9 Days in the Desert: Day 9

Day 9: And Now Goodbye

Last night I volunteered to be wake-up for our final day. Wake-up can be anything from going around and knocking on people’s tents to playing an instrument or singing a song. This morning I woke up at 5:30 am. The sun was still down and the sky was navy and jeweled with a thin crescent moon glowing high above camp. I sang The Beatles’ Blackbird. As I walked figure eights around the campground and sang, “Take these sunken eyes and learn to see all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free,” I kept my eyes on the horizon and took note of its moment of silence and darkness just before awakening. For the first time in nine days, I felt hope like a small spark in my chest just beginning to grow. Alone in a sleeping camp with the thought of blackbirds flying, I felt the rise of something beautiful.



After one run through of Blackbird, no one woke or stirred. I took the opportunity the quiet and dark gave me and climbed up on the grey Silverado truck and waited for the sun to rise. A thunderstorm rolled from the southeast cracking lightning and threatening to come our way. The tips of sun began in the east coloring the broken clouds in shades of pink and purple, and the crescent moon still crowned the sky. Elizabeth woke up and came and joined me. We sat together on the roof of the truck. She shared a cigarette with me. We didn’t talk, but instead let silence sit between us. The smoke entered my lungs and the morning sat on my shoulders. I would be O.K. I didn’t need to build walls or fill space with noise. For once, I could just be, she and me sitting on a truck watching the desert come alive, the day begin. That was enough. That was a lot because for the first time in nine days I was present. For the first time, I gave myself permission to be alive in the desert.

By the time the sun had moved over the horizon the entire camp was up and moving about. People were pouring coffee, brushing teeth, heading to the toilet. Our last day was upon us. As I walked back to my tent to begin packing and breaking down, Winston called out, “Look a rainbow!” And there, streaked across the bright sky, an arch of colors just above my tent. This morning brought the desert a blackbird, a crescent moon, pink clouds, a navy sky, a rainbow, and now goodbye.

9 Days in the Desert: Day 8

Day 8: Byrd Baylor

Today is the final day of patrol in the desert. I volunteer to stay in camp and “hold it down” with Ricardo and Mike. The Silverado’s battery is dead this morning and the Suburban’s starter is shot, so without a car Elizabeth also has to stay back in camp. The cars are always an issue. Every morning one or another has to be jumped, every afternoon one or another has a flat tire. It is a never-ending puzzle to keep cars, people, and supplies properly moving through the desert. No one in camp knows about cars. Our patient from earlier in the week, Francisco was a chauffer in Guatemala, and for a couple of days he was able to tinker with the engines. With my limited Spanish I was able to act as go between with Francisco and other volunteers. That felt good, like I was useful for something. So many times in camp I feel like I’m along for a ride. I’m placed in the back seat of the suburban, jostled around, taken out of the suburban, pointed to a trail, and then I drop water, and repeat. Too many times I feel like a visitor, like a witness, like a writer, but that isn’t the reason I came. I cam to stop writing, to take my nose out of a book, take my fingers from the keyboard and be active, do something, help.

The Spanish helps with this feeling. For too many years I have allowed others to shame me out of speaking. As a Chicana, people (other Latinos and Spanish speakers) judge me for having limited Spanish. It is a critique I’ve heard my whole life, and unfortunately, instead of practicing and speaking, I have become quiet in the face of the jeers. But now, for the first time, I feel a real need to speak Spanish and little hang up seems inconsequential when held up to the realities of the desert and even the world. This is my opportunity to be a help to someone. I can be a comfort to someone. I can communicate. I can break down a wall, a wall I built around myself because of fear. I want to break down this wall, even if it is the only one I can.

