A Day at No More Deaths

The wheezing of the harmonica threads its way through the light mesh of my tent. The rain fly is still damp from last night’s deluge. It will soon be dry as the sun rises over the mountains a dozen miles from the Arizona/Sonora border and heats the dusty earth into the 90s and 100s. The smell of cowboy coffee and simmering onions wafts through the semi-permanent but precariously mended structures of Byrd Camp: the half dozen campers with varying degrees of rust and rot, the sturdy boxed and canned food shed, the open-sided cooking and dishwashing tents, the canvas covered MASH-look-alike medical tent where nine travelers sleep on cots and rest blistered feet, the dining and lounging area with long picnic tables and benches and a couple of worn recliners neatly littered with stacks of magazines. It is quiet save for the bird songs and the Spanish and English intermingling in the still cool air. Soft laughing or dusty coughs from the numerous fabric tents on the periphery of the camp punctuate the sleepy murmuring. The vast stretches of hills and mountains around us are radiant greens and deep reds in the early morning light, the occasional window of a ranch house reflecting sharp white heat.

The harmonica-playing volunteer has started our breakfast, started our day with caffeine and protein, eggs scrambled into peppers, onions, beans, or any leftovers from the vegetarian meal the night before. Scooped into tortillas and washed down with ground-rich coffee, we will be ready to hike, navigate, bushwhack as we drop off water jugs, food, and socks along the trails for as long as daylight allows. We congregate around the propane burners and picnic tables and talk about the day’s tasks ahead.

There will be three patrols: The first will do “drops” spending much of the day in one of the burly trucks to navigate through washes and up and down rain rutted hills. Gallon jugs of water will be positioned at waypoints usually less than a half a mile from the road- close enough for our convenience but far enough from the Border Patrol accessible roads to provide a modicum of safety for travelers. Another team will go on a moderate seven-mile hike to drop water and food at more remote waypoints along a previously well-used migrant trail. The third team will be hiking all day, probably ten or so miles with some “topographical features” (AKA mountains and canyons) primarily looking for migrants that may have been left behind by their group due to injury or sickness or speed. Water jugs will be left at points along the way if supplies are low.

Each patrol should have among its two to five people a Spanish speaker (not necessarily fluent but with enough Spanish to communicate the basics) and someone medically trained (a Wilderness First Responder or EMT-Basic is ideal but not always available within the small volunteer pool, so we do what we can). The rest of the group usually has at least a basic grasp of both Spanish and elementary first aid. At first this lack of formal skills made me feel unprepared; how could we help with such limited training? But we are not Doctors Without Borders or the Red Cross. We are simply people wanting to help other people in the middle of the desert. Whatever skills, passion, supplies we can bring, it is more than if we weren’t here at all. At least this is what I tell myself to keep from feeling utterly helpless out here.

There will also be two or three people who will “hold down” Camp and tend to those in the medical tent who need assistance. They will welcome any more travelers who may arrive during the day that may be suffering from scorpion stings to severe dehydration to debilitating blisters to exhaustion. If they have time and enough people, the home team will also do any chores that the camp needs, like mending tent roofs after windy monsoon storms or filling up water containers in the closest town of Arivaca or cleaning out the solar powered fridge.

The travelers in Camp will have a chance to rest and eat and drink before moving on the following day (or take more than a couple of days if their health is severely compromised). Moving on as quickly as possible is encouraged as, though rare, Camp is not immune to raids by Border Patrol. The land is private and technically off limits, but BP has come onto the property in the past stating that they were following footprints of suspected undocumented persons. Laws tend to be blurry out here. With helicopters and fighter jets screaming overhead and the threat of BP surveillance and possible apprehension of persons near the property, the Camp is constantly vacillating between feeling like a war zone and an invisible bubble of safety.

We make our peanut butter sandwiches and fill our canteens before loading up the four-wheel-drive trucks with crates of gallon water jugs, Ziplocs full of high-carb food, bags of dry socks and medical supplies, plus our backpacks for carrying it all. Laminated topographical maps and portable GPSs, sunscreen and hats, granola bars and water bottles get shoved into pockets and clipped to bags. Oil and fuel levels, wiring, tires, duct-taped hoods are checked before we jump in the cab or pile into the back of the trucks and head out. It is 8am and we will meet back at camp by six or seven.

