It is the first day of November, year 2017. I had just
finished out a happy and successful summer of work in the wild, scrubby Chisos
Mountains, tucked away deep in the brown wasteland of the west Texas desert.
Barely thirty miles away, across a muddy river, a vast and varied land awaited
my restless yearning for exploration.
Setting out along the tortuously hilly back road leading to
the nearest border crossing, I drove slowly through its turns and grades,
seeing this uninhabited land of canyons and washes as if for the last time. Earlier,
I had posted my sentiments on Facebook: “If I die in Mexico, talk a lot of shit
at my funeral.” As the farm road leveled out through sleepy villages along the
Rio Grande, my heart quickened with apprehensive anticipation. Here I was,
driving everything I owned into a country notorious for narcotics cartels,
corrupt police, and general lawlessness. I had no fixed destination in mind,
planning mainly to follow whims and heed my instincts.
The west wind brought a smell which I would forever
associate with Mexican cities: unprocessed exhaust from old cars and trucks,
mixed with a little sewage and smoke from burning brush and trash. On through
Presidio, that quintessential border town; dusty streets, tired buildings
baking under the sun, Spanish spoken at the local grocery store. A town both
geographically and culturally distant from the rest of Texas and America.
Here goes.
The narrow two-lane bridge crossing the Rio Grande is the
only bridge for over two hundred miles in either direction. Halfway across,
over the verdant floodplains of the river, there is no going back. While
Mexican customs agents are typically more lenient than their American
counterparts, their legal authority is by no means inferior. To be safe, I keep
my cash in my pants pocket.
The light flashes green, and I pull forward; an agent tells
me to wait, asks for my license and registration. Examining them, he is
satisfied that the vehicle is not stolen. With a wave, the entire nation of
Mexico is now open to me.
The tension lifts like a balloon on the wide and homely
streets of Ojinaga, itself a remote outpost of Mexican civilization. The
traffic lights flash before changing, stroke of genius by Mexico’s highway
planners. Traffic consists of new pickups with Texas plates along older Mexican
vehicles; a goodly number of Texan trucks have out of date windshield stickers.
Everyone drivers politely and safely here; no speedbumps necessary. Just beyond
the new supermarket on Blvd. Libre Comercio, the highway to Chihuahua begins.
There are two choices: the libre, an old and winding
two-lane through the hills, or the cuota, a high-speed route barreling across
the desert plain, trucks with smoked-out windows regularly exceeding 100 miles
per hour. I choose the free road, which passes along the oasis of the Río
Conchos, small farms on this lumpy narrow road. The river is an opaque
blue-green, sluggish. After crossing the river, the potholed highway begins
climbing a range of desert hills, overgrazed to the point of utter uselessness.
At the summit is a roadside pullout, steps leading to the brink of a sheer and
awful canyon, the Río Conchos placidly slicing through a thousand vertical feet
of rock. Onward and downward into an uninhabitable valley, ranch roads running
to the horizon. One hundred miles of hills, washes, curves, the great scar of
an oil pipeline slashing a straight line across the terrain. Higher desert
populated by sotol yucca, prickly pear, ocotillo – here I pull off the highway
to find a secluded place to park in the golden light of evening. A
self-contained unit, bed, food, water for a week or more. Passport, visa card,
liability insurance, import permit, several thousand dollars in cash. Ready to
take on whatever they can throw at me, with the confidence of a gringo and the caution
of a lone wanderer in a strange land.