Road to Kazbegi, Caucasus Georgia. Credit: Mzuriana.
So back in a day, I made plans to walk from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego. The trek would mark an important birthday. I gobbled up all of the online long-walk journals I could find. However, other interests interrupted, and I pushed the plan onto the shelf.
Now I've revived said plan, in a way. This time not to walk its length, but to traverse it via various methods, including walking, cycling, or on motorized wheels, whether mine or a public bus or tourist van, or all of 'em. And maybe I'll start at the bottom and go up instead of move from top to bottom. Too soon to tell as yet. Or maybe I'll do as some hikers do on the Appalachian Trail: by sections over non-continuous times, and maybe not even in a sequential order.
"Kaw, that’s a big one!” said 59-year-old Danny “Eagle” Edgar.
“That’s a man,” agreed 56-year-old Clay Switzer.
“Boy, he really is big,” hissed Harry “Hop” Dugas, who at 47 is the baby of the group.
“It’s got eyes like an alligator,” murmured Edgar in wonderment. Tense
excitement bled through the three men’s Cajun accents. What could have
had them, with nearly 150 combined years of life in the woods and on the
water, so excited? Were they perched on a rickety bamboo machan,
hunting a man-eating tiger? Were they perched in the flying bridge of an
offshore boat, gawking at the massive bulk of a great white shark? Neither.
Some kick-ass music, good food, gorgeous day along the river, and, and, and ..... holy swamp gas! Gigantic bullfrogs!
Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.
Who knew frogs got so big?!
Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.
I was so fascinated by these creatures, I had to go back a second time
during the course of the festival, just to gawk some more.
Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.
I understand about the frog legs for eating, but what happens to the
rest of the bullfrog's body? Returned to the water for recycling? Used
as bait for fishing? Given the popularity of frog legs in southern
Louisiana, we're talking about a lot of skin and guts here.
Bullfrogs, Acadian Heritage Memorial, St. Martinville, Louisiana. Credit: Mzuriana.
Interesting articles about bullfrogs and frog hunting:
Of Frogs and Men, Louisiana Sportsman (excerpted at the top of this post)
Below is a reprise of my 2011 post on Luis Alberto Urrea's book, which impacted me deeply.
The book affected me so much, I uploaded the stories of the volunteers who delivered water to the desert into my brain's cloud storage, knowing that some day - some day - I would be one of those volunteers. And so I was, when I took up my tourist-in-residency in Tucson in 2019-2020.
Rootless Lit: The Devil's Highway: A True Story
"Rootless lit" - Literature that speaks
to travel, migration, displacement, exploration, discovery, transience,
divesting of stuff, or portability.
This is the story of the desert passage undocumented immigrants make
between Mexico and the U.S. Many die en route because of lack of water
and the heat. More specifically, it is the story of the Yuma 14, when fourteen men from one group died in 2001.
There were parts of this book, especially at the end, where it was
painful to read. Mr. Urrea described the final hours of the dead in
vivid, personal detail. One description particularly stands out for its
horrific sadness. A survivor reported: "One of the boys went crazy
and started jumping up and down. He started screaming, 'Mama! Mama! I
don't want to die!' He ran up to a big cactus and started smashing his
face against it. I don't know what his name was." The boy was 16 years old.
About another who died, Mr. Urrea wrote: "Nobody knows the name of
the man who took off all his clothes. It was madness, surely. He removed
his slacks, folded them, and put them on the ground. Then he took off
his underwear, laid it neatly on the pants. He removed his shirt and
undershirt and squared them away with the pants. As if he didn't want to
leave a mess. ...He lay on his back and stared into the sun until he
died."
I like how Mr. Urrea spoke for the dead as they rode in their body bags in the air-conditioned hearses.
Mr. Urrea's description of the Border Patrol's activities seemed
nuanced and even-handed to me. He offers thoughtful notes in the last
chapter regarding the financial costs and benefits of undocumented
immigrants, of other violences perpetrated in and around the desert
border.
It's difficult to describe Mr. Urrea's writing style other than to say
it is personal, often in second person narrative. His portrayal of
almost all of the players in the undocumented migrant universe is
empathetic. Exceptions are the drug gangsters and the coyotes they run,
plus certain aspects of the Mexican government machine.
Whatever one's position on migration, this book forces the reader to
acknowledge the immigrants' humanity. At least for a day or two.