Around lunch, Elizabeth asks if I want to walk with her to Byrd Baylor’s house to feed her horses. Byrd injured herself early in the summer and has been staying in Tucson. The volunteers have been caring for her horses and keeping an eye on her house. It is across the wash that runs around the back of the camp and up a hill, and is a beautiful hand-lay stone house with many Mexican and Native American influences and art. There is a succulent garden, hammocks, a windmill, barn, old rusted out bus, and a patio with a purple and pink mural on the floor of hand prints with two cots with blankets and pillows ready for any tired traveler (people are not the only travelers she welcomes. NMD volunteers have strict instructions to leave a plank of wood in every pond and water trough in order for bees to be able to drink without drowning). Elizabeth tells me a story that when she built the house the contractor laid the foundation and took off with her money, and that she and her friends built the home by hand, brick by brick, over years. Byrd has turned into legend around camp, perhaps made bigger by her absence. I feel her presence and the sacredness of the place and feel an ache that I do not have the opportunity to meet her. In some part of my brain where my fantasies run wild I imagine she is a kindred spirit and we are friends, or at least teacher and student, and we sit on her porch over-looking her garden writing magical tails of nature, want, life, death, and celebration, working together to create a more just world, a world where everyone is allowed beauty.

The Other Way to Listen is just one example of Byrd's beautiful children's books of Native American Folktales and the desert.

9 Days in the Desert: Day 7

Day 7: Dead Man and The Wall

Today I take on Dead Man’s Pass, a drop in the saddle on the south side of the Baboquivaris mountain range, with Lilly and Elizabeth, a long-term volunteer that recently broke up with her live-in girlfriend in Brooklyn to move to Tucson--I think the desert is her other woman. Lilly decides to rename Dead Man’s, Gumdrop Valley, in an attempt to make it less intimidating, and I am happy to give it a try. This is Lilly and my first hike with long-timer, Elizabeth. Lilly and I have both had a hard time physically through the week, and I warn Elizabeth of this on the drive, but she doesn’t seem bothered.

The Baboquivaris run north and south right into the Pozo Verde, a range that runs east and west and rides the border. Dead Man is an important drop because it is the western most point No More Deaths can reach without heading into the Tohono O’odham reservation where we do not have permission to go. The reservation can be the most dangerous area to cross and many people pass through Dead Man’s before heading in, so this point is our only chance to get them water. It is also a good spot because this is where people can pass through as they cross from one side of the range to the other, or as they move north over the ridge. Because it is such a well-trafficked area, BP are notorious for slashing our jugs here, and this drop has turned into a cat and mouse chase with decoys and attempts to out hike them.

Elizabeth, Lilly, and I take ten gallons up the north peak first because Elizabeth says it is the harder side, and it is best to get it over early. We find the decoy pile and walk another 100 yards up a steep, rocky path over grown with an assortment of cactus like nopales with red tunas, barrel cactus with orange sunburst flowers, tall noble saguaro, and crooked cholla. I walk slow to avoid getting stuck with white needles. Before we drop the water I draw the Virgen de Guadalupe on my three jugs. Then we walk back down to the saddle and up the south side, the “easier” side, which hugs a barbed wire fence marking the reservation border. When we don’t find any water on the trail we head back to the car for a short rest and to pick up another 10 gallons before heading up to the south side. On the 2nd trip up I am surprised by how much sweat slicks from my skin and how hard it is to breath.

“This was easier the first time,” I say feeling the pain of the climb.

“You didn’t have 3 gallons on you before,” Elizabeth informs me.

“Oh yeah.” I laugh.

“Each gallon is 8 pounds. That’s a lot of weight you’re carrying,” Elizabeth says.

“I wish you hadn’t told me that. 24 pounds sounds so much worse than three gallons.”

“Sorry.”

At the top there is a gorgeous view expanding west across the reservation and one just as spectacular expanding east. It is the closest I have been to the Baboquivari peak, loving nicknamed Babo, that overlooks the entire desert and that has been like a watcher of our work.

It feels good to be able to drop 20 gallons at Dead Man’s Pass with two other women. I feel strong. After a week of being in the desert I have conquered a fear that has tied my chest in knots for days. I defeated Dead Man’s!

From there we tried to do a hike in Pozo Verde, but there was a lightning storm. Elizabeth said it was still fruitful because she was able to route good driving directions to the area, which will make a return trip much easier.

Then we drive to Sasabe, a border ghost town with a port of entry, to see “the wall.” The wall is a red rusted fence lined with tall metal beams that dips and rises with the terrain and haunts the sleepy dilapidated town.

