Rain

It's been raining in the desert.
The washes have filled and the canyons have been rushing with water, overflowing out onto roads, making slight dips impassable.
Loose terrain has been washed away leaving bare rock and steeper inclines along trails.
A storm last week released between four and five inches of rain in the desert around Arivaca.
With this rain comes a new greening of the landscape. Tinajas--deep water holes made in smoothed rock that can hold hundreds, or thousands of gallons of water--have been refreshed.
Palo Verde trees have greened slightly, as have Mesquites and Acacias--obscuring their piercing thorns.

The rain seems a blessing, both for local desert dwellers in an unusually dry year, and for people crossing from Mexico when 10 months of the year they are beaten down and killed by the perils of dehydration and exposure. But the rain brings its own troubles.

This recent rain has been accompanied by a full moon, which provides enough extra illumination at night to increase the number of people crossing.
But many trails follow canyons or washes. These routes are natural corridors through the rough terrain of the desert, and allow for passage with limited elevation change. They also help folks to remain inconspicuous.
In rain storms, like the one last week, these canyons and washes fill with little notice, often after the rain has already stopped. Canyon floods can be especially violent, due to the limited space for the water to flow. With this limited space there is also limited opportunity to escape the flow. Trees are washed out, entire boulders moved.
When the washes fill and the trails are flooded, folks move up the sides of the hills, where trails don't exist, where the piercing vegetation thrives and where the terrain is looser. Debilitating ankle injuries are always likely to increase in times of rain.

The most common negative effect of rain for people crossing is blisters. Walking for most of each day and each night, often in newer shoes bought for the journey, blisters are commonplace. When combined with wet socks, and sopping shoes, they are inevitable. They form, most often along the balls of the feet and the back of the heel, break open and form again, encouraged by the constant friction in the shoe and the abundant amount of moisture. These open sores easily become infected, or turn bloody, or are compounded by sand and small pebbles entering the affected area.

In the desert the formation of a blister can mean death. It can mean falling behind in your group, it can mean increased time in crossing with the same limited resources, combined with wet clothes in February, it can mean hypothermia.

To compliment the debilitating effects of this storm, a thick layer of frost formed each night last week, with temperatures reaching the mid-twenties and snow falling on areas just south of Arivaca. It is a mystery how the desert is survivable at all in those conditions.

This time of year, the gallon jugs of water left along trails from Mexico by humanitarian groups are in less demand than the pop-top cans of food, blankets and small bottles of Gatorade, a comment on the need for energy in keeping warm in the desert.

Reports came back recently too, from the border aid station in Nogales, Mexico where 4 bus loads of people being deported were dropped in a single morning. Lines for medical care, primarily blister and cold treatment, were out the doors of the building, many commenting in abuse documentation sessions of a lack of heat, adequate food or places to lie down while in detention for numerous days in a row.

An interesting irony to the rain is that most Border Patrol checkpoints close in inclement weather. They let Mother Nature take over.