Migrant Trail

I feel so unprepared. I have been so caught up in work and everything else that I forgot to mentally prepare myself for the journey ahead.  Feel like I may come back with a new prospective or something. I don’t know. I am kind of excited though. Up close and personal with the border fence and the graffiti, the desert, the desolation. I want to see it, all of it. I want to feel it, to touch the sand and dig my fingers into the dry hot crystals. To remind myself that this isn’t a dream, it’s reality.

So much of the time here I walk down the street with the brick and adobe houses starring at me that I think it’s in a film, not real. Not until it’s dusk and I can feel the heat of the concrete and stone mixed fences around the houses still hot from a foot away. I have to stop walking and just touch them to remember that El Paso isn’t a dream, that I really did move here.

So, here I go. Packed. Blue bag and knapsack. Ready to go on this adventure, remembering the words from the vision statement in the Migrant Trail handbook:

The precarious reality of our borderlands calls us to walk.  We are a spiritually diverse, multi-cultural group who walk together on a journey of peace to remember people, friends and family who have died, others who have crossed, and people who continue to come.  We bear witness to the tragedy of death and of the inhumanity in our midst.  Lastly, we walk as a community, in defiance of the borders that attempt to divide us, committed to working together for the human dignity of all peoples.

La realidad precaria de nuestra frontera es un llamado a caminar. Somos un grupo diverso en cultura y espíritu quienes caminamos juntos en una jornada de paz para recordar a nuestros compañeros, amigos y familiares quienes han muerto, los que han cruzado, y quienes continúan cruzando. Testificamos acerca de la tragedia de muerte e inhumanidad en nuestro medio. Finalmente, caminamos como comunidad en contra de las fronteras que intentan dividirnos, comprometidos a luchar por la dignidad de todos.