I'll never cross over again...

I make popcorn, heat up soup, grab a kombucha and head toward Cochise and my delivery from the Bay.

I spend the night at one of my very favorite rest stops along I10 in Arizona, the Texas Canyon rest stop.

I walk along the fence at the far boundary of the rest area, saddened to see both the fence and the barbed wire running along the top of the fence. Are they really trying to keep out refugees or why? Why a fence and why barbed-wire.

I used to stop here frequently when you could hike along a trail going up into the rocks and back down again.

Now there's a very narrow and small cement path paralleling the fence. I see a snagged piece of material on the barbed-wire as I aim my camera up to take a picture of the fading moon. I capture a hawk gliding or maybe a vulture as I wonder if this horrid barbed-wire captured a person’s clothes.

A light-skinned man who has a trace Spanish accent is waiting for me outside the restrooms. He wants to talk but he also warns me that everything we are saying can be heard.

He wants to know what kind of christian I am and when I say I’m not, he says he’s not either. He tells me about his recent experiences trying to re-cross the border into the u.s. He declares with so much hurt in his eyes, that he was born in this country and has lived in Los Angeles all his life. And yet, these past couple years border patrol has made it so difficult to cross back over, he feels like a criminal, like they are telling him he doesn’t belong.

His eyes flash with anger and then hopelessness, as he proclaims he will never, ever try to cross over anymore.

My heart goes out to him as I think about those people trying to come here that don’t have papers and how they are treated.