Thursday 8.27.09: The Desert

It's so hard to process the fact that I'm leaving tomorrow. Packing up in the morning, going on one last patrol, then being at the Streamline hearings in Tucson at 1. I've been so tired whenever I have time to write, I feel like I'll have to sit down and gather all my thoughts later. We saw people on the trail today. They kept going when they saw us, then stopped and looked back, waited to see what we would do. We called out to them that we had food and water if they needed it, and could offer medical attention. We shouted this a couple times, then went back to the truck to get more water.

When we got to the truck, Border Patrol was there. Two trucks, pulled up near our car. I felt something hard in my throat drop to the pit of my stomach. Oh fuck. Had they heard us calling out? We always called out on trails, whether we saw people or not, but maybe we had called out too many times, drawn their attention. How could I be that person, that stupid naive american gringo bringing more harm than good, getting people arrested she was supposed to be helping? We couldn't warn them without drawing more attention. So we got back in the car, drove to the next waypoint on our GPS. What else could we do? The trucks just sat there, nobody got out. Maybe they were just doing their normal patrol, following us a little. We left water at the next drop. When we got back to the road, the two trucks passed us again. We peered in the back windows, but they were empty. I felt the tension I'd been holding in whish out of me. Thank god. They did seem to be following us though.

We went back an hour later, and all the food and water we left was gone. There were rocks left in the empty water bottles so they wouldn't blow away. We left a little more water, the rest of what we had.

When we got back to camp, Sofia told us we had a patient. His group got split up by the border patrol and his friends who also got away had to leave him behind because he had a fucked up knee. He said he'd been in the desert 4 days and was severely dehydrated. The medics are treating him, I can hear the people translating. Apparently he lived in the US for 20 years before he got deported, has a whole community there.

The moon is getting really bright. We went on a hike this morning after we saw people, and I swear I heard a woman's voice. Vivian said she heard someone cough. We called out but nobody answered, so we left some water and food.

It's so crazy to think about what people go through out here. We got caught in some bramble bushes on our hike and they were so hard to get out of without getting scratched up, even in the daytime. I can't imagine trying to cross that at night. I can't imagine walking through here for 4 days. I've only been hiking a few hours a day and I'm exhausted, my thigh muscles kill from the crazy mountainous hike we did yesterday, my back hurts from carrying my own water and food, socks, and gatorade for migrants on my back, my arms hurt from hiking carrying gallons of water. Imagine hiking all night. Every night. And you can't see the brambles that are going to scratch up your face, your guide might not wait for you to go up or down that 45 degree tilt on the trail, or climb under a barbed wire fence without catching your shirt or backpack on it, you don't have enough water and food, and you might have to leave your friends behind if they can't keep up with the group.

And somehow people make it, they get to San Francisco and Chicago and Lansing. And people treat them really shitty when they get there, they have a hard time getting shitty, menial work, and shitty, small homes. They spend their days, their lives, breaking their back to make money for themselves, their families, so somebody can make a whole lot of money off of them. Just like my father did, does, like many people in my family, only they do it for even smaller reward. And some who can't find menial jobs end up doing things for money that make them even more vulnerable, selling drugs or doing survival sex work. And the whole time they have to live in fear of La Migra picking them up, having to go through the whole thing all over again.

Vivian said something at check-ins tonight about trying to hold this whole experience, all the different aspects of it. Because it's so hard and so intense, but it's so beautiful here, and there's so much cool stuff in the desert, and we get to go on hikes every day in these amazing remote places, and I saw a really cool toad today, and found out those cylindrical plants I love are called ocotillos, and I got stung by a prickly pear. And everyone out here is so beautiful and amazing. And I feel like this experience has changed me, made me better. Maybe it's a change that's been coming for a while.

I'm getting too tired to write, and the moths keep bugging me, but the stars are so clear, and I can hear people singing, and I feel so at home now, in the desert, and I can hear coyotes, and I'm going home this weekend, and there's a man I've met whose journey home is far more treacherous and hard to trek through than mine. And I have to find a way to sit with all of that tonight.

I wish I could hold onto a moment forever. I wish I could take the sky home with me. I wish I could take them all home, all these people who are sharing the desert with us tonight. I tried to take a picture of the Milky Way but it wouldn't come out. Sometimes there's just not enough to hold onto.