This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day 7: Big Bend Ranch State Park
It’s hot.
But the desert at night cradles me, whispers to me, teases me with the promise of sleep. The moon is so bright it’s hugging me, pulling me close, promising that no ill will befall my makeshift camp in the dark. I am contorted between pebbles poking my back, angled just so to avoid the thorns of plants I still cannot name. The wind sings, distantly off-key, not enough to be unsettling, but enough to keep me from sleep. I roll and turn, and I think that if I lived here as people were meant to, tonight I could rise up and walk silently to nowhere, feeling the moon with me the whole way there. I dream of living, ignoring my need for water, the technical fibers that keep me warm on night less hospitable to human life. I want to sit silent forever, staring eternity in the face. I want to run and scream and laugh with the wind as it calls out to me. I want to never, ever forget that this is possible. I want to live knowing this is the most real my life will ever be.
3.17.2011
Regional, day six: the cinnabar mine
This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day 6: driving, passing through an old mine for cinnabar, also known as mercury ore
The old mines we went to look so innocent. They’re the kinds that make me wonder if extraction might be ok. Cinnabar sounds so innocent, almost like a cinnamon roll, something sweet you can pop in your mouth. None of the connotations mercury conjures up. How can something toxic like that be here, in the middle of nowhere, in such a nondescript place? Why doesn’t nature come with bright yellow signs and hazmat suits? And is it even toxic in this form? Or do we take it and bend it that way, realign the chemical bonds so they slip quietly into our lungs and nerves and muscles and stay there?
And gold. We use so much to extract gold. Cyanide. Mercury. A toxic cocktail of minerals, just for the sake of a shiny piece of jewelry. It’s just like diamonds. Every rich, married woman in the world has Sierra Leone’s blood on her ring finger. But it glows such a beautiful red. I wonder how much of the gold we dig is for industry and how much is for people*. I wonder how much of it ends up in electronics. I wonder what intrigue, human suffering, global trade routes, corporations, hardworking union men and abandoned small towns were part of the story of this mine.
*Bob Carson’s note in my journal: 80% of gold is for people, not industry
day 6: driving, passing through an old mine for cinnabar, also known as mercury ore
The old mines we went to look so innocent. They’re the kinds that make me wonder if extraction might be ok. Cinnabar sounds so innocent, almost like a cinnamon roll, something sweet you can pop in your mouth. None of the connotations mercury conjures up. How can something toxic like that be here, in the middle of nowhere, in such a nondescript place? Why doesn’t nature come with bright yellow signs and hazmat suits? And is it even toxic in this form? Or do we take it and bend it that way, realign the chemical bonds so they slip quietly into our lungs and nerves and muscles and stay there?
And gold. We use so much to extract gold. Cyanide. Mercury. A toxic cocktail of minerals, just for the sake of a shiny piece of jewelry. It’s just like diamonds. Every rich, married woman in the world has Sierra Leone’s blood on her ring finger. But it glows such a beautiful red. I wonder how much of the gold we dig is for industry and how much is for people*. I wonder how much of it ends up in electronics. I wonder what intrigue, human suffering, global trade routes, corporations, hardworking union men and abandoned small towns were part of the story of this mine.
*Bob Carson’s note in my journal: 80% of gold is for people, not industry
3.16.2011
Regional, day five: talking to deer, crossing the river
This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day 5: Big Bend National Park
The Rio Grande smells like salt. Matthew says it might be from sulfates, maybe from agricultural runoff. The most polluted river in the country to separate us from Mexico. The macro is scenic—desert mountains, hills stretching for miles. It’s in the details that I start to see a story.
Across the river feels immediately different—it’s hotter, more humid and smells like horse poop. There’s trash strewn everywhere and dozens of trails leading everywhere, leading nowhere in particular. This is not the federally protected wild land that exists across the river. This is somewhere people live and work, out of necessity.
I cross back, stopping the middle to let the polluted waters rush past my legs. It’s not a ritual, not an absolution. It’s just water, mixed with past mistakes, with ambition and regret.
We hiked Emory Peak today—5.1 miles more or less straight towards heaven, then back down to Earth again. I saw three deer, stopped, watched, tried my best to talk to them. I stared one down, tried to tell it I meant no harm. It looked back at me, seemed a bit puzzled, on edge, on guard. Sometimes I wonder if it’s ok to tell them not to fear me. What if they make that mistake with another human? What if they trust me, keep trusting once I’ve learned to take care of myself, to hunt? Where will my allegiances lie then?
Deer have so much to teach me. I could barely make out the tracks. If I’d stayed for longer, I might have seen the bite marks on the shrub it was chewing on, the shrub I still don’t know the name of. If I’d been raised to see properly, I would have been able to see its tracks, to follow it, to talk to it.
