Peanut Cloud and Border Wall / by Tomiko Jones

18 March 2021
Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, Arizona

In intense moments we often think of the most absurd things. This afternoon I am tucked inside with 33mph wind gusts shaking the MRS. The whistling and howling makes it hard to think, so I choose the simple task of cataloguing a pile of cyanotypes. I look at this one and am transported to a cloudless, dry day, barely a few weeks ago. At Cabeza Prieta, I haven’t seen a soul for miles, and the aptly named El Camino del Diablo grows narrower, more rutted and with deeper and deeper sand, the thorny branches of mesquite hemming me in on the sides. I think of the history of this road, and the many who have perished here over time. I finally find a place to turn around, and after some time, find a spot that seems somewhat close to the border wall. I’d like to drive closer, but the “road closed” sign deters me, as I don’t relish the idea of a citation or confrontation with the law. I pack my backpack and begin walking. I think, it will take me thirty minutes to get there. Like a mirage, the wall recedes further and further away and I realize after 20 minutes that I did not replenish the water bladder before I left. As I near the wall, I begin to follow a path of peanut shells, wondering who ate them and discarded the shells, a contractor, an asylum seeker, a border patrol agent? Seeing the peanut shells in turn spark a string of random memories-boiling peanuts with my grandmother, a bag of peanuts brought on a picnic by a man I fancied who did not mirror my enthusiasm, my dad’s love of peanuts and my mom’s exasperation at his snacking habits. I pick up a shell and am transported, without choice, to an afternoon some years ago spent at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, on the remarkable chance to see Marina Abramović “The Cleaner”, a retrospect. I wept many times that day, but I especially remember the heartache I felt viewing “cloud with shadow”. My conscious returns to the present; I feel the hostility of this place, the sun beating down, the screeching of a single hawk carried on the wind, my lips nearly glued together by dehydration. Just looking at the shells and imagining their salty contents are making me thirsty. Why was the little peanut pinned to the pristine white walls of the gallery so delightful, but so very sad today? I pull out a leftover scrap of poorly coated cyanotype paper and place a shell on the paper and angle it into the sun. I feel totally absurd, caught in a memory of conceptual art while standing in a real human crisis. There’s no one to talk to, but I say anyways, what a sweet peanut cloud you are, offering shade to tiny creatures. Then I walk closer to the wall. It’s strange to finally reach the mammoth, impassable 30-foot steel barricade and be grateful for the striped shade it offers. Contradictions. Then I unpack the drone and we fly west, then east, then west again until the sun begins to descend and it is time to start walking back. I carry the camera with the tripod leaning on my shoulder how I have so many times before. But this is my new camera, and I want to make interval images as I walk north, when I stumble ever so slightly and the camera flies off the tripod and facedown in the powdery dust and sharp rocks. I’m horrified. I sigh, wrap it up, put it away, and continue walking. What else can I do? The hawk begins to screech again, and I can see it poised on top of the same saguaro it screeched from on the way in, when I attempted to take a photograph through the binoculars as I had never seen a hawk open its wings quite like that, like a turkey vulture after the rain. The bird is a sign I am close to the road, and the truck, which means water. I look at my phone. Five miles. I lick my parched lips, hoping I got a good image from the day’s debacle. Cataloguing this tiny print today, I think maybe it is the one. Image 1: M. Abramovic, “Cloud and Shadow” (top), cyanotype, mine (bottom), image 2: peanut and wall diptych, image 3: hawk through binoculars midday (top), at sundown (bottom).