Divides and walls happen everyday. Around the fire pit that night, people talk about feeling a division amongst long-term volunteers and newbies. People are still coping with the stresses of the week and with caring for multiple patients. I have been making myself mad trying to talk to people, trying to relate. I try to say something funny and no one laughs. I say something sad, and people walk away. Finding someone to speak to has become just as hard as anything else out here. Elizabeth shares with me that when she returns to Tucson for a few days of rest, she has a hard time being alone. She likes to be in groups of people in order to kill the thoughts. Kill the feeling. I realize I am also scared by the silence, and I have become desperate to talk it away. We are all building walls within ourselves.

9 Days in the Desert: Day 6

Day 6: Finding a Way to Feel

I returned to Jalisco’s “Oak Tree” drop with Winston and Jason to take the water we missed the day before. The area still had heavy Border Patrol, but no helicopter.

We made two trips to the “Oak Tree,” each time carrying 8 gallons on us because while scouting the area we discovered two separate and distinct trails passing under two separate oak trees—the shade and placement of which could be a good rest stop. After dropping our 16 gallons we decided to hike back into the canyon for a couple of hours and see where one trail lead. The hike was not too strenuous and no one was in a hurry. We kept a steady pace and didn’t talk much. After an hour in, we stopped at a vantage point where we could see Ruby, Montana peak (Hippy Mountain), and the valley. It was all-encompassing and quiet. It felt good to be out there, in the sun, working out knotted emotions through the muscles.

I do these water drops every day and I feel good about myself, I feel like I’m accomplishing something, but then a migrant is found, or a person wanders into camp, or a story is shared, and nothing makes any sense anymore. My well-meaning tasks of the day are blown to tiny little bits of hope scattered across the desert and swept off by the wind.

But today, I don’t think of that because today I can climb, and move, and feel the breeze on my sweat-glossed skin. I can look across a vast valley and see its rugged, untouched beauty. Today I can feel my heart in my chest, my breath in my lungs, and my legs tire. Today I can feel.

On the journey back Winston and Jason have a talk about religion. Winston grew up Baptist but left the religion for many reasons, one of which being he identifies as queer. Jason grew up Catholic and went to a Christian Brother’s university, and though he is now a Catholic Worker, he is no longer Catholic and doesn’t know if god exists. They talk about callings. Winston is in seminary school to become a United Church of Christ minister. People in camp have often asked him about callings. I like to hear him talk. He is thoughtful and balanced. He shared that to him a calling is not always something you like to do or something that is good for you. I wondered if writing is mine. Together we talked about prayer, meditation and community, and I thought that this ritual of walking, this conversation we shared, could be a prayer. I don’t know if god exists, but I do believe in magic, and if anything the desert if full of magic and the unexplainable. It is in the mesquite trees, in the fire-orange flowers blossoming out the top of barrel cactuses, in the Ocotillo that stretch like fingers up to the sun like praise.

The second half of the day the entire group (Jason and Winston volunteered to “hold it down” in camp) headed back to Ruby Lake to celebrate Sonia’s 23rd birthday with swimming and brownies baked from a solar oven. The festivities were somber with six days of stress pressing on everyone’s minds and muscles, but people swam and even laughed. I tried to show Jacques how to float on the water to no avail, and people took turns jumping off the rope swing. Kennedy suggested that who ever jumped from the rope had to scream something funny, the more random the better.

“Hot Pocket!” Mike sang as propelled himself into the lake.

“Happy birthday, Sonia!” Jacques screamed making the whole group ring out in a joined, “Ah.”

“I heart Jacques!” Davey cheered with a click his knees before plunging into the murky green sludge. Over the days, our 18 year-old Frenchie had turned into object affection around camp. The frivolity helped lighten the weight of the week, and for once it felt like our collective fears had quieted for a moment.

Getting out of the water, I laid out on the white sand and let the sun bleach dark worries from my body. In a strange trance, I felt my limbs relax and sink into the sand, my cheeks warm with sunlight, my body calm with recent memory of green water washing over me.

And then we all gathered to go and I walked off the beach like waking from a dream, and headed back to reality.

9 Days in the Desert: Day 5

Day 5: How do you forget to feel?

I don’t know what to say about today. It is now 10 o’clock at night, I’m lying in my tent writing in my journal, the mumblings of conversations have quieted, and I can hear a helicopter circling over camp. It feels like I have been on the front lines all day. I feel the closeness of danger sitting beside me in my tent, and even though I’m exhausted I fear closing my eyes. I fear sleep.

