Alice's Restaurant II

It has been two hours since I drove ¾ of a mile down the road to push the emergency call button.  The sign near it states that someone will “arrive shortly” to help us. 

Meanwhile, overhead, jets fly high—the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range being right next to Organ Pipe National Monument.  Millions and millions of dollars wrapped up in each jet.  Mega-billions of dollars and lives spent on wars in the past 60 years that were not necessary and didn’t make us any safer. 

We returned from our incredible hike up the hill to talk with our new friend David, from England, who we had run into a couple of weeks ago at Madera Canyon, who informed us that a Spanish speaking man was sleeping on one of the picnic tables.  He was not a hiker.  Had one of the black jugs for water that we have seen strewn throughout Organ Pipe National Monument that are brought up from Mexico—a disgrace really.  A single illegal alien?  Someone scouting out our area?  Someone who got cut off from his group?  Someone dumped from his group because he was in trouble and couldn’t keep up?  David said he was told that sometimes scouts will be sent to observe what will happen before a larger group arrives.  Or what?  

OK.  So, what do you do?

Then I went over to our campsite to find that the Forest Ranger had been here and had removed our bird feeder and left us this note.  I feel like I am in the movie Alice’s Restaurant.  But instead of being busted for littering, like Arlo Guthrie did, I am busted for feeding birds. Where is the Audubon Defense Fund when you need it?

So, the three of us sort of stood around and looked at each other, hoping someone would come up with a brilliant idea that never came.  Ignore the situation?  Help him?  He looked to be in awful shape.  Is helping someone who is breaking the law against the law?  After all I already had one strike against me for feeding the birds, so I didn’t want to do that.  We were advised by Forest Rangers to not help ‘illegals.”  What kind of people are we to be afraid of someone who might only need fresh water? 

But that’s what we were, like people are prone to be, actually, and that is to be afraid of situations that are outside our range of experience. 

We just came here to hike, not to be confronted with reality.  Or to have to make tough moral decisions. 

Finally, after much discussion, we decided to ACT!  We would call 9-1-1. 

No signal.

Next idea.  One of us go down the road ¾ of a mile to an emergency call button we had seen driving into the campground.  So I go.

Isn’t this a weird sign?  This is somebody’s drawing of real people?  Looks like it is for reporting Aliens from Area 51 or Roswell rather than from Mexico. 

Drive back to the campground.  Guy still asleep.

Waiting for Border Patrol who is going to “arrive shortly” to help us…….Waiting…….Waiting……Waiting……

Finally the guy wakes up, and hobbles off.  Unless he has done a lot of hiking, and actually even if he has, he is probably tired, sore, and hurting. 

The irony doesn’t escape me, or maybe the absurdity.   I get busted for feeding birds.  Meanwhile, overhead, millions of dollars of wasted money on jets for wars we start ourselves, and down here we can’t get the Forest Rangers or the Border Patrol to make us feel safe when someone is breaking the law and we don’t know if he is alone or with many other people and whether he is dangerous or not.    And nobody comes when we push the button.

Where is the Border Patrol?  From what we can tell, they sit at highway border patrol stations, dozens of them, to catch people stupid enough to just drive over the border.  Do people really get caught that way? 

But out here in the sticks, where people desperate enough to travel this inhospitable desert and then come into contact with us?  Nobody.  Why isn’t the Border Patrol putting on hiking packs and walking out to the remote areas where they are?  Maybe they do and we just don’t see them.  I know it’s an impossible job. But we don't see them when we hike the desert, ever.

A couple of guys at our campsite told us that what a lot of the illegal aliens do is go over the other side of the mountain next to us because then they are in the Tohono O’Odham Nation Reservation (which looks to be the size of Connecticut), where the rules are more lax.  If true, what are we still doing with Indian Reservations that are quasi-nations inside our own nation and that have different rules about immigration? 

We are still waiting. 

Another jet just flew overhead.

Finally a car arrived with a couple that was here to do the short hike.  I asked them if when they returned to the other camp ground if they would stop into the Visitor’s Center and ask someone to come out here.  Apparently they did because a Forest Ranger arrived about an hour later.

He explained that the call button we pushed was for the Border Patrol—it isn’t tied into the Park Service.  How is that for coordination among law enforcement?  Right in the middle of the National Monument and the local law enforcement isn’t tied into it? 

