The End of the Road / by Tomiko Jones

29 January 2021
Coronado National Forest, Arizona

The “end of the road”, where the bulldozer stopped pushing the immense pile of gravel to build the road to build the new wall of the international border. On the US side, piles of the old barricade lay like rusty skeletons. The road is wild (image 2), the colors change with the geologic makeup like a layer cake and the road a wide undulating ribbon across the terrain. I have the sense of being on a rollercoaster, going straight up the steep grade, seeing only the blue sky beyond the once shiny hood of the truck. (Am I ever grateful for the 4WD rental from the UW fleet that has carried me miles.) Image 3 appears to be where the building has halted for now.  Ended the day with a bag of salty potato chips and a Tecate, contemplating politics and landscape while nursing windburn, sunburn and probably light dehydration. This morning I sip Bisbee Coffee Roasters and watch the sun rise, listen to the woodpeckers, the redwing blackbirds and all the others I can’t identify, thinking about a studio day to edit images, perhaps a walk down Sonoita Creek, a protected conservation area of a rare year round water source just a mile from camp from which this reservoir, Patagonia Lake, is created , and at least walk up the hill with my hand in the air to post this. Last night I began a re-read of an essay about Fort Huachuca from Lauret Savoy’s “Migrating in a Bordered Land: memory, history, race and the American Landscape”.