How can I defend my landbase without knowing it intimately? I don’t want to be the biologist, the chemist, the naturalist, the geologist. I want to know the plants because I depend on them for food. I want the knowledge that is my birthright, the knowledge to take care of myself and give back to the land as it feeds me.
day 5: Big Bend National Park
The Rio Grande smells like salt. Matthew says it might be from sulfates, maybe from agricultural runoff. The most polluted river in the country to separate us from Mexico. The macro is scenic—desert mountains, hills stretching for miles. It’s in the details that I start to see a story.
Across the river feels immediately different—it’s hotter, more humid and smells like horse poop. There’s trash strewn everywhere and dozens of trails leading everywhere, leading nowhere in particular. This is not the federally protected wild land that exists across the river. This is somewhere people live and work, out of necessity.
I cross back, stopping the middle to let the polluted waters rush past my legs. It’s not a ritual, not an absolution. It’s just water, mixed with past mistakes, with ambition and regret.
* * *
We hiked Emory Peak today—5.1 miles more or less straight towards heaven, then back down to Earth again. I saw three deer, stopped, watched, tried my best to talk to them. I stared one down, tried to tell it I meant no harm. It looked back at me, seemed a bit puzzled, on edge, on guard. Sometimes I wonder if it’s ok to tell them not to fear me. What if they make that mistake with another human? What if they trust me, keep trusting once I’ve learned to take care of myself, to hunt? Where will my allegiances lie then?
Deer have so much to teach me. I could barely make out the tracks. If I’d stayed for longer, I might have seen the bite marks on the shrub it was chewing on, the shrub I still don’t know the name of. If I’d been raised to see properly, I would have been able to see its tracks, to follow it, to talk to it.
How can I defend my landbase without knowing it intimately? I don’t want to be the biologist, the chemist, the naturalist, the geologist. I want to know the plants because I depend on them for food. I want the knowledge that is my birthright, the knowledge to take care of myself and give back to the land as it feeds me.
3.15.2011
Regional, day four: crossing the border
This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day 4: Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande and some unnamed hills just barely in Mexico
There is a camp across the river. It belongs to vagrants, Mexican cowboys, the desperately poor, the uncivilized who are aware of precisely what they’re missing. Empty cans strewn everywhere reflect either time or distance from the act of eating, show that if wind and weather did not spread detritus across the makeshift home, the weariness born of spending too much time trying to find a meal has. Maybe he—I feel certain that this belong to a he, or a they, not a she—is just a messy person by nature. Maybe there is no hidden meaning in the empty wine bottle, the canola oil (same label as mine, but in Spanish) sitting upright and half-gone, the empty bean can filled in with sand.
I cross the river, walk, invade, intrude, follow tracks, climb a hill, run back, run anywhere. I dream of kidnap, rape, abduction, becoming one of the desaparecidos. I picture men with guns surrounding me, motioning silently for me to come with them. I picture them as drug traffickers and American military, and I cannot for the life of me decide which one would scare me more.
day 4: Big Bend National Park, the Rio Grande and some unnamed hills just barely in Mexico
There is a camp across the river. It belongs to vagrants, Mexican cowboys, the desperately poor, the uncivilized who are aware of precisely what they’re missing. Empty cans strewn everywhere reflect either time or distance from the act of eating, show that if wind and weather did not spread detritus across the makeshift home, the weariness born of spending too much time trying to find a meal has. Maybe he—I feel certain that this belong to a he, or a they, not a she—is just a messy person by nature. Maybe there is no hidden meaning in the empty wine bottle, the canola oil (same label as mine, but in Spanish) sitting upright and half-gone, the empty bean can filled in with sand.
I cross the river, walk, invade, intrude, follow tracks, climb a hill, run back, run anywhere. I dream of kidnap, rape, abduction, becoming one of the desaparecidos. I picture men with guns surrounding me, motioning silently for me to come with them. I picture them as drug traffickers and American military, and I cannot for the life of me decide which one would scare me more.
Regional, day four: Boquillas del Carmen
This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day 4: in Big Bend National Park
Backstory: Big Bend National Park is right on the US-Mexico border—the Rio Grande, which runs through the park, is the official dividing line between the US and Mexico. Across the river, there’s a town in Mexico called Boquillas del Carmen. The people there used to make their living off of tourists from the park—they would take people across the river on horses and sell crafts and food to visitors. However, in 2002, the border was closed due to security concerns after 9/11, making all commerce between the town’s inhabitants and Americans across the river illegal.
Since the closure, most of the families have left, and the inhabitants are forced to leave crafts out on the trails around the Rio Grande and ask for donations, all while surrounded by signs instructing park visitors that buying anything from a Mexican national is a crime. The federal government has announced plans to re-open the border sometime soon.
While hiking in the park, I had a brief conversation with a man from the town named Felipe. This entry is based on that conversation.