At the button there is a sign that says to remain there, but I figured that sensible reasoning would be that if someone in an official capacity got there and found no one, that the obvious thing to do would be to drive ¾ of a mile to the campground where it is known there is no 9-1-1 service.  Apparently not. 

He checked the area.  We explained that we didn’t know if the guy was going to make it—he looked done (sleeping on a picnic table in the middle of the day), had come from an odd part of the desert (i.e., north), suggesting he was lost, and was hobbling.  Plus, there is no water here, so all he had was the one gallon black jug, and if he had come from Mexico, that wouldn’t have lasted long.

We found out that the first time (or maybe more) they are caught they are just transported back.  A few days later will try again.  I think I understood him to say that it is only after repeated attempts that short jail time is given. 

So, what is the risk of trying?  Other than dying in the desert I mean.

Would severe penalties the first time deter people from trying or make them more desperate to not get caught and therefore turn regular people into dangerous people.  Desperate people are scary in any circumstance, so maybe more severe penalties wouldn’t be better.  I don’t know the answer to this, but I’m sure it has been thought through by people with far more experience than I have.

It is all so confusing. 

I asked the Forest Ranger if he could do more checks of the campground for the next day or so, and he said he would.  And he did.  On our way to Mesa the next day we called the Visitors Center to tell them our campsite would be open, and we made a point of asking the person to thank the Ranger.  We really appreciated this.

I can understand now, better than I once did, when Arizona officials say to the rest of the country:  “You just don’t understand.  We are the ones who are having to deal with this impossible problem.”  And although I don’t agree with the policies Arizona tried to implement, even at the time I could recognize that the US Government, being almost totally stalemated on everything, was doing nothing. 

The next day, driving out of our campground, we saw this.  Three people caught, sitting, with their hands tied behind their backs.  Was our guy one of them (was dressed the same, but maybe there is are fairly standard, dark clothes that are worn to be less noticeable in the desert), and there really were more than one as David suggested there might be? 

Later, I stopped at Border Patrol and talked with some agents, suggesting that they put a call button near the campground.  They seemed to be sincerely trying to listen, but somehow did not appear to understand the predicament.  They said the call button was where it was because that wash was one that a lot of illegal aliens come up, and they push it when they need help.  In other words, the call button isn’t for us—it is for illegal aliens.  I don’t have a problem with this, but how about one for, you know…..us too?

I don’t think it really dawned on them how vulnerable we felt there at a camp ground with no 9-1-1- service, and with evidence of illegal aliens all around (including, of course, RIGHT THERE!).  Maybe because they carry guns, and are all young people (mostly men) who are experienced, they can’t quite imagine being old geezers who are not heavily armed.  But my idea for an emergency call button at the camp ground didn’t meet with an enthusiastic reception—they listened, but I’m sure that was as far as it went.

We left two days early.  It was raining, hard, and the desert was a muddy quagmire.  We knew we couldn’t hike for at least two days, and so decided to make the day a travel day.

 And after David left, there was only one other campsite occupied, and we didn’t want to stay out there by ourselves if they left and no one else came.  We were bit unnerved by the events that had transpired, and so invoked, once again, our safety rule. 

This is our favorite campground ever.  It is beautiful, and it a place where one can enjoy the silence of the desert while still having basic amenities (no generators, but toilets and trash pickup).  The hiking possibilities are endless.  We hope that the solution isn’t to just close it.  Our government’s job is to keep us safe, its primary duty.  Restricting our use of our country isn’t the way of doing that.  Those jets flying over certainly aren’t cutting it.   

I just read an article in the New York Times about how New York has become our safest large city, yet has low incarceration rates.  How?  They have increased the number of police officers and have focused on “hot spots.”  That suggests that more “police” presence at our National Forests, Parks, and Monuments in the border areas might be considered.  At Rucker Campground in the Chiricahua Mountains there was NOBODY.  Just us, and a sign warning us. 

Why haven’t we seen any Border Patrol agents back in the desert on our hikes?  The "hot spots" like the picnic area we discovered two days ago.  If we did see Border Patrol agents patrolling the desert, might not everybody else?

Addendum: 

Here is the sign that has the rule I broke.  Technically we weren’t feeding the birds human food, but bird food.  But I see the point.  With songbird populations in serious decline, though, (see the Audubon web site) I think feeding birds is different from feeding coyotes, but if that’s the rule, that’s the rule.  

Here is a shot of “our” hill in the morning rain.  Gives a good view of the ridge we followed to the top.