by Dan Wilson
My alarm clock rumbled at 4:30
a.m. It is just barely light as
the sun rises in the Sonora desert, about sixty miles south of Tucson Arizona,
and twelve miles north of the U.S.-Mexico Border. The morning couldn’t come soon enough after a night of fitful
sleep on a slowly deflating camping pad.
Didn’t use the sleeping bag again; it dropped to a stuffy 80°F overnight.
I roll out of bed and put on the same
threadbare pants, praying that they will hold together for at least one more
day and hopefully the rest of the summer.
It hurts to put on my shirt.
Two weeks’ worth of sweat has dried to a hard crisp. I open my tent, and turn my boots over
upside and shake. Luckily, no
scorpions this morning. I crawl an
extra three feet to duck under the prickly mesquite trees I put my tent
under. With my headlamp on, I do
the same morning chores that I have done for months. Water in the large stock pot, water in the gallon pitcher. Oatmeal in the pot, coffee in the
pitcher…more coffee in the pitcher.
I look in the kitchen tent for the
broken lighter, and flick at the propane for several seconds. The heat from the flames is another
unwelcome reminder that it is only going to get hotter today. Someone said 115°F this week.
Oatmeal on, coffee boiling, I tune my
banjo and play “Cripple Creek” as loud as I can, walking around the camp. About 20 other young volunteers perform
the same ritual: roll out of their
sleeping bag, tent, or the back of the truck they have been sleeping in. We all meet at the plastic folding
tables next to the kitchen tent twenty minutes later. With bowls of oatmeal and large cups of coffee in hand, we
begin to have the same conversation that we have been having all summer.
“When was the last time people went to
Ruby East?”
“Three days ago”.
“How about Apache?”
“How much water did we bring there last time?”
“Twenty-five gallons, I think? And
about 8 cans of beans.”
“We saw a lot of footprints at Murphy’s
Well last week.”
“What about Deadman’s Drop?”
“We only find slashed water bottles
there.”
“Did you bring them up the trail, up
that really steep hill? Border
Patrol won’t climb that high, you could try that.”
In this conversation I have another surreal moment, which
seems to make up the majority of my summer. This group of twenty idealistic volunteers is responsible
for trying to save the starving, dehydrated, and injured masses migrating north
through the unforgiving Sonoran Desert.
Thirty minutes later it is
decided. Four groups will go out
on “patrols” and “water runs.”
Three people will stay back to monitor the patients in camp, and to give
the “Know Your Rights” talk. We
also need to monitor our patients’ blood pressure. No More Deaths doctors in Tucson are worried that the
50-year-old couple staying in camp has ruined their kidneys’ ability to filter
blood. During the summer, you need
to drink a gallon of water a day, just to keep your body working. They were both in the desert for three
days without anything.
We drive out of camp in large, scraped,
bent, loud, old and awesome four-wheel drive trucks, each loaded down with
tired volunteers, hiking packs, lunches, crates of beans, medical packs, and
about thirty-seven gallon jugs of water. For the next hour and a half we drive
over dirt roads that I would feel uncomfortable walking over, listening to an
old cassette of John Prine. We
pass one or two locals driving into town, and about eight white-and-green
Border Patrol “dog-catcher” trucks.
Instead of a bed in the back of the truck, they have a low-ceiling box
with bars for windows. We drive through yellow mountains; they’re not yellow
with sand, but with blooming Mexican Poppies.
Our GPS tells us we are in the right
place. We all hop out of the
truck, load our backpacks with as much water as we can carry, and then throw in
cans of beans. We follow our GPS
down a hill and into a ravine. My
thighs are burning; my knees feel abnormally shaky underneath ten gallons of
water and my med pack. I am
blinking twice as fast to keep the sweat out of my eyes, and I realize that not
five minutes later, my shirt is once again soaked in sweat. We navigate down into a ravine, which
makes me regret carrying eighty pounds of water. In the bottom of the ravine, I see the most beautiful sight
I have seen during my entire summer in this magnificent and deadly desert:
thirty empty jugs of water, and twenty-five empty cans of beans! In the watertight bucket that once held
packets of food and socks is a note scribbled on the back of a bus ticket to
northern Mexico: “Thank-you and God Bless you very much.”
The most conservative estimates show
that at least five hundred people a year die in the desert, on the American
side of the fence. Since 1994, we
have been pushing people out of the cities, off the roads, and into the bleak,
burning desert. Almost eighteen
years later, the reality of the Border is changing. We are not closing our Borders to drug smugglers,
job-stealers or terrorists. We are
closing the door on those trying to go back to their lives in the U.S.
According to a recent survey of those
recently deported to Nogales, Mexico, the average person deported has lived in
the U.S. for 14.4 years, and has 2.5 children still living in the states (70
percent of these children are citizens).
Of those interviewed, 70 percent said they would continue to cross the
border until they make it back to their families. The trip into the United States consists of a three-day hike
(usually done at night, running); about three thousand dollars to a coyote (or human trafficker) who will leave you for dead if
you lag behind, or kidnap you if you are unable to pay; and interactions with
Border Patrol who WILL (99.7 percent of the time) hit you, deny you food,
water, and medical care, take your belongings, and make you as miserable as
possible for the 48 hours you spend with them (NoMoreDeaths.org). After this, you will go to court and
spend up to nine months in the worst jails in the country.
Still, the human spirit survives. Still, people make the journey for their
children, spouse, family, and almost never for their own sake.
One of the miraculous things about the
desert is its ability to cut through all of our preconceived notions about “The
Immigration Issue.” Theories about
free trade, Border militarization, and national security no longer seem
relevant when you meet someone without shoes who has been lost without food or
water for a week. There is one
truth given to us from the desert.
We are killing our neighbors.
We are killing ourselves.