This morning we were in Jalisco hiking water out to a drop named the “Oak Tree,” when saw two or three BP trucks, a horse patrol, and a helicopter circling, around and around, above the peaks, like a dark omen blanketing the day. My stomach turned with the helicopter, they are not only searching, but watching. Before we could drop our water, we decided to head back to the car and get the hell out of there because we had no way of knowing what they wanted or what would satisfy them, and we worried they might follow us and slash our gallons.

As I listen to the helicopter outside my tent I can picture the earlier helicopter swirling in the midday sun, and I know what it feels like to be watched. This is a police state. This is Arizona, and worse, this is my country. I must remember this moment. I must not forget even if I want, even if, when I’m back home in bed, the whole scene seems impossible.

XXXX

I remember a conversation.

“Does your family know where you are?” Yessica asked. It was after lunch. Other people had gone out on patrol, but I stayed back at Lilly’s request to tag-team with our Spanish. The group was always concerned with coordinating one medic and one Spanish speaker for each patrol out and in camp. Lilly was “holding down” the Spanish all morning and needed help and distracting.

“Yes, they are very worried about me,” I told Yessica.

“Oh, yes. The desert is dangerous.” She shook her head.

“It’s worse for her than me,” Lilly added. “She is Mexican. She has more worries.”

“You are scared of them too?” Yessica asked.

“Yes. I don’t know how they see me, or how they will treat me.”

“Imagine that. And you are in your own country.” She shook her head again.

The conversation switched to her daughter. Yessica told us that she loves to eat pizza, but rarely eats meat. She shared this because she knows Lilly also doesn’t eat meat. She smiled as she talked about her. Yessica’s daughter is eight years old.

“What is her name?” I asked. I saw a flash of worry run across her eyes. She gave a quick look to Francisco for approval before saying, “Her name is Lupe.”

“Was she born in December?” I asked making a reference to the feast day for Virgen de Guadalupe on December 9th. “I have an aunt named Lupe. She is born in December.”

“No, she was born January 4th.” She smiled. We were quiet for a moment.

“The first time I crossed, I was four months pregnant. In the middle of the night, I felt like I was losing my baby, like I was going to miscarry. I prayed and prayed to the Virgen to let me keep her.” She rubbed her stomach as she told this story. “I rubbed plants and mud on my belly and just prayed and prayed. And then when I was in the U.S., I prayed that she would have all her limbs, that she wouldn’t be sick. I worried that maybe I had damaged her walking in the desert. But when she was born fine, I named her Guadalupe, Lupe, to thank the Virgen for my daughter’s life.”

Questions I wanted to ask moved through my brain, but I wasn’t sure how to ask, or if I should ask. I wondered where Lupe was. I wondered how long they had been apart. Was she on the other end of this move in the U.S.? It was obvious she missed her even though talking about Lupe didn’t make her sad. In fact every time she shared some detail, she smiled.

“Where is she now?”

“Guatemala.”

“She is with family. We have a lawyer friend who is down there now. He is a U.S. citizen. We have it all worked out, paid him and everything. When we get to Florida he has promised to bring her. Everything is worked out. We just have to buy her ticket,” Francisco shared.

“She is American,” added Yessica.

“Whichever one makes it to Florida, will send for her.” Francisco said this with a smile. He was proud of his well-made plan, but I only heard, “whichever one makes it.” The statement was ominous. The statement rang with various unfortunate possibilities and tragic endings that started with the separation of mother and father from daughter. “Whichever one makes it,” he said as fact, as unchangeable.

The conversation was getting hard. The more I spoke to them the less likely I would be able to forget this nightmare later. The door I entered was quickly closing.

They asked me about our hikes. They have often shown concern for our long days and ask how we are feeling. Their kindness hurts. I told them that that I get tired and that sometimes I want to cry. I felt ashamed to share this, but I acted out my tears and they laughed at my silliness.

