Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
attheriver'sedge.Trucksonlonger-than-longhaulsspewedthickplumesofblacksmokein-
to the cloudless sky, while children ate Whataburger hamburgers and sipped from giant ves-
sels of Coca-Cola a hundred steps from the razor wire encasing the International Bridge. On
days when the farmers burned cane, the whole world seemed as though it were on fire.
Six years later, when I heard the story on the radio about the reporter from
Esquire
who was
walking 1,900 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border, I was standing on a countertop in McAl-
len painting yellow along the kitchen ceiling. Laura was on the floor in the adjacent office,
unpacking boxes and keeping an eye on the baby. We had just moved back after a three-year
graduateschoolsojourninIndiana.Alwayspronetotakingmetaphorstooliterally,Iwascon-
vinced that borders were a place that both divided and unified, and that in order to be made
whole again, one had to return to the place of initial rupture. Laura had her own reasons for
wantingtoreturn,butbothofushadagreedthatontheborder,somehoweverythingfeltmore
alive.Ihadfearedthatthissensationwasrootedinnostalgia,butuponreturningwasrelieved
to discover that the remembered past still held true.
I wasn't listening, but the interviewer's question penetrated my wandering consciousness:
Why? Why walk the border?
The reporter was doing it backward, Tijuana to Brownsville, traveling with a baby stroller
andaniPhone.HehadGPSandasolar-poweredKindle.Thoughperfectly awareofthepres-
ence of envy, I found myself judging his techi-ness: no donkey, no dog.
I climbed down from the counter and crouched, froglike, next to the radio with its staticky
reception.Nexttome,Laurafiledthedocumentsofourlifetogether,herlegsstretchedoutin
front of her so that her body formed a three-dimensional Y. The reporter remarked about the
difficulty of sealing off such a long border in such inhospitable terrain. My son, his posture
mirroring that of his mother, glanced up, then continued ripping the pile of discarded papers
infrontofhim.Thereporterdescribedthelongstretchesofnothingnessas“alearningexper-
ience.”
Myson,pastreadyforhismidafternoon nap,begancrying.Iloadedhimintothestroller,and
we headed out into the hundred-degree heat of late April in South Texas.
Ithoughtofthereporterwithhisownmodifiedjoggingstroller,thedesertsoflonelinesshe
must be traversing—Kindle or not—that I had once coveted for myself. I thought of the cir-
cuitous path that had led me away from the border and back again, into marriage and parent-
hood and homeownership and the trappings of—if not the complete conviction in—a settled
existence. I thought of my new job teaching community college students for whom the bor-
derwasnotsomethingexoticorevenparticularlynoteworthy,butafactoflife,itsabsurdities
and fucked-up politics and violence and juxtapositions not so much a story to tell as a back-
drop against which the satisfactions and preoccupations of daily life were set.
