kettle of vultures circling above the water, sometimes a squadron of egrets flying upstream, or a blue-gray kingfisher perched on a dead limb above the near bank.

Near where Chacon Creek meets the Rio Grande

When a middle-age couple briskly walks by or the stout man with the German shepherd gently tells him to sit as I pass or if it’s Saturday and a dozen bicyclists in a smooth line glide around me, I raise a hand, exchange “Good mornings,” and hustle on.

Mesquite, huisache, cacti, and clumps of grass line the creek and trail, and, with the hum and clatter of traffic on Clark fading, it seems I’ve left the city behind.

Once past the spur leading to the Haynes Wellness Center, the trail slopes toward the creek, and I run a bit faster, move through several more turns, and pass a thick stand of cattails and several fan palms. I cross two tidy railed bridges, hurry below a fenced yard where crowing roosters often raise a racket, and turn down a long straightaway. Trees hug the trail, and sometimes bristly javelinas scramble or whitetail deer leap into the brush as I approach. Then, after a slight descent through an S, the concrete ends below the train trestle. On the two east-west tracks overhead stand tank cars and boxcars, some strikingly graffitied with bold, angular overlapping letters that I try, often unsuccessfully, to decipher.

I slow down and hop up to a short patch of uneven grass and dirt (or slick mud if rain fell recently). Then, it’s across a rough carpet of stones and shattered rock that shifts underfoot before I come out from under the trestle, and the flat concrete trail resumes. Now about a mile south of where I parked, I run past another spur, this one leading to Madero Avenue, turn due east, cross a couple more bridges, and ease to the right. I trudge up a small hill before veering south again down a long open stretch, Cheyenne Park on my left, the creek beyond the brush on my right. Here a young woman sometimes walks with a Chihuahua on a long leash, or a doe or two watch me from the west side of the trail amid mesquite and clumps of grass six or seven feet tall.

One of two walkways down to Chacon Creek near the south end of the trail

When a gang of barking stray dogs trots behind me, I turn, clap, and shout until they retreat across the grass and toward the houses on Sioux facing the park. Occasionally an armadillo, its long snout to the ground, waddles across my path or waits stock still next to the concrete as if he hadn’t heard my labored breathing and footsteps or thinks not moving renders him invisible.

At the south end of the park where the trail slants right, I pass a small, well-tended shrine — “Leslie” written down the upright part of the cross — and go over a small bridge where kiskadee flycatchers sing their name above the creek bed. After a late-summer downpour, rushing water quickly rose over this crossing and swelled out of the narrow channel. The current bent saplings and left white plastic bags, crumpled water bottles, broken tree limbs, long masses of twisted grass, and shattered palm fronds tangled in the railing and trees and, farther down the trail, in the chain-link fence running parallel to the creek in Villa del Sol Park. While that was several weeks ago, brown grass still hangs in the wire and trash in the trees, evidence of how high the water rose.

At the west end of the park, about two miles from where I started and nearly halfway to the river, a flock of grackles speckle the grass and several pigeons bank overhead. Then, the trail rises through another S, straightens as it runs parallel to Guatemozin Street, and turns left, twisting through trees nudging the trail before dropping under 359. Traffic rumbles and revs overhead, and I tiptoe through the shadowed underpass, hop over some muddy patches, and skirt the standing water covering the right side of the trail before I come out the other side.

After several more twists, I reach the end of the concrete, the trail changing at the top of the longest grade so far to a narrower pebbled asphalt track. I pick up a bit of speed going down the other side, the bottom leveling out and winding through a shady wooded area. Then, I cross another small bridge, trudge up a slope, and follow a concrete sidewalk past Dryden Park. Near its southwest corner, I turn on to grass and dirt and lope down to a short narrow bridge over stagnant water and back up to the asphalt, first bending, then stretching between several immense round pillars supporting the long span of US 83 far overhead. Under the thump and hum of vehicles on the highway, I notice one of the columns on which someone spray-painted, “What your desires.” As I run past, it seems a question, one particularly relevant and vital since I’m not far from the river.

Once I leave 83 behind, it’s quiet again. I don’t often see people or deer or javelina along this part of the run — now about three miles from the trailhead — and hear only the sporadic barking of a distant dog or the clang and clatter of iron in a yard hidden beyond the trees. Then, Chacon Creek bends to the northwest, the trail shadowing it, before both turn south again, the asphalt sloping down, abruptly bending left, rising through a brief steep grade, and then making a hard right. Here it crosses an open stretch of neatly mowed grass on the west edge of the M. E. Benavides Sports Complex.

The fishing pier on the river at Chacon Bat Park

I don’t often run this far because I’m no spring chicken anymore, and eventually I have to turn around and retrace my steps back to my vehicle. But now the noise of traffic and the creek’s slow ebb and gradual descent draw me farther south. Giant cane bends riverward on the right, and erect sheets of corrugated steel form a ramshackle fence on the lefthand slope. Then, the sky opens up, and the trail levels out and runs alongside the creek under Meadow Avenue, where dark stains from guano cross the asphalt in parallel bands, evidence of the bats roosting in the crevices of the bridge overhead.

The trail then veers left and alongside Meadow before bending through Chacon Bat Park, where it passes a terraced bank high above the creek, a portable floodlight standard, and first one and then another stone path with rustic splintered handrails leading down the long slope to the brownish-green water inching toward the river. I run past the dirt parking lot but hesitate at the top of the long grade to the riverbank. I’m tired and going down means I’ll have to climb back up. However, I know why I’ve come this far, so I let the slope carry me to where the fishing pier juts over the water and Chacon Creek merges with the sedate Rio Grande drifting between stands of green brush on both banks.

Chacon Creek below the trail at Chacon Bat Park, not far from the Rio Grande

Here, I pause briefly on the river’s edge as the water, like time, slips past. Here is the promise of the long view and the close look. Here, where quiet drowns out the distant rancor of fearmongers, we might, instead, be good neighbors.

And here, where the trail ends, I eventually turn and start back up the hill, trusting still in the possibility and rightness of being part of the wider world.