“When we were walking, it was night. At first we were being chased and we had to run up to nearly the top of Hippy Mountain.* There were dogs and helicopters, but somehow at the top of the mountain we were able to hide and rest. Then the next day we came down, but after another day, I didn’t want to walk anymore. I couldn’t. I started to cry. I couldn’t do it, but then Francisco shook me by my shoulders and it was like I felt a calm come over me. I felt strength.” She shook her fists in front of her to illustrate what Francisco had to do.

“I took her to a hill and I pointed in the distance to the houses we could see, and I said, ‘do you see those? We will go there. We will go to the houses.’ But no, as soon as we walked down off the hill she started crying again.”

“I couldn’t see them anymore. I couldn’t see anything. He told me he knew where he was going, but how was I to know? I couldn’t see anything.”

“Well, didn’t I know? I told you I did,” Francisco laughed at this, and Yessica smiled at him. Yessica was ready to give up. They had no idea what they were heading to, no idea who they would find, no idea if they would see Lupe again.

I wonder why some people are born into a life of suffering and why others are born into a life of privilege. What makes us different? What brings us together at this moment and yet, grips us in different realities? Who makes our reality?

At one point, we get word from a patrol out in the field that they have found someone alone on the side of a road. We didn’t know much more than he was alive. I looked at Yessica upon hearing this, and for the first time I see her face turn dark. It was hard to look her in the eyes because it was like I could see memories of panic and pain rise back in her like a storm. Francisco patted her on the shoulder.

“Thank God, they found him. No?” Yessica said. “No, he wouldn’t have survived out there alone.” She shook her head and kneeded her hands. I tried not to look at her.

We heard a story that this man was falling behind with his group. His coyote was on drugs and when this man couldn’t keep up, the coyote beat him, took his shirt, and left him (“for dead” are words no one is willing to add). He was without food or water for many days. It was unclear how many days.

“Thank God they found him. No, thank God,” she said again. I looked at her. I could see tears begin to form in the lips of her eyes. I put my hand on her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. Her tears grew fat. I felt my own starting to form and my hand burn hot with need and emotion sparking like bolts electricity in the space between my hand and her shoulder. Unable to take it, I dropped my hand and scurried away to find a task to accomplish. Something easy with a beginning and an end—cooking dinner, washing dishes, unpacking the truck—something I could do without thought, without feeling, without this never ending electric need that just kicked me off my feet.

XXXX

I now know no good can come of feeling because there is no comfort for the things the questions that bubble up in our chests. I now know why in the cars on the way to patrols we listen to Katy Perry, Nikki Minaj, and Brittany Spears. There are no answers in the world. There is no order left. All there is are manageable tasks and pop music with beginnings and endings and catchy hooks.

And I still can here the helicopter circling above my tent.

* Hippy Mountain is Montana peak. Migrants call it Hippy because it stands above Ruby and Ruby Lake, which was once a hippy commune. Strangely enough, Yessica and Francisco walked on the edges of Ruby Lake when they were lost only days before I went skinny dipping there. Another example of the same place holding horribly contrasting realities.

9 Days in the Desert: Day 4

Day 4: Mala Mujer

This morning I head to the Warsaw and California drops off Ruby Road with Davey, Jacques, an eighteen-year-old Frenchmen learning English, and Mary, a kind, confident Catholic Worker. Davey explains that our first drop is at the end of a rigorous up hill hike. He promises it will be the only hard part of the day, and the worst of it will not last more than 30 minutes. I calm myself with the thought that 30 minutes sounds manageable.

The first half is an easy walk along a rocky wash, and I feel good. I carry two 1-gallon jugs and 2 cans of beans in my backpack—18 extra pounds, but then the incline starts and doesn’t stop. I trip and fall. The weight of my pack throws me forward. Well-meaning, Jacques advises me to walk slower.

This trail is very overgrown, and I am introduced to Mala Mujer (bad woman), a bright green plant with large starred maple-like leaves detailed with white veins and white polka-dots washed from bud to base in white sharp hairs. It might be pretty, except for that when I brush against one I can feel a multitude of hairs run up and down my leg creating individual sharp pains all at once. Somehow it reminds me of being electrocuted, and I slow my stride to carefully step over or around every Mala Mujer I see. She is a demon plant.


We keep moving up. I’m out of breath, and it is clear I’m out of shape, and can't move at the same pace as everyone else. I get a twinge of shame.

