Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
DANIEL TYX
The Year I Didn't
FROM
Gulf Coast
T
HE YEAR I
didn't walk 1,900 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, I purchased a detail map
oftheborderstatesandnorthernMexicoattheCircleKinMcAllen.Inmymind'seye,thePa-
cificOceanglistenedcrystallinebluewhenIfinallyarrivedinTijuanaalongMonumentRoad,
sun-cracked and solitude-wizened.
I debated whether to travel with a dog or a donkey. I liked the image of the latter better, for
the sake of the topic jacket, but there were logistical problems. How does one transport a pack
animal across a transnational frontier?
I quit my job at the International Museum of Art and Science (slogan:
At IMAS, hay más
),
an eclectic amalgamation of amateurish rock and insect collections and Mexican folk art be-
queathed by civic-minded Oaxacan tourists. Like me, the museum couldn't figure out what it
was supposed to be about, or perhaps was convinced that it could be more than one thing at a
time.
Twocamps:thosewhothoughtIwascrazy,andthosewhowantedtoknowthedetailsofmy
route, which Ipreferred to leave to chance ormy imagination. Ineither case, everyone wanted
to know: why was I walking?
The year I didn't walk 1,900 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, the truth was that everyone
seemed to be doing something with their year, then writing about it. There was the man who
lived without electricity in Brooklyn, the woman who didn't take out the trash, the two separ-
ate guys—one a believer and one an agnostic—who lived like Jesus would.
ThetruthwasthatIdreamedofwritingatraveloguethatwouldforeveralterthedynamicof
the American conversation about immigration and the border. I wanted a conversation piece
for life, something to bust out at parties when, as usual, I couldn't for the life of me think of
something halfway intelligent to say. More than that, I wanted a story to tell myself about my
life, one with a page-turning plot and a clear beginning, middle, and end.
The truth was, why not? I was already there, my girlfriend, Laura, and I having been de-
ployed at the same time as the U.S. National Guard as part of a teaching corps that, ironically,
favored a military lexicon. She had quickly become a star educator; I had even more quickly
become a devastated dropout with halfhearted suicidal impulses and a dead-end job at a dead-
end museum. Her previous boyfriend had moved on from her to Harvard, and the recurring
thought haunted me: Was I her rebound? His unaccomplished, ham-fisted doppelganger?
