THESE GRAND PLACES
Field Notes
Field Notes is a living archive, a repository for ephemera, of collected maps and materials, gathered plants and samples, prints of all kinds made in situ, and written pages of notes that Tomiko composed while traveling through public lands and working on These Grand Places.
Clouds Gathering over Bears Ears
A long and rigorous walk to an ancient sacred dwelling, a profound encounter, a deep marking of existence across human, geological, and celestial time. It is dark on the drive back to camp, and I strike an owl flying low across the road. The islander in me feels the omen of such a killing, and distraught, I weep at the death of a beautiful creature by my careless, human actions. I bring the nightjar home.
In the morning sun I honor its life through the making of a memorial imprint, the body as it is. The wind picks up and the clouds are gathering above the Bears Ears. I point my camera lens to the sky, capturing the promise of rain, or the threat of a torrential desert monsoon. I quickly pack up camp, leaving a moment before the storm arrives, the wind at my back.
Coyote Sunset
2019. The sun sets over a mountain range in México, a strange incarcerated view through the bars of the border wall. It’s December, the night falls early and the temperature is dropping. A coyote is running along the border, looking for a way through. Your timing is good, but the window is closing. I see your shadow of a body slip into the night. The new impenetrable wall is not yet complete, I saw an opening, I photographed it earlier that day. The gap was like a missing tooth, offering an unobstructed view across the border, where the ribs of a dead but still standing saguaro held the horizon, unlike the one on this side of the border plowed down by a bulldozer. Saguaros are protected by state law, they are ancients, living up to 200 years. This one lies dead, pointing to the gap. The allure of the gap beckons, like the feeling when crossing a high bridge, the emptiness pulling you to plummet off the edge. Your timing is good, I hope you find your way home tonight. But what about next winter? Will the gap be closed, completing the 2000+ miles of steel that divides an ecosystem?
2021. I return to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and travel the length of the wall from the west at Puerto Blanco to the east where it meets the Tohono O’odham Nation. The gap is closed. I am at Quitobaquito Spring assessing the water level. So much regional water was used to mix tons of concrete to construct the border wall. It’s February and the first rains of the Sonoran winter have fallen. The new border patrol road of dirt and gravel is already slumping from erosion, the ditches thick with drying mud. Things are already falling apart, I think, when I see the tracks. I stop cold, frozen by the pang in my heart and the grip in my chest, imagining you on the wrong side, a family divided. I stare at the false line, a blade severing the grey sky. A land divided. A world divided.
Ghosts
It’s early morning as I leave camp for the arduous journey into Chaco Canyon. A beautiful bluebird is perched on a fencepost. I pull over and peer at it through my monocular, attempting to make a picture of it through the magnified lens, one of my favorite things to do lately. I have wanted to visit Chaco Canyon ever since I can remember, and despite living in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, I have never been. Driving through the greater Chaco landscape I think about the “Fracking Reality Tour” led by Daniel Tso, Navajo Nation council member. I want to go on a tour, but there are none as we are in a pandemic. So I think of oil drilling, its effect on respiratory health, and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on the Diné. I see a tuft of fur blowing in the wind and pull over. Two executed puppies lie just off the road next to a discarded pair of blue rubber gloves. I take photographs, and feel sick for doing so. I am sorry, I say, and drive on. After many miles on the bumpy, dusty road, my mind calms and I arrive at a site of ancestral Puebloan culture where countless people gathered over a thousand years ago. The Great Houses are vast, with structures oriented towards the sun, the moon, and celestial events. I feel the power of this place.
The sun beats down intensely, so I slip away into an underground space, where my body casts a soft shadow on the earthen wall, like a ghost. The day is waning, and the park closing, so I head out, passing a herd of elk laying in a meadow. The deeply rutted road jostles everything, it’s like I’m tumbling away from the canyon. I finally reach the pavement and turn west towards the sun that has dipped behind the mountains. It happens so fast, I don’t even remember seeing it until a small form is rolling down the road in my rearview mirror. A western bluebird. I cradle her in my hands, but her neck is broken. She is already dead. Maybe she was flying home for the evening, maybe to the place I admired a male western bluebird this very morning. Maybe to her mate. The world is violent. We are ghosts.
