Border Journey – Memorial Day in the desert
We commemorated Memorial Day by hiking to three shrines in the Sonoran desert and leaving water and food along the trail in an effort to prevent the creation of future shrines.
We commemorated Memorial Day by hiking to three shrines in the Sonoran desert and leaving water and food along the trail in an effort to prevent the creation of future shrines.
We were walking along the side of a hill when Bob stopped and began peering around. He stepped off the trail and started working his way up through the spiny ocotillo. After a few minutes he saw the cross and a small pile of rocks. He took some rope out of his pack, knelt down, and lashed the cross solidly together again. Bob had found the remains of a migrant there in March of last year. We sat down in the scant shade of a mesquite tree and contemplated the tragedy that had occurred at that site.
The trail continued up to a saddle between the hills a quarter mile away. This is a resting place for migrants where Bob and Dorothy had hung four packs beside the trail a week before. They checked the packs and the water and food they had placed inside was all gone. We unloaded the water and food packets we had carried and restocked those packs. It felt like an appropriate way to honor the person who had died just down the trail.
We continued hiking and after a while Bob led us to a tree which has a cross and a candle at its base. That marks the site where he found the remains of a migrant in February of this year. We again sat in the shade for a long moment of silence.
A short distance away, Bob brought us to the third shrine. He found the remains of another migrant there on that same day in March 2011. The bones he encountered were of a small person, probably a woman.
I asked Bob a few questions about the shrines and I started to feel overwhelmed – sadness at those painful deaths and anger over a border strategy that deliberately funnels people into such remote and deadly terrain. I took a few steps away and tried to focus on the mesquite trees and the feel of the breeze on my face. The cactus behind the cross was in bloom – beauty and tragedy, side by side.
“I don’t want to have to place another shrine in the desert,” Bob told me. “It hurts to do so but I don’t want people to be forgotten.”
In love and solidarity,
Scott Nicholson
Scott Nicholson, a member of University Congregational UCC in Missoula, Montana, serves with BorderLinks in Nogales, Mexico as a volunteer at the Community Center.
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