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February 13, 2007
Borders
I’ve always found borders fascinating.
I grew up in Mamaroneck, 26 miles to the north of New York City. The boundaries were complicated. There was a town and village of Mamaroneck; we lived in the unincorporated zone of the village. Four houses up the street, our neighbor’s home had its front yard in the village of Mamaroneck and its back yard in the town of Rye.
In 1979, when I was 15 I went to Finland for the summer and I stayed about 60 km from the Russian border. The family I stayed with asked a man, I think it was someone in the Finnish army, to take me there as a favor so I could see it. I was staying in Taaveti, to the east of Lappeenranta; Nuijamaa was to the west. I don’t remember much about the trip, though for some reason I have a feeling we took it in a Lada, but I have a snapshot of the border in my head. A grassy zone, yellow signs, coniferous forest beyond and a watch tower. As we gazed down at it, the man cautioned me about the border zone; walk into it and you risked getting shot. We stayed a safe distance behind.
The border was in the middle of a forest with no distinguishing feature to mark it. Like much of the border the United States and Canada, it was arbitrary. At least there is a river to cross between here and Mexico.
Among the possessions I lost when a box didn’t get loaded on a van during a move from 50th Street to 56th Street were my coin collection from childhood, my cookbooks (the loss I felt the most) and a photo album of a trip I took with my friend Dale to the Gaspé in 1986. We circumnavigated the peninsula and on the way back, stopped in a little hamlet called Estcourt. There’s a picture Dale took of me, now lost. I’m smiling, wearing a new sweater I had bought at Holt Renfrew in Quebec City and straddling the earth. One of my feet is in the United States, the other in Canada. There’s no difference in the ground or the features in the space between my feet, but one is in one country and one in another.
The town itself was as curious. The majority of it was in Canada, a small corner of it where we stopped in the United States. This part contained about four or five houses; families slept in Canada and ate breakfast in the U.S.. There was also a gas station, a drive in movie theater and a post office, all used to advantage by the Canadian residents. Amusingly enough, there was also a customs office. The thing was, the road from the town into the United States led into the Deep North Woods reserve, then petered out to nowhere. It was in the U.S., but you couldn’t get to it from there. All the cheap American gas had to either come from Canada or be shipped through it.
I get a small thrill from border signs. They demarcate a road trip and fill one with anticipation. “Connecticut Welcomes You”, “Welcome to Massachusetts” and then Boston approaches. “Welcome to New York, The Empire State” on I-95 means the lights of Manhattan will be visible in about half an hour. Border signs in other languages are even more exciting, “Bienvenue à Canada” or “Croeso I Gymru.” The drive from Bristol to Wales has a potently tangible boundary; crossing the Severn over the huge span of a new bridge that takes several miles to traverse.
The summer of 1987 was my first year up at Burklyn Ballet. I was a counselor; one Sunday when we were off, I took two of my favorite students, Virginia Batson and Alison Roper on a pleasure drive. Northern Vermont is astonishingly beautiful in the summer; one of the great pleasures is to just get lost. We headed north, probably towards Enosburg about an hour’s drive over country roads away.
We headed to the border. It was the country on a beautiful summer’s day; it didn’t occur to me I was transporting two minors without identification across an international boundary. Even only a few years ago there was less fear of kidnapping or terrorism; we crossed without incident. I can’t recall whether we were leaving the U.S. or returning, but we stopped at the border to take a picture, much like the one Dale had taken of me in Estcourt, and then we piled in the car to cross the border.
I’ve never had a car searched quite so thoroughly before.
The main border crossing in Vermont is at the end of I-89; an efficient toll site that takes one towards Montreal. One day a few years later, my friend Amy and I crossed that border in an enormous 1983 Oldsmobile Delta 88. We were randomly stopped at the checkpoint and examined. The immigrations officer asked Amy if she seeking work in Canada. Amy, who was just shy of 18 and auditioning for ballet companies, answered innocently “No, but I’d like to someday.” They smiled and let it pass. A small Quebecoise woman asked to look at the car. “Can you open the hood?”
“No.”
She looked at me quizzically.
“I really can’t.” I explained. “I don’t know how.” My father had given me the car right before I left. I was living in New York, and only used it in the summer and then when I left the city to work in small ballet companies. I filled it with gas and turned the key; I had no clue how the thing worked.
We did get the hood open and I stared at the enormous engine that I had never seen before in awe. I opened the trunk with alacrity; I was already embarrassed enough and at least that I knew how to open. The trunk was empty, a yawning cavern from a time when cars where huge. The inspector was short and lifted herself into the trunk to check for hidden items. She seemed to disappear into the trunk as Amy and I looked at each other, fighting giggles. Mischief always presents itself at the most inappropriate moment; it seemed way too easy to just close the trunk and drive off with an angry inspector inside.
The border from Vermont to Quebec is arbitrary at that point but the topography changes quickly, the horizon lengthens and flattens quickly once you enter Quebec. The excitement of a border is the excitement of change and transformation. It may not feel different when you cross from Connecticut to Massachusetts, but why does it when you cross from England to Wales, from Finland to Russia, from the United States to Canada?
Posted by Leigh Witchel at February 13, 2007 11:21 PM
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Comments
Bien dit. And I'm glad you didn't drive off with her after all. At the Nevada-to-California border, it's, "Do you have any fruits or vegetables?" Because if you do, then the border guards know what they're enjoying for lunch that day.
Posted by: AlisonH at February 19, 2007 8:39 PM