arbitrary borders
work in process//45.
Last week I spent five days in the Big Bend in far west Texas. I love the open, scratchy desert. It makes me feel small in my body and big in my mind. It’s so rough I can be soft. It’s scraggly and far from perfect, just like us. There are lessons and layers everywhere you look.
On our first full day at Desert Flow Camp, we drove from north from Terlingua to run and hike in Fresno Canyon. The road rose and dipped steeply. To our left was a narrow river punctuated by bright blue pools. The river appeared to have no current, like a painting of a river. It was the kind of water you want to jump into after a run.
Only later, on our way back, did I realize the river was the Rio Grande. Of course it was. There’s so little water in West Texas, what else could it be? Still, it took my breath away. It was the same river as the one that flows through New Mexico, the same water yet different. Our Rio Grande is dark green in winter, the color of root-beer in summer; in the Big Bend, it was nearly turquoise, and not even half as wide.
I was here, and Mexico was just over there.
I couldn’t get over it. The two sides of the river looked exactly the same: brown mesas rising into brown mountains; everywhere, the same forbidding starkness and aridity. There was no difference, but we had made it a boundary, a division separating us and them, here and there—an arbitrary border.
Nature is filled with ideas and patterns; narratives, forms and metaphors. When we go into wild places, everything we encounter becomes a point of entry into our writing. This is what I teach at Flow Camp: that movement is a creative practice, and creativity is a physical practice. To be alive is to forage for stories. Everything is material. It’s all art.
The next day, our local guide, Tyler, led us a thousand feet up Mesa de Anguila for a view of the river. The Rio Grande looked smaller and, impossibly, even bluer from above. It coiled and twisted behind mesas and through long bends, blinking up at us. We sat for a while in silence, eating oranges and drinking water. Then we pulled out our notebooks. It was easy to think of a writing prompt, a port of entry—we were staring down at it, and it up at us.
Let’s write about arbitrary borders, I suggested. Or what it’s like to be on the brink of another country. I didn’t mean this only literally. Our group of 15 had come from all over the country to Flow Camp to explore unfamiliar territory, in the landscapes of Big Band and our own imaginations. Each of us was on the edge of something unknown.
We hunched over our notebooks and began to write. Writing outside is good. In the fresh air, under the enormous sky, you tap into your inner wildness, no premeditation or planning, no editing or self-censure. Let it rip. Just like running.
Afterwards I asked if anyone wanted to read aloud. It’s important to read our work, not to get feedback but to hear how our minds move, to be surprised by what our hearts have to say. No one raised their hand, so I read mine [unedited]:
On the brink of another country. Staring into Mexico, I see no differentiation. The river does not know the difference between Mexico and the United States. I feel like I’m looking into a mirror at myself look back—no markers or signs warning of another country, just mesas and mountains unfolding and folding in time, the great earth burping itself up from below, saying Here I am in all my brown rumpled imperfect layers. No excuses or caveats, no explanations. Like the best and bravest writing. The new territory is unconditional self-love, unapologetic. I’m facing a mirror into myself, like tracing paper folded in half to make a symmetrical picture. There is a deep silence of a foreign land, what would it be to love myself completely as the mesas love themselves? Or to forget myself as completely as the mountains forget themselves, regardless of which side of the river they’re on? To lay myself bare, exposed and browned by the sun—old and young at the same time, a blip in infinite time. Is there another me across the river staring back? A me from Mexico wondering about the me from the U.S.? The breeze rises above the canyon, the sun bakes. All is still here on the edge of another country, vast and without borders, without arbitrary divisions, allegiances, languages, currency, time.
Time had been weird all weekend. Our clocks were confused. Though Terlingua was on Central Time, our phones kept bouncing back and forth to Mountain Time. Was it 7 am or 6, 2 pm or 3? Who knew? We couldn’t keep track. It didn’t matter! Time was an arbitrary distinction, too.
I’d learned this from Zen as well: Time doesn’t flow in a straight line, from past to present to future, but in all directions all at once. It’s borderless and fluid. It moves with our minds. Flow, too, happens best in a boundless world. When there’s no gap between you and your activity, when your separate self dissolves and disappears, you are in flow. You are flow.
Up on the mesa, Tyler told us about the time he’d run through a borderland canyon and discovered ten dozen “carpet shoes”—carpet fragments that migrants strap to their shoes to obscure their footprints, to become untraceable, invisible. He’d collected them into garbage bags and carried them out. I knew I’d never look at those rugged, exposed borderland canyons again without thinking of the carpet shoes and the people who’d left them behind. They must be escaping something truly awful to attempt such a perilous journey. The border may seem arbitrary, but trying to cross it could cost them their lives.
Flow Camp flowed on. Time meant nothing. We were always late for something or early for something else. It was a gift, really. An unplanned gift. We’d entered a territory of our own making, where differences and boundaries dissolved. You can’t predict this or orchestrate flow in advance. You just have to live all the way into your life and let it rip.
with a heart full of flow~~
xx katie
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN FOR MOUNTAIN FLOW CAMP! September 5-8, 2025, at High Camp Hut, outside Telluride, Colorado. Write, run + hike with the mind of mountains. We will apply the teachings of Zen to being wild in our minds, bodies, and hearts. This is a completely offline retreat with no cell or WiFi—a rare and much-needed chance to disconnect and reconnect to our true selves and our creativity. $2,600 per person, double occupancy, in a traditional alpine lodge at 11,000 feet in the San Juan Mountains. Hut space is limited to 14 guests and will sell out. Link below to apply.
BRIEF FLASHINGS IN THE PHENOMENAL WORLD is now available on audiobook, read by me, the author! Buy it and gift it on Audible or wherever you get your audiobooks. Perfect for listening while you ramble, run, wander, walk, or rest.
Beautiful, Katie!! What a gift Flow Camp was to all of us. Thank you for holding us in your wisdom and belief!