GREAT ADVENTURES:
Three People Who've Traded Business for Pleasure
LEXUS Magazine, Quarter 1, 2007
Cisco Guevara starting running northern New Mexican rivers in inner tubes in 1967 with his buddies from high school. They took turns pulling each other out of the water, unconscious and near death. Though they emerged from the trips bloodied and bruised, they were also exhilarated. So they tried bigger inner tubes and got the same results. When the local Boy Scouts got wind of this, the leaders showed up at the high school with life jackets for them to wear, and proceeded to teach them how to canoe, kayak, and raft the rivers.
Shortly after high school, a commercial outfitter contacted Guevara and said, "Heard you know how to row the Box." This refers to riding the Taos Box section of the Rio Grande Gorge, famous for its rapids, in a raft with a pair of oars in the middle of it for steering. Guevara took a job with the outfitter as a guide, and then in 1978 started his own company, Los Rios River Runners.
Guevara's company employs 35 people and, for both the guides and the visitors, he believes it's more than just an adrenaline adventure: "When people have experienced the rush of white water and the awesome beauty of the gorge, their batteries have been recharged in a way that's really meaningful. There's a lot of thankfulness and connection between family members after a trip."
But it's really the allure of the place that keeps him on the river. "This is a unique ecosystem," Guevara explains, "and it's remote—there are no trails in and out of the canyon. It's only accessible by raft. By working on this river, I have a connection to a place that's extremely beautiful and scenic."
Guevara also devotes time to keeping the river this way. He's president of Rio Grande Restoration, which facilitates efforts to restore the river through education, lobbying, and hands-on physical work. His company donates raft trips to youth groups, with the belief that the teamwork they learn on a raft will make them better citizens, and that they'll learn about the delicate ecosystems of the outdoors and work to preserve them.