Big Bend National Park, Crossing Water, and Guns (from Elizabeth)

Big Bend National Park. Notice Del Rio is just east of the park. A book we'll read later in the semester, It Came from Del Rio takes place in this area (as the title suggests).

Big Bend National Park is in the "bend" of the Rio Grande that divides far West Texas and Mexico. It's a pretty place to camp--think lots of cliff-top views, high desert landscape, and almost constantly clear skies. I follow Big Bend National Park's Facebook page because it was useful to get park announcements on our last camping trip, and also because I appreciate the occasional very pretty nature photo showing up in my feed.

See? It's super pretty.

A few days ago I noticed a post from Big Bend that was so fitting for our class's topic. Someone asked a question that stemmed from the fact that Big Bend is nestled just north of Mexico:

Please excuse my truly awful photo shopping.

About twenty people weighed in, and I just screen grabbed the choicest comments. But there is a lot to unpack in this exchange about how borders function in a practical situation and how people's impressions of a space are drastically changed by the existence of a border.

First, there's the original question--it's a great summation of what it means to live in or move through a space that is restricted. Timothy's party will be rafting on the Rio Grande, basically straddling the water that is between Mexico and the U.S.  (the way that these two countries divide water rights is another post altogether...) and figuring out how to deal with a rafting trip in which you can only land on one side of the river. You can imagine that on the ground, in the moment, this division must seem pretty arbitrary--particularly in the case of this rafting trip, when both sides of the river are wild and look essentially the same.

The second thing worth noting is the perception people have about camping on the other side of the river. It's worth pointing out that depending on the weather, there are some very shallow places in the Rio Grande-- you can sometimes wade across it. Given the relatively ease with which one could potentially cross the river (if not by foot, obviously it is possible by boat), I wonder if the Mexican side of the Rio Grande is that much more unsafe than the other side of the river. It is absolutely true that some places on the border between Mexico and the United States are often sites of undeniable violence. But comments like, "[A] Firearm would be a good idea...unless you get caught with it in Mexico" suggest that the entire country is defined by violence-- so much so that it's worth risking serious trouble to bring a gun across the border with out permission. The idea seems to be that simply crossing a river would mean stepping into a world in which you'd need a handgun. And asking after the safety of this choice wasn't even part of the original question. Though Timothy's question did get an more relevant answer-- other commenters explained that camping on the Mexican side isn't allowed because the land is privately held, and pointed out that, in fact, there hasn't been any violence against campers in the park's part of the Rio Grande since the 1980s.

So I'll leave you with two ideas. First, that life on a border comes with a particular set of difficulties, and that it means constantly bumping up against the "other side." And second, the impression that crossing a line can so drastically change things--it changes the place you are, it changes your self identity (suddenly you're foreign, or local, or something else), and it can change the way you interact with your surroundings (as it clearly would for the folks that recommended bringing a gun on that rafting trip!).

Think about how these ideas come up in similar or different ways this semester, beginning with the ways that borders and boundaries are drawn in True Grit, and what those distinctions mean for the landscape and for the characters. When Mattie and Rooster and LeBoeuf cross into Indian Territory, what changes in their interactions with themselves, with other people, and with the land?

-Elizabeth