The High Speed Corridor is nearly to Smuggler's Gulch

John and I went out to the border yesterday morning. He had been wanting to see the area and I had been wanting to show him. There were a few interesting/alarming things that happened. One, there were more vehicles in the hills working than I 've ever seen. Usually about half the 20 or so vehicles that park in the construction area stay parked, yesterday there were only two parked and the rest in the hills. The second and definitely most alarming was the amount they had advanced on the road! They are now only about 200-300 yds from Smuggler's Gulch. The amount of native vegetation that has been destroyed in the last two weeks is almost incomprehensible. Probably close to an acre of these plants which have been there for centuries and whose root systems take decades to form was uprooted in two weeks. The filling of Smuggler's is imminent! More evidence to this effect was demonstrated by the third interesting ocurence. On our way walking out of smuggler's we were stopped by BP. This, in itself, isn't that unusual. I often get asked what I'm doing there and sometimes asked for ID. But the comments and scare tactics of this BP agent were things like "You really shouldn't be in here", "There's a lot of 'activity' and it's dangerous". He asked for our IDs, ran John's liscence plate, and asked to see the video clips that I had taken on my computer. When we asked if what he meant by 'activity' was construction he said "No, other ativity". I think this is more of the same scare tactics that is in the news and everywhere else that the border is some violent dangerous area overrun with drugs, arms, and dangerous aliens running around. I've never seen anything but peaceful bushes and birds and destructive bulldozers since I've been going out there. I've been there easily 100 times. John and I came to the conclusion that despite the insinuations, the 'activity' that is really going on there is people like us trying to keep up with the pace of the destruction. I suspect they are nervous about us being there because the strength of their progress on this fence has been the secrecy that they've been able to keep it under and now that it's just barely to starting to break into mainstream news, they are worried about people like us getting word and somehow holding up their progress on the fence.


Here's a video taken about a 1/2 mile east of Smuggler's Gulch which is about two miles from the Pacific Ocean right along the US/Mex border. The original audio was barely audible so I spent a lot of time doing a crappy editing job in order make the it audible. If anyone has any video editing tips for me, I'll take 'em.