It was when Marty and Karen yelled into the canyon below us, “tenemos medicina, tenemos agua (we have medicine, we have water),” at the top of their 60-something year old lungs that I shed my first tear and shivered from a body covered in goose bumps. I couldn’t help but love humanity with all my heart in that moment.

We were three complete strangers (Marty, Karen and I) who had signed up with the Samaritans for a migrant patrol of the desert that particular day; a very cold and crisp Arizonan morning in January which relentlessly held tremendous amounts of possibility in it’s sunshine. At 6:57am, the two cheerful seniors and I, 31 years and 6 months, loaded the Samaritan pathfinder in south Tucson. Into the mud-encrusted Toyota that had seen so much humanitarian love-work over the last 9 years went plastic-wrapped warm blankets, cases of bottled water, bins of pre-made food bags, a duffel bag of socks and a hand full of garbage bags. Marty took the driver’s seat and towards the border we drove. I sipped my super-food-green-machine smoothie that I had excitedly made at 6am with a sense of utter-love-filled-ecstasy as we cruised towards Arivaca. I had been waiting for this day for months.

Actually, I had been waiting for this day for years… I have been wanting to give my borderland migrant brothers and sisters some love, water and emotional support since I can remember… For so many reasons… The main reason being that I have had re-accuring nightmares for over a decade that my childhood best friend, Yeni, died crossing the Sonoran desert. In my dream she was coming from Yelapa to find me in Tucson so that we could go to Disneyland. You see, as children I always told her how much I would love to bring her to the USA and take her to Disneyland. Disneyland was and still is as foreign a concept to Yeni as Mars is to me. I am still haunted by these dreams…

Every woman and child that I hear or read about who has perished on the desert floor just a stone’s throw from my apartment in Tucson represents Yeni to me. No woman should be dying in the USA with her baby in 2011 because she is lost when there is a road a mile a way; or when she is dehydrated when there is a Circle K just up the road; or because she never knew the desert could get so completely and deathly cold…

Marty, Karen and I drove over 200 miles and did some light hiking to known migrant camp sites. We saw 2 coyotes, 3 hawks, a lost domestic cat and dozens of Border Patrol trucks on the dirt roads we traversed. We encountered not one migrant. And yet I know several brothers and sisters saw me and heard my call. I could feel their eyes on my back and taste their fear in that sunshine-air. I held back tears as I filled up 3 garbage bags from a few migrant campsites with abandoned backpacks containing herbal remedies for coughs I used as a child in Mexico at Yeni’s house; beat-up sweatshirts, jeans and jackets and several pairs of worn-out shoes also went into the trash bags. One set of shoes were a child’s pair of cowboy boots. What is the story behind these these boots and where did they come from to end up in my trash bag, I cannot help but wonder… And, of course, I picked up hundreds of empty water bottles varying in size and plastic type.

I have no intention of taking my camera along on these trips. Yet. After I get more acquainted with how things work, I hope to have the privilege of photographing what I see out there and what my heart feels as I call out to canyons and wooded ares, “tenemos agua, tenemos medicina…” And maybe my photographs one day can help educate my fellow American-humans that indeed, we are all human. We are all beautiful. We all have children, we have all fallen in love and yes, we all have dreams.

I did, however, photograph my dad and his beautiful partner doing Yoga this past weekend. I hope that the love I put into these photos can somehow resemble the love that grew in my heart after my first Samaritan patrol for migrants in the Sonoran Desert.