I feel the cool of water work down my lower back and into the seat of my pants. “You have a leak,” Davey says. Grateful for this, I stop to remove the gallons off my back and examine the damage. I don’t see anything.

“We try not to carry them in packs because they can break easier that way. We want to avoid that.” I take one out and continue up.

A few more few feet and I start to stumble. “It’s just at the top of the hill,” Davey reassures. I squint into the direction he refers to search for this “top,” but I don’t see it, and it doesn’t come. Water is still leaking down my back.

I have a soaked butt, I’m the only one struggling, and I feel stupid.

I stop to take out the second jug, but again, no visible cracks. Without word, Jacques takes it from me and charges up ahead. His eighteen-year-old energy makes my 31 years feel worn.

I keep moving, slowly. My legs start to give out, and I must brace a hand against my knee to hoist myself up. The sun is beating me down. I feel a heaving in my chest.

“I need to stop.” The whole group halts.

I try to settle my breathing, but it’s hard. I try to drink water, but my hand shakes spilling it down my chest. After a couple of minutes, I feel the exhaustion and panic subside as it has done every day before, and I’m ready to go again, but no more than another 10 steps and I’m on the verge. A dizzy fantasy of throwing down my one gallon to the rocks, pushing off my pack, and plopping on the ground like a six-year-old having a tantrum fills my mind. I want to throw a fit. I am ready for a fit.

“I can’t do this!”

“It’s here! We’re here,” Mary calls from 20 feet ahead and it’s like I’m in a joke. Davey tells me to rest where I am as he takes my last gallon to the top. So close, I suck the tears back into my eyes and trudge my way to the drop—a cluster of gallons sitting in an elbowed pass beneath the shade of a mesquite tree. A barbed wire fence cuts right through the bottleneck of five trails heading down four different slopes.

“You guys are awesome! Getting this drop is so important because as you can see we are hitting many trails. We have a chance of reaching a lot of people,” Davey says. I have no emotion about this. We find evidence of slashed gallons by Border Patrol. I have no emotion about this either.

I sit my soggy ass down on the ground and allow the feeling of failure to soak in, to numb me.

Davey passes us sharpies to write messages on the water. These are meant to communicate to migrants that the water is safe to drink. For two days I’ve been trying to find a symbol that would convey what I want to say to those walking, a symbol that will give them hope, a symbol that they will know without doubt. Below the mesquite, I decide on an image and draw a line figure of the Virgen de Guadelupe with little flowers at her feet and the words, “Que dios lo bendiga.” Yes, the Virgen is hopeful. The Virgen can help me.

"SAMARITANOS," in reference to The Good Samaritans, another humanitarian aid group, is a word migrants have told NMD they trust.

“I’m sorry I’m so serious right now,” Davey says. “I’m just really worried over things at camp, but I want us to be able to laugh. It’s good to have fun. I don’t want this to be so hard.” I would welcome a laugh, but there is nothing to laugh at.

Over the course of the day, I fall a total of three times, and on the last one I jam the heal of my palm into rock and sprain my hand. It stings and I don't want to focus on it, but the entire day stings. Davey bandages up my hand while Mary and Jacques carry gallons a quick walk from the road.

“Today is a bad day,” I say.

“Oh, I’m sorry." He finishes wrapping my hand. Fighting the urge to give up, I walk over the bank on the side of the road to meet Jacques and Mary at the final drop. I feel a need to see it, to finish.

Before going to camp we stop at Ruby, an old rusted-out mining town with a lake that is less lake and more pool surrounded by a white sand beach created by the mine’s mineral deposits. It is some kind of surreal mirage.

We take off all our clothes and jump in. I have never done such a thing, but I haven’t showered in days, and the water over my naked skin is soothing (I have just checked an item off the bucket list). Mary, Davey, and Jacques take turns jumping from a rope swing. Jacques doesn't pull up high enough and the three of us in the water gasp at how close he is to the rocks. He plunks in and bounds back out with a big smile and I look of "what?" We laugh.

I float on the cool surface and try to wash this feeling away that sits with me, not heavy, but haunting: if I can’t do this, what am I here for? Why did I come?

The desert is una Mala Mujer I've walked directly into.