Sunrise with the Border Patrol
I leave before dawn, walking towards the waning crescent moon, a golden sliver hovering over the edge of the thirty-foot wall like a beacon. When I cannot walk any further, I turn east and follow the boundary between the United States and México. I know it won’t be long. Behind me are two tiny white lights in the distance. The sky is beginning to lighten before headlights are shining on me and a voice speaks in Spanish, where are you going?
I answer, to see the sunrise, but my backpack is heavy, and the road is rough. He switches to English, I thought you were someone else and was going to offer you a ride back. I think, who else could I be, and back where? Since the invocation of Title 42 at the beginning of the pandemic, agents can expel migrants instead of allowing them to seek asylum. They put them on a bus and take them far from where they were encountered. Want to give me a ride? I ask, I want to get to the top of this hill before sunrise. He pauses and then says, okay, but you have put on a mask. I can’t believe my good luck and hop in the passenger side. We aren’t but two minutes into the drive when we agree that the wall is not the solution. The problem is systemic, he offers. I ask, have you been to where the contractors blew off half a mountain?
No, but I see them speeding by in their work trucks. His tone confirms the tension I have been picking up on. That is where I am headed, want to go there? We arrive just as the sun is rising over the ridge and I fly the drone up and down the canyon. I take out my field camera and set it up on tripod. He tells me he took photography classes and really liked printing in the darkroom. It must have been in El Paso, where he is from a family of teachers and law enforcement officers. I tell him I teach film photography and darkroom classes and picture him as a student, a civilian. He leaves me there, but comes back later to check in. I know the road goes on a few more miles through this rugged landscape, where there had not been a wall, or road, before. Do you want to go to the end of the road?
There a bulldozer has pushed a berm of rocks to the top of a steep slope, marking the end of the road. He walks to the edge and gazes out. We look quietly together at the expansive desert, the first view of an unscarred landscape.
Vigilantes
I’ve been out here for about a week. On the second day a border patrol truck follows me for miles back to camp. We exit our vehicles and stand face to face. I was just seeing what you are doing out here, he says. Well, I have a pretty nice camp, but don’t have any firewood. As he departs, he says, you can call me Agent Brewoo. You can call me Professor Jones, and the next time you visit, please bring firewood, and he finally cracks a smile. I feel a little bit better having another person of color in the field. The nearest town is thirty miles down a dirt road. Here the Sonoran Desert is flat, the foliage sparse, and my camp is exposed to the road. It is true that I have felt spooked. It’s been a month since the storming of the US Capitol, and two weeks since President Biden signed an executive order temporarily pausing border wall construction. Hostility and xenophobia are palpable. One day I’m headed towards the New México side of Guadalupe Canyon. I stop before turning onto the road to doublecheck that I brought the map, when I hear the crunching of tires on gravel. I look up to see four white men, clad in camo, in a big white truck with a gun rack. They slow down next to me. I’m alarmed but raise my hand and wave. They stare back at me coldly and do not wave back. The hair stands up on the back of my neck. Vigilantes. They move past me, kicking up dust as they circle my camp, and then continue down the dirt track. I’ve followed that track, it does not seem to lead anywhere.
I go back to my camp and scoop up Cub, extra food and water, and the rest of the gear. I grab the bear spray which is next to the fire extinguisher. I can’t help but think about the Asian American family ambushed, surrounded by trucks, and threatened while camping last summer. I check all the locks and think, locks won’t matter when there is a fire.
We head up and over the Peloncillo Mountains where I search for easement into the canyon, but all the roads are blocked. I see a U.S Customs and Border Protection vehicle, also a big white truck, and pull up. I ask about the blocked roads. The two agents share information about the geography and the private public tension around the border. I ask if they have seen the mountains that were blown up with dynamite to construct the new wall. No. I ask them, how did you become border patrol agents? It pays well, one of them says, and I learn they are both from Lordsburg, a predominately Latinx community. They are surprised when I say I’ve been there. I lived in Las Cruces, I tell them, which they laughingly call the big city. I also remember there was a Japanese American Incarceration Camp in Lordsburg during WWII, but I don’t bring it up. Hey, I want to tell you about the men in my camp today. It’s not hunting season, is it? They shake their heads. They give me a card with their phone number. Call us if you run into trouble or need help.