9/1
To Those Good Folks With Whom I Like To Exchange Stories, share ideas, and mutually engage in real work, visit and generally keep up to date:
After a short ride on the greyhound, I'll be spending the fall out on the Arizona/Sonora (U.S.-Mexico) Border with an educational nonprofit called BorderLinks. For those of you who know him, Rick Ufford-Chase founded the program back in the late 1980's. This semester will serve as a study-"abroad" of sorts. I'll be out that way until December, my time split between Nogales, Mx and Tucson, US. Travel, classes, a homestay in Mexico, reading, cultural interaction, etc. Yes, by the
way, I'll receive credit hours. The plan is still for me to graduate in May.
These emails will serve as periodic updates of my time on the Border. Chances are, none of them will be pressing. They should-- if things go as planned-- be filled with impressions and stories, perhaps a few facts and summaries along the way as well. The point is, these "Updates from the Border" should not be time sensitive, do not require response (though I'll certainly engage as I can), and are intended to give you a few pictures, a few stories, perhaps a couple of laughs. So, if you're rushed on time, let it them get buried in your inbox. Find them several weeks later. Read as you have time, not a moment sooner. And, please, do not feel guilty when your cursor hovers near the delete button. We will never know all about each others' lives, and indeed, "Update emails" are hardly my favorite medium for telling stories.
Although I have not sent this email until my arrival in Tucson, AZ, I began composing it still in Tallahassee, FL.
The rush is always mental up until my bags are packed and sat next to the back door. But sit with me a moment here in Tallahassee, FL. From what I recall of southern Arizona, it is unbelievably dry, and grey, and brown, and so, I'd like to draw your attention to what is beyond my bedroom window. Out front, all along the front sidewalk our struggling-- yet green-- blueberries as well as pomegranates, muscadine grape, blackberries and pears grow ever larger. Though, to be honest, all is still very small having been planted just over a year ago. Between the sidewalk and house lies (or lays, please Joe, I still need help with those words) the remnants of one of our vegetable gardens: okra, pooped-out tomatoes, tomatillos, sweet and lemon basil. Then, of course, there are the young apples trees: four of them, and a planter box with bell peppers, chard, and kale started for a fall garden. There is other greenery: a magnificent live oak, pine trees, a giant Christmas tree planted six years ago at Christmas, sago palms, azaleas, grass. As you might guess, the food bearing greens (i.e. plants that grow food) draw my special attention.
Beyond the site of my window, what you cannot see, are the bananas, the mulberry, tangerine, orange, kumquat, loquat, grapefruit, pomello, chinquapins, persimmon, and on the list goes. Also beyond the view, is the pear tree down the street in a neighbor's yard from which Katie- my niece- and I picked pears last night in a last-minute, ditch-effort to can the love of summer, the flavor of summer. We made pear butter. Also beyond my sight, are the figs that grow in a neighbors yard around the corner, and the blueberries and grapes that grow on the edge of town. Nor can I see the rolling Tallahassee pastures, vibrantly green from the Florida Thunderstorms, graced by enormous live oaks. Tallahassee and its surroundings are positively alive with Chlorophyll.
Thursday, 1:30pm. I leave at 6pm. I'll arrive in Tucson at 7:45am, Saturday (Tucson time); 10:45 EST. 41 hours on the bus-- if things go as planned.
- - - - -
In San Antonio, my aunt and Uncle-- who live just outside town-- came down to the bus station to greet me on my way through town. I had about an hour at the station. They taught me about family: no offer, they just bought me lunch. At some point, my aunt began apologizing, offering her sympathies and her compassion that I had "so much further to go." According to her, it sounded like "a dark and stormy night" or "a long an arduous journey." Now, don't get me wrong-- its WAS long. But, it was a funny thing to be able to say in San Antonio, "Heck, I've only got 18 hours left. I'm over halfway."
In the past few weeks as I've told people that I was taking the greyhound to Tucson, they'd blink at me like a deer in the headlights: "Oh," was all they could say. And, when I paired the Greyhound with, "Yeah, I'm spending the semester on the U.S. Mexico Border," they'd get this glossy-eyed look that suggested they might never see me again. "Be safe," they say as if my death was a sure thing. Really they were saying, "I suppose if you die-- which you probably will-- it will be admirable. Nathan, well. It's been good knowing you."