I have picked the water dropping patrol. I am in a group of four. To pass the half hour it will take to get to the first drop waypoint we brush up on our Spanish with flashcards that C. brought along. “Meatballs!” I shout when O. reads off “Albondigas.” My Spanish speaking skills are pretty dire when it comes to anything but food, but put me in a market in Central America and I can ask for just about any fruit or veggie I need or order off a menu with relative confidence. Which doesn’t really help me help anyone in the middle of the Sonoran desert, but luckily there are several competent Spanish speakers in the truck. What do I have to offer? Remnants of knowledge from my EMT training ten years ago and a strong back to haul multiple gallons of water miles on end. And a bag of cashews. And a loud laugh.

We reach our first waypoint and tumble out of the cab, stretching our legs and arms after the bumpy 30-minute ride. I’m still sore from yesterday’s eight-mile hike over steep, overgrown terrain, but I know walking the trails will loosen me up. We fan out and find the trail relatively easily then load up packs and empty hands with our supplies. The GPS says the waypoint is only .2 miles away so we take much heavier loads than we would if we were hiking all day. Down a mesquite-covered hill and into a dry stony creek-bed, then up through smatterings of cholla cactus and over rusty red earth.

We find the waypoint: a crate of untouched water jugs surrounded by a dozen empties. They’ve been used! A five-gallon bucket sits overturned and bare inside. It is bittersweet to find a site like this. It is encouraging that the supplies are being found, hopefully by travelers. It is encouraging that the jugs are intact and haven’t been slashed. (By Border Patrol. Or ranchers. Although the former is more likely as they have been caught on tape destroying water jugs.) It is encouraging that the food and socks in the bucket have been taken. Yet it is accompanied by the discouraging feeling that somehow we are not doing enough. What if there were 16 people in a group and only three packets of food? Did they get enough water? How long would the water they could carry last anyway? How is it possible that there are people in the desert desperate enough to make this journey with so little and that they are forced to travel through a place so remote and treacherous that they have to rely on fucking Nature Valley granola bars positioned in the middle of the fucking desert by a bunch of punk/anarchist/hippie/activist good Samaritans? And why do we need to be labeled as such “on the fringe of society” individuals for wanting to make a fucking difference?

(Sigh. Breath. Continue.)

We write “Agua Pura” (pure water), “Buena Suerte!” (good luck), “Hasta un mundo sin fronteras” (until a world without borders), and draw hearts and smiley faces on the jugs. I rarely draw hearts on anything in earnest these days, but out here the sentimentality of such a symbol rings more genuine than anywhere else.

We record what we found and what we are leaving and head back to the truck to find the other eleven drops. Some sites are as easy to find, some take us twenty minutes to locate with the GPS leading the charge. Some are well used, some untouched. There is one remote site that is totally empty except for one blue plastic shred from a water bottle cap. How long ago was the last volunteer group here to drop? The record says a month ago but wouldn’t there still be remnants if that was the case? Were the jugs and bucket taken by BP? Or were the supplies well used? Has anyone come by who needed water and couldn’t find any?

We’ll never know. That is the reality out here. As much as we can speculate each step of the way, we won’t know the story attached to each hand that lifted a water jug to their lips. We won’t know who or how many passed this spot this week, month, year, or even an hour before. On these trails, people don’t want to be found. Oftentimes the only trace of humanity is an oxidized can or blown out sneaker rotting next to the packed earth of the trail.

We eat our sandwiches under the sparsely leafed trees next to the road. Once the calories and hydration are absorbed we speak of lives at home (waiting tables, going to classes, surfing) that seem irrelevant out here among the thousands of miles of trails. We laugh at bad jokes (What does the hippie say when you try to kick him out of your house? Namaste.) and puzzle over drawn out riddles and relate traveling stories as we finish the rest of the drops, the sun sinking down to touch the jagged edge of the Baboquivaris.

