Here’s the first of a few pieces I call photo poems:
The photos were taken in Big Bend National Park, near the Rio Grande which is the natural border with Mexico. We were in the middle of the road trip of a lifetime from L.A. to Toronto via New Orleans. On a sidenote, it’s very cute to hear a 3 year old say, “Alabama”.
Here’s my wife, Amy, and son, Sam, in the Rio Grande. The river flows on both sides of the island to their right and it’s not clear whether they’re in Mexico or The States.
The quiet in “Far West” Texas (the moniker given to that section of West Texas that’s I suppose just a bit more “West”) was unlike anything I’d experienced before, despite several forays through rural places like Saskatchewan, Montana, and the desolate parts of Nevada. The vastness of the landscape takes you right out of your head, to consider things larger in scope, the history of people on this continent, the shaping of the continent itself, the cosmos.
But traveling close to the Rio Grande we were stopped abruptly and more than once by these roving border cops. They check to make sure you’re an American citizen. I am not, technically, American, but white Canadians travelling with American wives are not who they’re looking for. They want to find people like the Mexican craftsman crossing in a canoe that we nearly encountered, who drops handcrafted wares off at the old Hot Springs ruins at Big Bend on the American side, with a bucket and a note attached that says, “$10 each”, like some sort of capitalist river elf. He’s not supposed to be seeking out a better life that way because it’s against the law. I’m no anarchist, but sometimes the imposition of the rule of law feels particularly brutish and in conflict with unspoken natural law.
As I stood back taking the two photographs above, a Texas family of four appeared on the trail and told me they’d spotted him, as if he was a wild turkey. I wondered later if they’d reported the “latino man in a canoe escaping” they said they saw. I was too cheap to buy any of his trinkets, and I regret it. They weren’t that impressive, but how many people’s stuff really is? We’re all just trying to figure this out together. And if you think you’re better than a Mexican in a canoe in the middle of nowhere paddling his way to a better life, you’re delusional. People like that are the best of us.