9 Days in the Desert: Day 3

Day 3: Josseline

Today I participate in a 4-hour hike through an area called Blue Grass with Mike, a soft-spoken and meticulous Catholic Worker, Jason (Mike’s foil), Lilly, and Ricardo, a young Latino L.A. punk. If you know me, you know the idea of me participating in a hike is comical. I have more than once exclaimed from a trail, f*@k this $h!t! But here I am stumbling over unclear paths, bushwacking half the time through heavy vegetation full of thorny plants and cactus that scratch at my legs and arms, and continually rolling weak ankles on loose rocks.


There is a lot of debris along these trails: empty tin cans, blankets, hats, water bottles, and one fresh footprint of a man, and at one point I get the eerie sense that the hills have eyes. I want to call out to whatever/whoever is close, but I don’t. If people are close, they will most likely not show themselves. They do not trust us even though we call out “¡Tenemos agua!” and write messages like “¡Buena suerte!” and a personal favorite, “Que dios lo bendiga” (my grandmother’s regular send off) on water jugs so they know they are safe.

Our first stop on this hike is Josseline’s Shrine. It sits at the bottom of a canyon where a group hills meet next to a wash sprinkled with small stoney pools that reflect the sky. Mike explains that when a person becomes dehydrated they tend to move to the lowest point and he gestures to the high walls surrounding us. He recounts Josseline’s tail as best he can: Josseline was a 15-year-old girl traveling north with her brother. When she became weak she urged her brother to go on without her. Later, a No More Deaths volunteer found her body while hiking on a regular patrol. Her shoes were off and her feet were dipped into one the pretty pools of water. They were able to identify her body by the pink shoes she had.*

This story consecrates the reflective pools of water at my feet.

The shrine itself is a white cross with her name written in script and painted with pink flowers. Rosaries adorn the cross along with a framed Virgen de Guadalupe tied by a pink ribbon and a photo of Josseline standing before a church altar. I’m taken by how small she is. Her body is thin in the way a young girl’s body can be before it begins to round and soften. It makes me sad to see this girl forever on the precipice of womanhood.


Back at camp, I feel the ache that has become my muscles and all I can do is lay still in our one hammock. A kind breeze comes through bringing with it an afternoon cloud cover from the sun. I’m thankful because camp often sits beneath a stagnant heat that is impossible to escape. I hear a group of people in the distance figuring out how to fix the torn tarp that shades our water supply, but I do not move. I can’t. My heart starts to beat fast and my breath shortens. I don’t think I can do this. I hate this! I hate hiking! It frightens me to imagine one more day of this work. For the 4th day in a row, I want to cry, but then somehow my body relaxes, and without warning my mind shuts off, and I fall asleep to the sounds of people fiddling with plastic tarps.

When I wake, a new Frankentent has been erected from old bits of tarp and all my anxiety has lifted. I feel strong again. It’s strange and wonderful how quickly the body can forget exhaustion and pain.

Once up, I walk over to the med tent to find our patients sitting out front under some shade. The woman has her foot up on a chair in care of her sprained ankle. She shows me where she lost a toenail. I tell her I have friends who like to run and it is common amongst runners (I guess I say it to soften any worry).

She asks me about my hike and I tell her it was tiring. She shares that it is even harder at night. They have no lights and can’t see the paths and don’t know what they might be walking into—cactus, snakes, rocks. She shows me the severe slashes that have created a red fleshy pattern on her arms as proof. My hike was nothing in comparison. I wasn’t running for my life. I wasn’t moving in the dark. I wasn’t being chased. I was allowed the opportunity to rest and regain strength without fear. I was allowed a rest.

I think about Josseline. All she probably wanted was to stop for a moment and let her feet cool in the water, take a moment to catch her breath. Maybe she thought she would be able to catch up to her brother. Maybe she promised him she would. Somethings make no sense like why Josseline, a young girl, was never allowed a safe place to rest.

*Some details in this story are in correct. Josseline was fourteen and her shoes were green, but this is how I first heard it. For a more accurate telling you can read this excerpt from the book The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands.

Here is an interview with the author Margaret Regan at NPR.

To learn how you can contribute to the efforts to end death and suffering in the desert, please go to the No More Deaths donation page.