Walking with Naomi on the US-Mexico border

Naomi Grossman at US-Mexico border Photo by Dan Grossman

My daughter Naomi is an inspiration to me in many ways. She is currently enrolled at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design at Indiana University, Bloomington where she is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design. Unfortunately, for the past year, she has been having symptoms that mimic severe carpal tunnel syndrome—still undiagnosed at this point despite her seeing many specialists. Whatever it is has prevented her from pursuing her art, which normally involved using colored pencils and involved many repetitive hand movements.

But I’m happy to report that she’s now able to return to artmaking, now using watercolors. Check out her Instagram page.

When Naomi visits San Diego, we make it a habit of hiking along the US-Mexico border, in Tijuana River Valley Regional Park. On our last visit, she was patient enough with me to let me get the above photo. We also had fun with my Merlin app on my cell phone which allowed us to track the local bird population which, according to the app, includes the Eastern Phoebe, the American Pipit, the Spotted Towhee, the Orange-crowned Warbler, the Black Phoebe, and the White Crowned Sparrow. We were able to observe a hawk of some kind, perhaps a Red-tailed Hawk, which is common to the area. That wasn’t the only wildlife we encountered, however, on our hike: we saw dozens of tiny land snails making their way across the dirt road we were following.

There was also evidence of another kind of migration, some clothes and a cheap backpack abandoned under a Gray Pine; it appeared that some migrants had evaded not only the 30-ft. high double fencing on the border, but the Border Patrol, which had a heavy presence in the area. Also, in the sky above, the constant buzz of helicopters—not Border Patrol—but helicopters on training flights.

At last we walked as far as we could go, seeing Avenida International, leading from Downtown Tijuana to Playas, the beaches.

During a hike during the previous year, we explored a different part of the regional park. That particular visit inspired this piece, which appears in my book American Panoramas Beyond 360°: Poems, Prose, and Photography:

Border Stone

My daughter Naomi and I walked up the hills at the edge of the Tijuana River Valley, at the edge of the United States of America.

It was all brush and low hills on our side of the border but beyond stretched the dense urbanity of Tijuana, Mexico.

Between the countries: a 30-foot-high double wall and the no man’s land in between.

“This border was set by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848,” I said. “Isn’t it amazing to see that history here?”

“You know what else is amazing?” Naomi shoved an oval-shaped quartzite, formed around a billion years ago, in my face. “This stone.”

Shots that appear in my book “American Panoramas”