Cutting Sign by Ryan Auclair

This is just an excerpt of a longer piece, but between it and Ryan's other texts posted in July on this blog*, you should have a good idea of the quality and creativity of his work...[FG]

*Drake mag • Ryan's Roots • Blood Meridian photo essay


Cutting for Sign

I’m walking wide concentric circles in a saddle on the Huachuca Mountains. I stopped initially at a boundary gate on the southwest corner of Ft Huachuca, looking at the mountains sloping away southward to Mexico, State of Sonora. This seems like a good place to start as the mountains and high canyons here are the migrant highways and not the flat land below, as up here vehicle patrols are difficult to impossible, lone agent foot patrols are ineffectual and the overhead cover provided by the oaks screens those on the ground from visual detection from helicopter and fixed wing pilots. The cloud cover is low today, but I’d bet pretty heavily that there is a Predator drone circling overhead as well.

Despite the increasingly high tech detection and enforcement mechanisms of the US Government, the best way to find the evidence and the experience of the border crosser is to go to ground, cutting for sign like you would with a deer. The track is not usually hard to pick up, even up here in the Huachuca’s with its rabbit warren of unimproved roads and footpaths. The footprints with the hexagonal Vibram logo are from hikers or hunters and the prints that look like oblong checkerboards are made by standard Army issue boots, worn either by soldiers from the Post at the base of these mountains or by Border Patrol agents. The prints made by worn tennis shoes are from migrants. In addition to the high tech surveillance circling overhead, the Border Patrol also employs the “Shadow Wolves” of the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation using Native American tracking skills in hunting down drug smugglers and illegal immigrants.

The trail I took up here is fairly well known and connects with The Rim Trail that follows the spine of the peaks roughly east west then doglegs, along with the mountains, to the north. I’m wearing a blaze orange top because deer season is open and because I don’t want to be mistaken for La Migra; either way it breaks, it is a good way not to get shot at. The tracks lead off roughly north east, back down the canyon I took to get here. Hiking in, traveling roughly southwest, the debris left behind is evident in the form of empty cans, water bottles, toilet paper, trash bags, and other assorted flotsam and jetsam. Hiking out, following the coyote trail north, you notice other signs you missed while traveling in the contrary direction. Spur trails break off the main path, and they invariably lead to a small secluded area a 100 yards or so off the main trail. The grass here is matted flat, similar to where animals bed down, and the amount of trash moves from the randomness of the main trail to a sort of general heap. These areas serve as rest areas- places to lay up in the heat of the day, or when the birdwatchers are out and about.

I followed the trail into one of these, the spur marked not only by the worn dirt on the forest floor, but by a small, unmistakably human made cairn of stones marking the fork. The clearing overlooked the both the trail and the main vehicle track below, and being at least 20 feet above both and screened by a stand of scrub oak and mesquite, would have been unnoticeable to a vehicle patrol below. I followed the trail to another rest spot near a stream, certainly an area to refill on water and perhaps for those who didn’t toss their empties, a place to stock up for the long trip north across the high desert.

From the stream, the trail turns from northeast to north, cutting across the impact area of the Fort’s rifle, pistol and crew served weapons ranges, around the rear of the base housing area and then they must negotiate Libby Army Airfield, where the Border Patrol launches their Predator drones.