In my dreams and nightmares, I keep coming back to those eight intense days in five states along the border — after nearly a half century of crisscrossing it — and it still feels like a changling, a chimera to me.

Is it a hard surface of discontinuity, with a sharp division of opportunities on either side of its sheet metal walls, its Normandy barriers, its anti-ram concrete blockades, its bollards and barbed wire fences? Or is the sharpness I feel ...

As the day approaches when a federal judge learns whether federal agencies have been able to reunite all detained families that have been separated, we hear in Las Cruces at dawn that these agencies appear to have fallen far short of their mandate. There is chaos and disappointment in the air as we talk to people from all walks of life, of different ethnicities and faiths. We have been on a listening tour on both sides of the borderlands. We ...

How do we rekindle our hope during the darkest of times? With regard to the current crisis at our border, many of us have felt anxiety, distress, frustration and horror over the way many people have been repeatedly been treated during their efforts to gain political asylum, seek sanctuary and secure dignified livelihoods in the U.S.

Well, in Anthony, Texas today, I was deeply inspired by both the remarkable food justice work being done and the social commentaries we heard from ...

Kristy: I am feeling that parts of the story of the border are hidden to most Americans, as if these sagas have been made “invisible” even to those of us who come to the borderlands attempting to understand it.

Gary: I think you are right about that Kristy. That’s why I am so glad that you met Enrique Madrid in Redford Texas today. A giant of a man, with his long, gray-haired ponytail and his huge heart, he is an independent ...

Our conversations and experiences the past few days have shown us the real harm that walls do to people and their communities. From concrete and steel to closed ports of entry, walls disrupt. They dehumanize. The lovely Boquillas del Carmen was almost destroyed when its port of entry was closed in 2002, and is making a comeback since its 2013 reopening. Borders/walls dehumanize people like Sandro, a U.S. citizen who has experienced verbal and physical at the hands of Border ...

Gary: We are being hosted by Bonnie McKinney, Wildlife Coordinator of the El Carmen Land and Conservation Co. LLC, and her partner Bill Pat not far from La Linda Coahuila, just east of Big Bend National Park. Bonnie reminds us that this private conservation reserve is the connecting link in an ecological corridor which joins the Sky Islands of the northern Chihuahuan Desert with the Sierra Madre of northern Mexico. But Bonnie also reminds us that this migratory corridor has ...

Cousin Gary Nabhan and I are having an enriching, educational, and all-around incredible time here on the U.S.-Mexico border. In the past 5 days we have met with women, men, and children From Nogales to Terlingua, Texas. Aid workers, refugees, small business owners, U.S. Park Rangers, and land conservationists. White ethnics, Mexicanos, and indigenous women and men alike. All have stressed the need to heal the divide that is expanding between us. That everyone wins when we invest in and ...

Gary: Where else are we seeing signs of hope along the U.S.-Mexico border?

Kristy: In the person of Marcos Paredes, a lifelong borderlander of Yaqui and Mexican descent, who worked for the U.S. Park Service and Far-Flung Adventures, Inc. for over 30 years. Today, he is President of Rio Aviation, Inc. run out of Terlingua, Texas and helps facilitate many cross-border exchanges. He is committed to maintaining mutually beneficial relationships for Americans and Mexicans on both sides of the border.

Gary: Yes, ...

Gary: It seems that we’re beginning to hear some recurrent themes from our friends that live closest to the border.

Kristy: I’m reflecting on that too. Remember the beautiful challenge our cousin Joe Nebhan put before us just before we left El Paso? I think he said it this way:

“There are commonly-held misconceptions about the border that are based solely upon fear, not on knowledge. I recommend to those uninitiated Americans who, for whatever reason they have not spent time here ...

Gary: Oh, what an irony: We could hardly find the Southwest Key detention center for unaccompanied minors in Tucson, but when we met our Lebanese relatives at their historic Gardner Hotel in El Paso, they had a few surprises for us, didn’t they?

Kristy: I would say so. Another Southwest Key detention center was right next to the hotel, less than 50 yards from where the rooms were that our cousins graciously offered us. The windows are all closed tight, the ...

There is a lot of compassion here in the borderlands. Borderlanders are telling us that the only way to understand the complex situation is to “Come and visit. Eat the food. Talk to people.” Indeed. We spent time this morning at the Annunciation House where individuals are reunited with their families. Incredibly moving… expectant mothers from El Salvador, a father and son from Brazil, young men from across Central America.

So many people fleeing violence and disarray yet we are feeling ...

Gary: Do you know what really touched me today Kristy, while you were talking to the mothers from Guatemala and Mexico who were stranded, waiting to be processed at the DeConcini Gate at the Nogales Port of Entry?

Kristy: So much of what we saw and heard there was moving to me, since it was my first time at the border there. But what moved you?

Gary: It was the excitement of the face of the 8-year old boy from Guerrero, Mexico, ...