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.”
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