Day Four, in words

And onwards, always onwards:

• It was at least as wonderful waking up at Organ Pipe as it was falling asleep there. And getting up at 5 AM, while painful back home, seems very, very…natural, out here. You fall asleep with the sun and wake up with the sun.
• Lukeville, Arizona: my first border town. Border towns have a certain feel to them everywhere — in a way, it reminded me of Ventimiglia, Italy, or other European borders: bored officials, bilingual signs, lines of people moving through, shops catering to travelers, everything… The thing that surprised me was the degree to which it felt like I was already in Mexico: signs were far more often in Spanish than in English, and — although this may be far too bold for me to say, since I’ve never actually been to Mexico — it just plain felt like a foreign country. There were packs of stray dogs everywhere, too…
• More about the U.S.-Mexico border in a subsequent post. Much more.
• The Tohono O’Odham Nation — a little-known but huge Native American nation in southern Arizona. Many more feelings here, too…the sheer poverty was heartbreaking to see; every other vehicle I saw was property of the Tohono O’Odham government. It’s just…words cannot possibly express. Great, great sadness.
• The little guy you see below followed my car during a roadside photo stop…he got very close to my car, but retreated fifty feet whenever I got out of the car. Who doesn’t like puppies? So cute. I have no idea if he was stray or belonged to someone, but he made me want a dog so badly…
• Southeast Arizona is surprisingly lush; it’s still desert in the sense that there are cacti everywhere (Saguaros, the “Charlie Brown” cactus), but the ground is no longer bare — there are flowers everywhere, grass filling in, and it just generally feels very alive. Quite a difference from the (beautiful) barrenness of the California desert…
• Kitts Peak observatory: a mountaintop run by a consortium of universities with over two dozen telescopes on top of it. Not all that fascinating for me (I’m not really a telescope kind of person), but the views were absolutely spectacular. Also: witness the telescope above. Who knew all those male astronomers had so much to prove?
• I love the random stuff out in the desert. The Longhorn Grill, below: just perfect.
• Nogales, Arizona: my second border town. It’s just…impossible to express. The whole town feels like part of Mexico, except for this massive wall splitting it right in two, with literally hundreds of border police dotting it (along with giant spotlights) every few hundred feet. Staggering. Just staggering. The search towers, the spotlights, the pseudo-military presence…it was like being on a different planet.
• Oh…a shower. After three days without, this — at Patagonia Lake State Park, AZ, where I camped for the night — felt absolutely, positively glorious. And I was human again.

Day 4: (Tuesday, August 7, 2007) Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to Patagonia Lake State Park.
Miles: 1335.8 + 411.5 = 1747.3 total. Current distance from home: 915.4 miles.
Photos: 760 (10 GB) + 191 (3 GB) = 951 (13 GB) total.
Next up: National Monuments and New Mexico…