Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The truth was that I'd thought up the idea and told the first person I saw, in the hopes that
my public declaration of intent would shame me into doing something significant with my
life. That person happened to be Laura, who'd recently hazarded to mention that she was
thinking about marriage. Things snowballed from there.
The year I didn't walk 1,900 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, I bought a new pair of
hiking boots and stomped around the neighborhood with my '70s-era external frame Kelty
backpack, wearing two pairs of socks. I carried plenty of water and tried to avoid the roving
packs of Chihuahuas that bared their teeth like four-legged piranhas.
I went to the library at the University of Texas-Pan American and checked out a stack of
books on the border that I found, for reasons not well understood, totally unreadable. I left
them splayed open around my bedroom floor, and my cat, Che, who bit my girlfriend's toes
at night out of either jealousy or boredom, slept on the pages.
Laura offered to take care of the cat while I was gone. She asked me not to leave, but said
she understood if I did. Both gestures struck me as pure demonstrations of true love, though
I doubted if she understood an impulse that I myself did not truly comprehend.
Of all of the adventures in my life that I have not undertaken, this one was the most fully
realized.
The year I didn't walk 1,900 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, I began to question the
purpose of my trip:
Why was everyone so gung-ho about doing something exotic or noteworthy with their
year?
Why couldn't they write about a year of failure, a year of discontented employment, a
yearofmetaphysical paralysis, ayearofresisting loveforthesakeofpreserving anidealized
vision of their future selves, a year of getting up every morning to feed an FIV-positive cat
picked up outside Che's Restaurant in Rio Grande City, one-eyed and hairless, who howls
andhowlsatnightbecausehewantstogooutsidebutcan'tbecausehe'llinfecttheneighbor-
hood?
What were all these people trying to prove with their years ofdoing something? More pre-
cisely, what was I trying to prove?
Was I on a journey to discover something, or did I already know what I was going to dis-
cover?
The year I didn't walk 1,900 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, the sun beat hot on the
white sands of the Yuma Desert. Jaguarundis lapped up water from the Rio Grande, green
jays flitted from branch to branch of craggy mesquites, cacti hoarded water in thick-walled
cisterns,menandwomenleftbehindsodabottlesandtornunderwearhangingfrombulrushes