I have no words to even adequately begin to apologize to the people of Boquillas del Carmen for the US’s idiotic, criminally insane culture and the security, immigration and anti-drug policies that come along with it.
And then if I really think about it, the list of people I need to apologize to stretched so far I can’t see the end anywhere in sight. I owe an apology to the indigenous communities here before me, to the descendants of black slaves who worked backbreaking days to amass wealth for my ancestors, to the people of the Niger Delta, to the women raped in the Congo because of civil unrest caused by the curse of having resources my country needs, to every salmon dead so I can charge my phone with cheap hydropower, to the natural communities that lived on the land my house is on, to people who starve to death or die of malaria because they can’t afford health care or food that costs 1/100th of what I’m willing to spend on a smoothie or another piece of clothing I don’t really need…
And I know guilt does no good. I know I didn’t create these systems. I know that focusing on the big picture is far more important, and that the most self-serving, awful thing those in power have done to keep us from fighting back is to convince us that our individual choices can somehow, magically, save the world.
But then someone looks you in the face, and says nothing about this. He doesn’t talk about capitalism, immigration policy or NAFTA. He looks at me, hand on his horse, and says simply, “No hay mucho trabajo.” Is it hard to survive? “Si, es dificil.” And that’s all. He seems uncomfortable when my questions get more general, when they touch on illegal people, on migrant farmworkers. Maybe it’s my poor Spanish, or maybe he’s just tired at the end of the day. Maybe it’s just that I have the luxury to sit around and daydream about bringing capitalism down, but he’s too busy dealing with its daily realities to help a white girl feel less guilty.
day 4: in Big Bend National Park
Backstory: Big Bend National Park is right on the US-Mexico border—the Rio Grande, which runs through the park, is the official dividing line between the US and Mexico. Across the river, there’s a town in Mexico called Boquillas del Carmen. The people there used to make their living off of tourists from the park—they would take people across the river on horses and sell crafts and food to visitors. However, in 2002, the border was closed due to security concerns after 9/11, making all commerce between the town’s inhabitants and Americans across the river illegal.
Since the closure, most of the families have left, and the inhabitants are forced to leave crafts out on the trails around the Rio Grande and ask for donations, all while surrounded by signs instructing park visitors that buying anything from a Mexican national is a crime. The federal government has announced plans to re-open the border sometime soon.
While hiking in the park, I had a brief conversation with a man from the town named Felipe. This entry is based on that conversation.
* * *
I have no words to even adequately begin to apologize to the people of Boquillas del Carmen for the US’s idiotic, criminally insane culture and the security, immigration and anti-drug policies that come along with it.
And then if I really think about it, the list of people I need to apologize to stretched so far I can’t see the end anywhere in sight. I owe an apology to the indigenous communities here before me, to the descendants of black slaves who worked backbreaking days to amass wealth for my ancestors, to the people of the Niger Delta, to the women raped in the Congo because of civil unrest caused by the curse of having resources my country needs, to every salmon dead so I can charge my phone with cheap hydropower, to the natural communities that lived on the land my house is on, to people who starve to death or die of malaria because they can’t afford health care or food that costs 1/100th of what I’m willing to spend on a smoothie or another piece of clothing I don’t really need…
And I know guilt does no good. I know I didn’t create these systems. I know that focusing on the big picture is far more important, and that the most self-serving, awful thing those in power have done to keep us from fighting back is to convince us that our individual choices can somehow, magically, save the world.
But then someone looks you in the face, and says nothing about this. He doesn’t talk about capitalism, immigration policy or NAFTA. He looks at me, hand on his horse, and says simply, “No hay mucho trabajo.” Is it hard to survive? “Si, es dificil.” And that’s all. He seems uncomfortable when my questions get more general, when they touch on illegal people, on migrant farmworkers. Maybe it’s my poor Spanish, or maybe he’s just tired at the end of the day. Maybe it’s just that I have the luxury to sit around and daydream about bringing capitalism down, but he’s too busy dealing with its daily realities to help a white girl feel less guilty.
3.13.2011
Regional, day two: tracking vs. science
This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day two: driving from El Paso
I found a coyote today. I saw tracks, a set of footprints telling a story, spelling out yesterday’s intention. Two sets of scat—one canine, dark, segmented with pointed ends and full of fur. One red, orange, with nut shells, seeds. A bit of fur in one. Looked like a coyote too. Why both there, why together? How old were they? Just how much of that story can I train myself to decipher if I work at it?
Science and tracking seem like convergent evolution at first. Tracking is knowledge applied out of necessity, deeply rooted in place. Science promises us the same precision, the same attention to detail, all for our insatiable curiosity, our desire to understand the world we live in. I want to be both, and sometimes they seem so similar. They’re about process and discovery, about getting intimate with dirt and plants and rock. But they’re also so fundamentally different.
