Meet the Border Patrol
Thursday, April 26, 2007When I left Laredo, I had been driving and birding since 8 am Wednesday morning.
I found myself in late-night road construction hell, driving in a single lane with concrete barriers close on either side of me. I feared I was going to crash. Some driver came up behind me with brights on. I flashed my lights—even though I was ahead—and he turned his off and back on as bright as before. That was helpful. Eventually I found a rest stop, where I watched the bats hunting in the bright lights and listened to the truck engines across the parking lot. I felt afraid to get into the back of my truck and stretch out in my sleeping bag—as if being so enclosed without an easy exit would endanger me.
After an hour or so of trying to sleep in the driver’s seat, I went up 83, at that point a two-lane highway that veered off northwest from I-35 toward I-10. I pulled off somewhere, in the dark, and attempted to sleep in the driver’s seat again, but it was not to be. Although there was little traffic on this road, the trucks that did go by created a whoosh of air that shook the truck. And then—flashing lights behind me!
I have to backtrack here. Before I left Colorado, I had been copyediting a book on a serial killer who liked to murder women on the side of the road. And here I was, on a dark road at night, with someone behind me in an “official” vehicle. What if it was an impostor? With that rational question in my mind, I started the truck and drove up the road a ways. Back on came the flashing lights. At that point I succumbed to the inevitable, but I wouldn’t lower my window all the way until I saw a man in uniform. Then I informed him he had scared me. He apologized but said that this road was a preferred route for illegal aliens.
So in one twenty-four-hour period in Texas I encountered the Border Patrol twice. I drove on. On the edge of some Podunk town, I got stopped by a cop again, for going 40 in a 30 zone. By this point it had to be 3 in the morning, and I suppose he was just trying to keep awake, but it made me want to cry. I managed not to sob on the cop and only got a warning anyway. I drove on, through what I thought at the time was Texas hill country (I was going up and down hills, after all) and collided with another bird in the dusk. It made a huge thump. I stopped and looked for it but couldn’t find it.
Finally, about 7 am, I arrived at Garner State Park, north of Uvalde on Highway 83, with a desperate need to pee. 
The park wasn’t staffed yet, and I couldn’t figure out how to pay the entrance fee, but there was no gate, so I drove in and found a bathroom, just in time.
It was an extra-nice bathroom for a state park. It had a flush toilet, and outside the bathroom was a hummingbird feeding station. Although it was a chilly morning, I sat and watched hummingbirds for a while. Then a large herd of white-tailed deer moseyed through the parking lot. As I drove out of the park, I saw a turkey displaying in a grassy area. It came to me suddenly that if I hadn’t taken that detour to Mexico, I most likely would have missed the hummingbirds and the deer and the chipping sparrows and the turkey, not to mention the owl in McAllen. It had been a painful night, but it was over, and now I had a chance to get to Carlsbad earlier than expected.
Later that morning I bade good-bye to 83, which was a really pretty drive most of the way, and headed west on I-10 to Ft. Stockton and U.S. Route 285 North, which I would take almost all the way back to Denver. Near Iraan, which is north of I-10 on 290, I saw a wind farm that went on for miles. Somewhere before Ft. Stockton, I pulled off on River Road (perhaps the Pecos River?) to rest. 
I still couldn’t sleep, but I did see a sage sparrow and got some nice pictures of the local flora. Eventually I arrived at the Texas state line. 
It was hard to believe when it happened because I had been driving through Texas since April 18, and today was the 26th.
And, of course in this case, leaving Texas meant entering New Mexico.
I stopped again on 285, south of Carlsbad, trying to gauge whether I had enough time between semis to pee on the side of the road without flashing any truckers. A red truck passed me, turned around, and came back. All my fears flooded back, but the men in the truck were merely worried that I had broken down. In a way they were right: here I was mentally accusing them of being rapists, and they were trying to help a stranded motorist.
As I paced up and down the shoulder, trying to ease the cramp in my hamstrings, I noticed that although the overall landscape was ugly, individuals plants were very pretty and very green. 
I think it was at this stop I tried to convince myself I had seen a verdin, which is, as Sibley says, a “drab gray bird of the arid Southwest” (except for the yellow on its head) that likes desert scrub. Alas, it was too far away for me to see more than gray and a flash of yellow.
Then I drove up a very windy road to the Caverns to see the bats. I believe they started their nightly exit around 7, and when I left at 8:12 they were still going. 
their wings sounded like gentle rain. The park ranger had a massive cylindrical bat detector, which he used to determine when they were coming out.
He made us turn off our cell phones and digital cameras because they sound like nails on a blackboard to bats. 
I wondered if my picture taking in Austin had that effect. He said these bats were 99 percent Mexican free-tailed and 1 percent myotis, but the myotis go out a different opening because they’re smaller. Most of the bats at Carlsbad migrate; those who don’t are unhealthy the following year—I suppose because of a lack of food.
posted by Price of Silence @ 11:41 AM
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