I'm so tired I don't know how long I can stay up to write. I feel like my body has gotten heavier, or my joints weaker, like I'm walking through sand. This is after only 2 hikes today, maybe a few hours total. There are people, right now, walking those trails all night. Probably less equipped than I am, maybe in worse shape, maybe with medical conditions or poor nutrition or a whole lot of stress.
Today we went to Josseline's Shrine. Josseline was a 14 year old girl who got sick when her group was being led through the desert last February. She was traveling with her little brother, and she made him go on without her because she knew she couldn't keep up with the group. No More Deaths found out she was missing from her family after her little brother got to his parents. They searched for her, but they didn't find her in time. They found her body.
She wandered alone in the desert a week before she died. Her shrine said something about persevering when you are lost, and having faith in god. A group went to her shrine yesterday, and during check-ins last night Anna talked about how she has a granddaughter that age. They left water bottles and a can of beans, wrote "¡Suerte!" (Good luck!) on the bottles.
Today someone had desecrated her shrine. They slashed all the water bottles, crossed out "¡Suerte!", and dumped the beans all over the shrine. We saw slashed water bottles this morning too. I was down the trail about an hour with Wendy and Claire when we found two.
I don't understand what it takes to destroy other people's sustenance in an unforgiving desert, to deface a 14 year old girl's grave. It's one thing to disagree with the fact that they are coming here, but to say that they should die for it, that they deserve to die? I'm so angry I can hardly find the words. I just don't understand. It's got to take a whole lot of anger at the world to do something like this. Sometimes I feel like I have too much anger in my life that I need to let go of. But nothing could make me that angry.
Other parts of the day were good. We went swimming in a ghost town named Ruby. The hike this morning was gorgeous, though the terrain was rough on my borrowed sneakers. Yesterday we went on a tougher hike, and the shoes I bought with me completely fell apart. I borrowed some shoes from the donations meant for migrants. I saw a turtle and another dam. We had chicken and beer for dinner, ice cold Coronas brought in by volunteers from town, when I've been accustomed to drinking hot water from my bag. The stars tonight are gorgeous. Michelle pointed out that you can see the Milky Way. We talked about the shrine a lot in our check-ins tonight. About how people are going to try to stop you in your work, but all you can do is keep doing it. If they deface a shrine, we'll clean it. If they slash our water bottles, we'll leave more. It's really all we can do. So I'm trying to hold that.
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