Tracking demands humility because your very survival depends on the information you can wrest from the ground. It’s collaborative, about give and take. It’s a delicate dance between the animal, trying to remain hidden, and your very real need to find answers, to find food, to grasp whatever tiny details of information lie hidden in the dusty prints by the side of the road.
Science requires patience and coming to the natural world on its own terms, at least sometimes. But it’s born from curiosity, not necessity. It’s us above, trying to make sense of our world below. It’s the triumph of the human mind. It’s us knowing how to manage a forest but not remembering how to talk to the trees. There’s beauty in all that too, in the insatiable curiosity of the human mind, in our ability to decode natural laws and ascribe meaning to the rhythms and patterns of nature. But sometimes, I just want to be a tracker.
day two: driving from El Paso
I found a coyote today. I saw tracks, a set of footprints telling a story, spelling out yesterday’s intention. Two sets of scat—one canine, dark, segmented with pointed ends and full of fur. One red, orange, with nut shells, seeds. A bit of fur in one. Looked like a coyote too. Why both there, why together? How old were they? Just how much of that story can I train myself to decipher if I work at it?
Science and tracking seem like convergent evolution at first. Tracking is knowledge applied out of necessity, deeply rooted in place. Science promises us the same precision, the same attention to detail, all for our insatiable curiosity, our desire to understand the world we live in. I want to be both, and sometimes they seem so similar. They’re about process and discovery, about getting intimate with dirt and plants and rock. But they’re also so fundamentally different.
Tracking demands humility because your very survival depends on the information you can wrest from the ground. It’s collaborative, about give and take. It’s a delicate dance between the animal, trying to remain hidden, and your very real need to find answers, to find food, to grasp whatever tiny details of information lie hidden in the dusty prints by the side of the road.
Science requires patience and coming to the natural world on its own terms, at least sometimes. But it’s born from curiosity, not necessity. It’s us above, trying to make sense of our world below. It’s the triumph of the human mind. It’s us knowing how to manage a forest but not remembering how to talk to the trees. There’s beauty in all that too, in the insatiable curiosity of the human mind, in our ability to decode natural laws and ascribe meaning to the rhythms and patterns of nature. But sometimes, I just want to be a tracker.
3.12.2011
Regional, day one: civilization and peak oil
This entry was originally written in my journal during a regional geology trip to West Texas from March 12-19, 2011. For the complete list of regional geo blog posts, click here.
day one: flying into El Paso, Texas
Flying in looks like civilization, like creeping destruction, like our abusive conquest to impose order on a world too beaten down to resist. Square plots, prescribed Edens, green with life stolen from deep underground, from river choking with petrochemicals. Houses and houses and houses and they all look the same. At least they’re honest. I want to believe we can turn this around, but we’re all so invested in keeping the machine moving forward that three-quarters of us will never see the problem or understand how deep it goes, how rotten our civilization is. I want to believe that peak oil will be our unwelcome savior, an intervention when we most need it, forcing us to get clean, to break the habit, to once again live our lives as fully and humanly as we’re capable of, the way no Westerner has in recent memory. I pray for this, knowing that when we’re on the other side of the Hubbert curve, we’ll murder and rape and bomb each other into oblivion for every last sweet black drop. What the drug trade has done to Ciudad Juarez, to inner-city Los Angeles, oil will do to Western Civilization. I want to open my eyes and look my future full in the face, but I’m afraid that the clarity of reality will be too blinding for me to coexist with it. So I fly over, falling in and out of sleep, dreaming of place crashes, and I don’t look down anymore. I close my eyes and sleep.
day one: flying into El Paso, Texas
Flying in looks like civilization, like creeping destruction, like our abusive conquest to impose order on a world too beaten down to resist. Square plots, prescribed Edens, green with life stolen from deep underground, from river choking with petrochemicals. Houses and houses and houses and they all look the same. At least they’re honest. I want to believe we can turn this around, but we’re all so invested in keeping the machine moving forward that three-quarters of us will never see the problem or understand how deep it goes, how rotten our civilization is. I want to believe that peak oil will be our unwelcome savior, an intervention when we most need it, forcing us to get clean, to break the habit, to once again live our lives as fully and humanly as we’re capable of, the way no Westerner has in recent memory. I pray for this, knowing that when we’re on the other side of the Hubbert curve, we’ll murder and rape and bomb each other into oblivion for every last sweet black drop. What the drug trade has done to Ciudad Juarez, to inner-city Los Angeles, oil will do to Western Civilization. I want to open my eyes and look my future full in the face, but I’m afraid that the clarity of reality will be too blinding for me to coexist with it. So I fly over, falling in and out of sleep, dreaming of place crashes, and I don’t look down anymore. I close my eyes and sleep.
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