Desert//Travelers

Writer-ish Prompt #195: Write about a family trip.

When I think about horses, I think about the border.

One of the last family vacations before I left for college was to a dude ranch smack on the border between Arizona and Mexico, in the middle of the Sonoran desert and not far from the major crossing point of Nogales . This was the late aughts; I was old enough to understand some things about the politics of the border, but young enough that the sight of border patrol cars roaming the highway was still a surprise.

The ranch was beautiful, all stucco and wood fired stoves, gourmet meals served at a big communal table for the whole place. Days were spent riding, simple trots through easy trails mostly, with one exclamation mark day of just myself, my father and a guide out for a long ride through a mountain pass. A packed lunch and a steep incline, in which I struggled to guide the young mustang I had been given, and a momentary cantor through a sandy wash are my most salient memories.

The kind folks who owned the ranch made a point to leave water jugs cached throughout their property. I am not sure if they warned us specifically that there could be people passing through, but they were people of the desert - they knew what would become of those left to dehydrate in the cruel sun while trying to avoid capture. We rode at least once alongside the wall that existed, even then, all matte black on the edge of their property.

The ranch struggled during the next decade or so, a victim of heightened militarization of the area. It wasn't until later, in college, when I learned of the policies that intentionally drove migrants to attempt passing in the Sonoran, often a fatal endeavor. But I didn't know that then; what my memory holds instead is both the calm reassurance of the horses, their wisdom filled eyes, and the vague fear of the humans they carried, fear not for themselves but for the unknown traveller, so often just out of sight.