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Bleeding Red, White and Blue
by Harmony Paulsen
He pressed his foot hard against one strand of barbed wire and lifted another as high as the taut rusted string would allow, creating an opening just big enough for my body. I slid one leg through, bent at the waist and balanced parallel to the wire. Face suspended just beyond the reach of the contorted, rusty points, my eyes locked on the metal below. In motion from one side to the next, I did not perceive the fence as a formidable blockade, just a minor nuisance bisecting my chosen path. I swung to the other side - right leg, head, and body clear - and began to pull my left leg up, less cautiously. The barbed wire appeared unimposing until it snatched the flesh of my leg and held me against my pull. The cut did not hurt until I saw blood seeping through the hole in my jeans.
Driving at sixty miles per hour on an interstate highway across Nevada, I became hypnotized by wood, metal, and plastic poles that whipped across the frame of the tinted Suburban window. They are hard to miss, set against expansive backdrops of sage and grass. Stoic, solid, corroded reminders of our society's obsession with "mine." Even as our SUV shuddered on more primitive roads, the fences stretched ever farther. I expected them to taper off, leaving unmanipulated, untrodden, unowned wilderness, but fence-free land is difficult to come by - I would argue that it doesn't exist. Every inch of land is owned, partitioned off by countries, states, corporations, government agencies and individuals. Seven hundred and fifty thousand miles of metal markers slice into our public lands - an ecological blow to the western landscape. Fences do not follow natural contours; do not compliment hills and valleys as a turquoise necklace might grace the sensual curves of a woman's neck. They are grotesque stitches moving against the grain of skin, dividing the land rather than fusing it together. Fences fragment habitat and destroy wildlife corridors, altering natural migratory patterns and animal behavior. Even birds cannot escape their overwhelming presence. A small bird might be able to tumble through the narrow gap between wires, but predatory birds using the manmade structures as perches have greater reign over the land and can therefore predate prey more easily. One side of a fence might be overgrazed and trampled raw by cattle, revealing only hoof impressed dirt while the ulterior side abounds with grass knee high - an outcome known as the fence-line effect.
Agua Prieta, Mexico, lies directly south of Douglas, AZ. Miles of fence separates the two cities which have evolved very differently, despite their close proximity. In Agua Prieta, countless city streets remain unpaved and dust assaults eyes and skin when any amount of wind calls it to ranks. Vendadores make their living by selling religious images and hand-made crafts to cars bound for the states. Agua Prieta's main industries are tourism and smuggling humans across the border, la frontera. Houses are small, clustered, and grass nonexistent. The language is different, the food different, the money different, and the culture different. A cultural fence-line effect. The differences became less apparent as we moved away from the city, towards the Sierra Madres. At the San Bernardino ranch in the San Bernardino valley, the only thing that reminded us of our location was the border fence decorated with white markers and a proud American home on the other side, waving its proud American flag above the reach of the trees.
I was in Mexico for the first time, looking at my country from the outside. Barbed wire pulled tight across the landscape and metal poles marching up mountains and hunkering in river beds stood as a barrier between me and my homeland - my West. I could slide my toes beneath the lowest wire, dig and fill my nails with American soil, glide my hand above the top wire, arch my neck to breathe American air, but I could not step across nor crawl through the boundary. It is illegal to cross the border where a port of entry does not exist.
"Citizenship?" The man at customs inquired on my way back into Arizona. "United States." I quickly replied, my white skin and American accent acting as a virtual passport for travel between the cultural funnels of either side. Mexican citizens and other than Mexicans (or OTMs, the grossly oversimplified designation used by the US Border Patrol to describe all other diverse populations of the world) do not enjoy the same freedom. Many global citizens seeking economic opportunities in the United States must cross the border illegally since they cannot prove their value to the US government through bank accounts and interviews. Since illegal immigration has increased, the height of the fence has increased, especially where cities and towns touch the border. Now that it is more challenging to successfully cross the heavily guarded sectors of the 2,000 mile border, illegal immigrants are crossing in the more desolate desert areas of the Southwest. Exhaustion, dehydration, and heat stroke claim the lives of hundreds each year who attempt to cross the desert under-equipped. People do not move freely across the land, they must be smuggled. Even humans have been made into a commodity, becoming temporary property of el coyote, and likely property of exploitive American employers. I am fortunate to live on one side of an arbitrary fence.
There is a reason trees do not grow through fences. Fences separate landscapes, cultures, languages, philosophies, people, plants and animals. They were erected to keep out and to keep in, not to harmonize. Our land is divided and disrupted, cut-up, partitioned and suffering. Humans are forced to communicate over mile high jagged wire fences. Consequently, this land is bleeding; these people are bleeding - caught in a barbed tangle from the actions of our past and present, fractured by our obsession with possession.
I have traveled ten thousands miles in the West, slept beneath stars on my public lands, hiked to alpine lakes, heard the varied voices of the landscape, observed life in potholes and in canyons. "Citizenship?" The man at customs inquired. I wanted to say the West, but I didn't. Love is an emotion I harbor for only intimate relations. Living and breathing the expanse of this western landscape I have come to know it in an indescribably personal way - I love the West. With love comes concern - I see the wounds of the west now, the affects of our destruction, the fragmentation and confinement of oughtta be open spaces. In seeing these wounds I feel these wounds - they affect me as they affect one that I love. My barbed wire gash has since healed; I wonder when my West will heal.