All this fear of the Greyhound really puzzled me. I truly couldn't understand their vicarious fear. Look, I knew it was going to be a long ride, and I knew that my legs would get a little cramped. But, at every stop, I'd be able to get out and at least pace back in forth, which I ended up doing. By the end of the trip people would smile. "There you are again," they'd say as I walked by them again for the 17th time.
But heck. My ticket from Tallahassee to Tucson cost me $76 with fees. The cheapest flight was $460 PLUS fees. Even if I could have worked both the days of my travel... I just didn't understand the fear.
If you will spare me a little irreverence, I finally discovered why people are afraid of long Greyhound bus trips. Midway through west Texas (which is practically its own continent), I made my way to the back of the bus to the bathroom. Have you ever tried to pee standing up in the bathroom at the back of the bus? It brings whole new meaning to the phrase "Shoot a moving target." Imagine standing on the tea cups at Disney World-- a feat in itself. "Now," your bladder tells you, "Aim for-- hit, bulls-eye-- that ridiculously small, moving hole, way - down - there."
It makes perfect sense. Men are terrorized by their inevitable consternation of such an impossible feat-- peeing successfully in a moving Greyhound-- with fast heart and bitten lips. And the women? (And all the sitters): they fear the inevitable result-- the, um, "out wash"-- of such as disaster. And heck, everyone has to use the bathroom at some point, if, of course, they're traveling long distance.
Jokes aside, you want to know the truth? I think we're afraid of poor people. We're afraid of people that have less money than ourselves. We call them "dangerous" without even realizing that we've labeled-- not individuals or even groups but-- a whole class of folks. And you know why they take the Greyhound? I guess that $76, 2000-mile transportation weighs in.
Maybe they're so poor, they're "desperate." But heck, I traveled with $32 in my pocket. If I got mugged, I'd loose $32. It seems amid the housing market collapse, that we have a lot more to fear from the rich. Looks like they seduced thousands of folks into mortgages that were balanced on a shoe string. Now, folks are loosing hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's a bunch of zeros. But maybe since those crooks mug others with paper, signatures, interest rates, and contracts, somehow we still justify calling the poor "dangerous."
Well. I drank about 8 or 9 quarts of water since yesterday at noon, and I only have had to pee about twice. West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona were unusually green, which in dessert terms, still, means brown. It's like "fish oil with a hit of lemon." It still tastes like fish oil. At sunrise, we drove through a desert boulder field. In their million years in Southern Arizona, they've seen about as much water as drops during a normal Florida Thunderstorm.
Upon arrival in Tucson, Theresa, the on-site program coordinator picked me up from the station. The sun beat down like a micro-wave heat lamp. One of the first thing she said to me was, "It's good you came in the morning. It's not so hot yet. But then, the sun has not been so intense lately. It's monsoon season. It's really humid." Humid. "Yeah right," I laughed.
Humid. Huh.
Well. I guess not everyone understands what it means to live in north Florida during August. Have you ever been in a sweat or a sauna when someone poured too much water on the rocks? And, you have to get down near the ground in order to breathe? North Florida during August.
She went on: "Everyone told me, 'Expect dry heat.' And so I expected something really intense. But it hasn't been all that extreme." Then she went on to tell me that in the desert-- that is, right here-- in the desert, the temperature is routinely around 110 to 115 degrees. And within two feet of the ground, the temperature hovers close to 130, "So if you lay down to take a rest..." She trailed off.
And yet, somehow, there's a garden out-back of the BorderLinks' compound. They've got a fig tree, and there's a pomegranate growing up along the fence. This coming Thursday morning is garden day.
A new bed, new bathroom, new kitchen, new folks, new towns, new country, new grocery, new books. But do you know? It feels just as good regardless of a little anxiety, amid exhaustion, to peel off socks that you've been wearing for 48 hours straight. There's almost nothing like it.
Except maybe lying down my tired body, which, now, I'll do.
Nathan
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