Peppers, okra, and onions that some of us helped harvest the day before from the Arivaca Community Garden simmer in a huge pot in the Camp kitchen tent. Moths swarm around kerosene lanterns and volunteers sit talking with travelers at the long wooden tables. B. is practicing her Spanish with the flashcards now and asks P. to help her pronounce nouns (granjero = farmer) and eerily relevant verbs in the infinitive (viajar = to travel). We anxiously glance over towards a circle of chairs where several volunteers and a couple of travelers perch. One man is leaning back, leg propped up, a blanket covering his muscular arms. He was supposed to leave with the group of five men heading out after dinner, but he won’t be going anywhere tonight. Earlier that afternoon D. was finding a place to piss on the periphery of camp, as we all do (there is a bucket with a seat over it for taking a shit- the buckets fill up quickly with twenty people in camp and even more quickly if we all pee into it too, so it is encouraged to #1 elsewhere). He made his way into the shrubs and bushes of appropriately named “Rattlesnake Ridge,” just a hundred yards from my tent, where he met a rattler shin to fangs. Contact.

D., a firefighter and paramedic at home, had traveled for two months from Central America to reach the border. He saw a friend shot and killed by the Cartel. He saw another man cut in half by a train. He had crossed the border and walked for days to make it to Camp. And at the “safe-haven” of Camp, perhaps only days from “making it,” he was bitten by a rattlesnake. He immediately refused evacuation to a hospital for the anti-venom that could save his life. After discussing the options, the more experienced volunteers made a deal with him: they circled the bite marks with a sharpie. D. agreed that if swelling increased and other signs of envenomation presented themselves, the volunteers could take him to a hospital where he would most likely be apprehended, processed, possibly incarcerated, and inevitably deported after his life is saved. But until then he would wait to see if his bite got worse. Volunteers set up a schedule to take his vitals every hour during the evening and night. Everyone is tense.

The realities of the desert come rushing in. That could have been any of us but it happened to be a man who cannot simply call 911 and have an ambulance meet up with the truck in Arivaca without severe life-changing consequences. This man is literally risking his life today on the chance that he can keep walking (and that with no guarantee of safe passage) tomorrow.

The privilege we volunteers have is painfully clear.

We inhale our veggies and tortillas, beans and salad after our long days on the trail or caretaking at Camp. Everyone is tired but hyperaware of all that is happening. On other nights we have sat in a circle and shared thoughts and feelings about the events of the day. Sometimes it involves laughing, sometimes crying. It is a safe(r) space for all of the swirling emotions that accumulate like tangled brush in the washes during the desert floods. On other nights we have sat around the campfire and sung songs in Spanish and English, “Jolene” or “Como Quisiera” rising with the smoke from burning cardboard boxes and mesquite branches. On other nights, when the Camp has not been filled with travelers, we have ambled back into our tents without the fragility of life weighing so palpably on our psyches.

After dinner the group of five travelers sling on their tiny backpacks filled with granola bars, tortillas, cans of beans. I hear that M. had a full bottle of cologne in his pack and smile with the thought of the “necessities” that make us human. He hugs me in a cloud of spice and pine and wishes me “Buena suerte!” His high pitched laughter had filled the camp for two days and even those folks that were initially put off by his energy and compulsive smile were charmed by the end of his stay. He and I had attempted conversation over the picnic tables over many meals but our lack of language skills reduced us to laughter most of the time. Connection. His spirit buoyed the volunteers and the rest of the group of travelers (strangers before the journey), even if they playfully called him loco. I wish him “Buena suerte” back and he continues his rounds, thanking every volunteer in Camp. The other men do the same with hugs, handshakes, and kind words. We stand in the pooling light of the kitchen tent as they walk into the darkness of the brush-lined trail to the north. It is surreal to watch them disappear into the night. Would they make it? They swore that they would stick together, that they wouldn’t leave anyone behind. But what if they were “dusted” and scattered by a Border Patrol helicopter? What if someone was injured or stung by a deadly scorpion or bitten by another rattler? Would they still stay together? How long would the rest of their journey be? Days? Weeks? Would we ever know if any of them would make it? We stare at the spot where they disappear through the brush until the yawns begin to leap frog through our dusty and tangle-haired group.

Our day is over. I climb into my sleeping bag and dream of cactus, of water jugs, of freedom. I want to wake up to a day where this sort of work isn’t necessary, where this sort of privilege is irrelevant, where there is not fear and pain and desperation with every blistered step.

I may be naïve, overly optimistic, foolish. But at least I (we) am doing something out here in the beautiful, tragic, life-giving and life-taking desert where the invisible wander, work, and dream every day.