Chiricahua.

Before me, long red and green cliffs stagger out of the dusty mountains.  Beside me, emerald hummingbirds zag under greening trees. In my hand, a cold Hefeweizen homebrew.

I am in heaven: Portal, Arizona.

The last time I was in Arizona, I was nineteen, studying the border with a class. We went down in a big white van to the migrant centers in Agua Prieta and Nogales. We interviewed the Border Patrol, slept in the slums.  I drank a lot of cheap, sugary coffee out of styrofoam cups and fumbled through in Spanish.

On the last day, we drove the stretch of desert where so many die, thinking of the men we’d met.  As we stepped into showers in Tucson, they were creeping north of Sasabe. They were hiding from Border Patrol in the brush. They were sipping Coke bottles filled with water, trying to make them last. And they were hoping they could keep their children from starving.  NAFTA had razed the economies of southern Mexico; in many villages, they told us, the only option was to leave.

The men I met were lawyers, psychologists. They would take work picking stawberries or digging trenches. Maybe they would be deported. Or maybe they would die before they got there.

This time—six years later—I am walking around the loveliest garden, waiting for a wedding. There will be local Arizona wine and a sandwich bar. There will be women in floral dresses laughing and fixing each other’s hair. Around me, trees bend with fresh spring leaves. In ways, it seems impossible that I’m so close to that border.

But I am.

I got into Tucson late last night, past ten-thirty, and drove the rental car blindly east.   I played games with myself to see how far I could make it before pulling over to sleep. “After I’m off the interstate,” I said aloud.  I dreamed of a pullout with a flat patch of ground, where I could throw down a tarp and sleeping pad and crawl into my bag.  But once I turned south onto 80, a slow uneasiness grew in me: I knew what this landscape held. Once, twice, then a third time, I passed the parked cars of Border Patrol. The place was crawling with them. Saw a flashlight in a field. Watched a van idling on a side road—loading or unloading?

All this time, the fear in me grew. I thought of coyotes, those brutal human smugglers. I thought of the drug cartels sending runners through this passage. It was two in the morning, and for the first time in my life I didn’t want to sleep in the desert.

So I went all the way. I took the hooking righthand road toward Portal and watched the cliffs of the Chiricahua rising out of the darkness. The moonlight was strong. Hares darted across the road: conejos, I remembered. I scanned the radio and found some bad country. Turned it way up.

When I got to the Forest Service entrance—Cave Creek—the sign, brown and in all caps, read: “TRAVEL CAUTION: SMUGGLING AND ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY BE ENCOUNTERED HERE.”

And I laughed maniacally. “Okay. Fine.” There was no way around it.

It was Easter weekend. There wasn’t a camping spot left. At three a.m. I circled every campground twice, then finally parked my car beside an occupied site and bedded down in the back seat. All night I jerked awake, worrying about tickets from the Forest Service, or (!?!) a coyote putting a gun to the window and demanding the car keys.

Needless to say, I was fine.

Here on the porch, it’s hard to feel anything but peace. Cave Creek Ranch is tucked down into the grasses, a circle of stone cottages protected by juniper and cottonwood. Skinny, ruffled-looking deer totter across the lawn.  The front yard is set with linened tables and wedding flowers. I cannot imagine people walking through at night while we sleep.

But when I ask my Arizona friends, they shrug. “It’s a real possibility around here,” they say.  They know that, regardless of what we see, we are in the borderlands. 

I take a walk down the road. Dust kicks up behind me, and the light is golden on the long cliffs. I find myself hating my wild fear. What moves through this desert is not only shadow but people too. They are people who love, who make love, who wipe their childrens’ brows in fever. They have passions, talents. They work hard. They are people fighting to live. I have spoken to them before.

I stop in the sun. Hands out. Heat collects in my palms. I hold the contradiction as it twists and moves through me: Coyote. Smuggler. Immigrant. And This gentle land. Nourishment. Oasis.  I am cradled by desert heat. By secret streams. I become quieter and quieter.

Then I know that the fear I feel is only my inability to understand all things at once.