That Which Divides Us

After almost two months in residence, I have finally reached the summit; the summit of Mule Pass, anyway. My morning walks up Tombstone Canyon have steadily lengthened as the days have gone by, and I have gradually pushed myself to ascend the rather steep Divide Road by about 100 yards more each day. Yesterday I realized that I was so close that I made up my mind to go the distance this morning, a walk that was not as hard as I had first envisioned. The total distance from my house to the summit is actually only 2.2 miles, but it involves a steady climb of 627 feet, steeper at some points more than others. The walk back is, of course, easier.

The view from the divide is very nice. To the east one can see the Huachuca Mountains, and to the west the dim outline of ranges in New Mexico are visible on the horizon. A strange monument sits just off the roadside which proclaims the point is at 6,030 feet above sea level (which seems about

right to me) but also proclaims the pass to be situated on the “Continental Divide.” This is patently false since the actual line is more than 130 miles to the east, but it struck me this morning as I perused the names of all the local and state politicians listed on the obelisk that it is a three dimensional metaphor representing today’s political climate.

First, the false claim of being the Continental Divide represents a lot of the erroneous information flooding our news broadcasts and Twitter feeds which has earned the monkier “fake news.” It only seems authoritative because it is literally chipped in stone. Second, the listing of all those political leaders who, we can safely assume, were entirely male and white, represents the current power structure in a country where this same demographic is making decisions on how women may use their own bodies and what complexion an aspiring immigrant must have to enter the country. Finally, there is the shocking testimony that the road itself was the product of prison labor.

One can only imagine the slave-like conditions those incarcerated souls endured as they sweated under an Arizona sun moving earth for the highway. With those who presently clamor for more arrests and more prisons and harsher sentences, we ought to recognize that the United States already has the highest rate of imprisoned people in the world. In fact, a whopping 22 percent of the worlds prisoners are right here in the land of the free, hardly the sort of statistic that would make a contemporary political conservative confident in his assurances that our society is based on individual liberty. And so this simple monument suggests to me a cultural and political divide more than a geographic one, and while it is my present goal in morning physical exercise it should also stand for a contemplative destination as well.