Where the Ghost Bird Sings by the Poison Springs (Cont.)

Outside Magazine February 2002

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	Crunch, crunch: Skulls and feathers form the beach at North Shore.

NORTH OF THE BORDER, the New River curves and jitters for 60 miles in a backward S to a sort of estuary on the southern shore of the Salton Sea, equidistant from the towns of Calipatria and Westmorland. On a map of Imperial County, the towns and road-crossings of its progress are traced in blue, right down to the last demisemiquaver. But immediately south of Calexicoís stubby fan palms and pawn shops, there runs a heavy line demarcating the end of California and the beginning of Mexico, and of the state of Baja California. Here the New River becomes the Río Nuevo, and vanishes upstream from all but one of the maps Iíve ever seen, each time in a different way.

My plan was to cross from Calexico into Mexicali, hire a taxi, and get the driver to take me to the source of the Río Nuevo—wherever that was, but according to most accounts, just a few miles outside of town. Then I would rent a boat and ride downstream. But once I arrived in Mexicali and sought to zero in on the mysterious spot (excuse me, señor, but where exactly does it start?), people began to tell me that the river commenced right here, in Mexicali itself, in one of the cityís industrial parks, where a certain Xochimilco Lagoon was fed by a secret spring. Moreover, the municipal authorities of Mexicali were even now pressing on into the fifth year of a very fine project to entomb and forget the Río Nuevo, sealing it off underground along a concrete channel below the median strip of a new highway, whose name happened to be Boulevard Río Nuevo—a hot white double ribbon of street adorned with dirt and tires, an upended car, broken things. Along its median theyíd sunk segments of a long, long concrete tube that lay inconspicuous in a dirt trench; and between some of these segments, where the tube had been buried, were grates. Lifting the grates revealed square pits, with jet-black water flowing below, exuding a fierce sewer stench that could almost be some kind of cheese.

I decided to ride the New River from its source in Mexico to the Salton Sea. The border patrol advised that if I tried crossing into the U.S. that way, I'd infallibly get arrested.

Not far from the border, a yellow pump truck sat roaring as its hose, dangling down into the Río Nuevo, sucked up a measure of the effluvium of Mexicaliís 750,000 people. This liquid, called by the locals aguas negras, would be used in concrete mixing. What treasures might the river gather here on its way to the United States? Bacteria that could lead to typhoid, hepatitis, amoebic dysentery, perhaps a few other things, says the Environmental Protection Agency. (Well, the kids have respiratory problems just from living here, said one se-ora who lived a few steps away. They have coughs, she said, and on the skin some pimples and rashes.) Beside the truck were two wise shade-loungers—the temperature was 114 degrees—in white-dusted boots, baseball caps, and sunglasses. I asked what was the most interesting thing they could tell me about the Río Nuevo. They conferred for a while, and finally one of them said that theyíd seen a dead body in it last Saturday.

One of the men, José Rigoberto Cruz C-rdoba, was a supervisor. He explained that the purpose of this concrete shield was to end the old practice of spewing untreated factory and municipal sewage into the river, and maybe he even believed this; maybe it was even true. My translator, a man who, like most Mexicans, does not pulse with idealism about civic life, interpreted the policy thus: Theyíll just go to the big polluters—American companies or else Mexican millionaires—and say, "Weíve closed off your pipe. You can either pay us and weíll make you another opening right now, or else youíre going to have to do it yourself with jackhammers and risk a much higher fine." No doubt he was right, and the clandestine pipes would soon be better hidden than ever.

The generator ran and the Río Nuevo stank. The yellow truck was now almost full. Smiling pleasantly, Señor Cruz Córdoba remarked, "I heard that people used to fish and swim and bathe here 30 years ago."

That night, at a taxi stand in sight of the river, the cab drivers sat at picnic tables, and the old-timers told me how it had been 25 years ago. Theyíd always called it the Río Conca, which was short for the Río con Cagada, the River with Shit. The river was lower then, and they used to play soccer here; when they saw turds floating by, they just laughed and jumped over them. The turds had floated like tortugas, they said, like turtles; and indeed they used to see real turtles here. Now they saw no animals at all.

For three or four languid days, I sat in the offices of Mexican civil engineers, telephone-queried American irrigation-district officials, and then, in the company of various guides and taxi drivers, went searching for the source of the Río Nuevo. Sometimes the street was fenced off for construction, and sometimes the river ran mysteriously underground—disappearing, say, beneath a wilderness of pemex gas stations—but we always found it again, smelling it before we could see it. At Xochimilco Lagoon, liquid was flowing out of pipes and foaming into the lagoonís sickly stinking greenness between tamarisk trees.

But the lagoon was not the source, because there was no single source; the Río Nuevo drew its life from a spiderweb of irrigation drains and sewers and springs and lagoons, most of which ultimately derived from the Colorado River. Easing my way past the sentry at a geothermal works, I discovered waters of a lurid neon blue; what had stained them? That water entered the Río Nuevo, and so did this channel and that channel and that channel drawn on the blueprints of the engineers. From a practical point of view, the end came when I peered into the stinking greenness of Xochimilco Lagoon and the taxi driver appropriately said, "The end."

Iíd already realized that my plan to raft the Río Nuevo was shot. Early one evening, the heat stinging my nose and forehead deliciously, I had gone to the river, peered down one of the square pits, and wondered whether I would stand a chance if I lowered myself and a raft into it. The current appeared to be extremely strong; there was no predicting where Iíd end up. At best Iíd drift as far as the border, five miles away, and be arrested. Should there be any underground barrier along the way, my raft would smash into it, and Iíd probably capsize and eventually starve, choke, or drown.

While I considered the matter, my latest taxi driver stood on a mound of dirt and recited "El Ruego," by the Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Thus Mexico, where the most obscene feculence cannot prevail over art. It was settled. Since I couldnít spend my own death benefits, I decided to begin my little cruise in the USA.

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