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.
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