Garth on the Dawn Hike, the Border Patrol and arriving in Nogales

02/11/08
Para Garth D LeMessurier
We awake at the early hour of two. With breakfast sandwiches made the previous night, we embark like zombies down to the vans, in a semi-delusional state.
At two thirty the vans leave for the rendezvous point. Some listen to music, sleep, and the couples snuggle. Its dark out and the lights of the streets glow crystal beams of sunlight through the glass windows of a factory.
We arrive at a u-shaped shopping plaza, mostly closed except for the lights of a food mart. Elissa gets out and checks the nearly empty parking lot and signals to a blue SUV. We follow him for a few minutes to a dirt road next to a household with barking dogs. We get out and after a short introduction with Don Garrote, who proceeds to lead us through thorny bushes for 20 some odd minutes. It takes longer than expected as he loses the trail, or the lack of trail, until we find it under the path of power lines. Packs of coyotes howl, communicating with the local dogs, some kids are frightened. We follow the power lines to the power station and Don holds the fence down as we pass under it, it buzzes with charges. We follow down wet fields until we get to railroad construction. We cross a few sets of tracks until we get to the one we will follow.
We turn our headlamps off walking on the tracks in hope of seeing passing migrants, there is no hope though as we can be heard from miles away from our chatter, and falls on the dirt/gravel parallel to the tracks. Don shows us an old blue metal barrel, supposedly old water barrels unmarked and un-flagged, some migrants won’t trust it, and culverts under the tracks where migrants often sleep in hope of slightly warmer conditions, yet probably only from the wind. We stop miles down the tracks and pass almonds around as the sun rises with yellow-purple-green tints in the sky.
We pass two large ranches as we walk down the wide gravel path in-between the tracks. One is a vast open dirt field with a few cows, the other pristine green lines of grass, where exotic horses graze. Several cow carcasses and bones are spewed around the tracks—victims of oncoming trains. A freshly killed horse is melting in the dawn, its organs fumigating, its hair stained with blood.
We take a longer path to the nearest bridge downriver, Don wishes he had planned for a raft to cross earlier. We walk through a marsh/swampland, with drooping barren trees, a trash ridden dirt path, with the occasional stream. We cross a 20 foot bouncy plank bridge, bending a foot down at times.
We travel down a crushed gravel road under arching trees to an open field with a steeple, the tallest point in the mission. A small village of historical sites surround the old church, a sprawling garden, a chorus loops in the entrance to the cryptic monument.
Soon we are whisked away by two of our three vans. Back at the campsite we catch a quick nap and lunch before packing and setting off for the boarder patrol offices. We sign in at the building with camouflaged security guards bearing m4-a1 rifles and 40mm grenade launchers. We watch a heavily scripted power point presentation, lead by two Mexican-American officers. Every officer bears an H&K USP 45 CAL. pistol. They cannot answer if there are cameras on the railroad tracks we had walked on earlier in the morning. The surveillance room spots two dogs crossing illegally. A detained female migrant stares towards the group from behind bars.
We cross into Mexico, getting stares all the way through the city. A top a hill, on the far right side of town, we arrive at the casa. Pictures of revolutionaries are painted on the concrete wall near the playground of the casa. The sun sets through the fractalized clouds. We sleep on beds for the first time since the 3rd.