might be more alluring than any pragmatic considerations . Everyone around her entertained a certainty that her political work was not finished .

The governor had subtly entered my household through a friendship with Amanda . She sent handwritten notes to our daughter at the end of each year . They included encouragements to read and attend a university outside of Texas to broaden her perspective and recounted the governor ’ s adventures of the justconcluding year . When Amanda was confirmed in her church , Richards gave her the gift of a commemorative bracelet , and upon completion of high school , a crystal bowl arrived at our house with a pewter lid , personally inscribed to Amanda , with her date of graduation , and the governor ’ s name and permanent title . She had already been writing letters of recommendation to support our daughter ’ s applications to several universities .

These kindnesses ought not to have been so confounding to me . Richards ’ thoughtfulness and charms were not secrets , but I had studiously avoided any type of relationship with her beyond being a TV correspondent who asked questions . In fact , my practice as a journalist was to keep a considered distance from all the public figures who were the subjects of my reporting . Being an astute observer of people , the governor probably understood my comportment , which made her outreach to my only child even more touching .

Richards had seemed unstoppably ascendant . Opinion makers east of the Hudson and Potomac Rivers , though , had fixated on her opponent ’ s candidacy during her first run for governor . He offered the comforting Texas stereotype to East Coast intellects , with a cowboy hat , an oil company , and an ability to sing Mexican campfire songs in Spanish . He also , however , counseled women to “ relax and enjoy it ,” if rape were inevitable , refused to shake the lady ’ s hand in advance of a debate , and then admitted to paying no federal income taxes during an interview in the final week of the campaign .

Long shot Richards never got to evolve into a sure thing , though ; especially when the inexperienced Bush walked in from his dry hole drilling enterprises in the West Texas hinterlands . On the last day of the campaign , she sat across from me on the jet that was taking us from El Paso to Austin .

Reporters were hurriedly making margaritas on a battery-operated blender to consume before the flight landed . The governor sat , almost serenely , reading Michael Ondaatje ’ s masterpiece novel , “ The English Patient .” She closed the hardback and scribbled on something , which prompted me to turn my head , and then she looked up at me .

“ I think you should read this ,” she said , and offered me the book .

The author ’ s name was unfamiliar . “ Don ’ t know him . But it ’ s good ?” “ I can ’ t imagine you wouldn ’ t like it .” “ Well , thanks governor . I appreciate it .”

Safely in my truck a bit later at the terminal parking lot , I opened the book to see if she had left me an epigraph or any type of note , but the frontispieces were blank . Maybe she just did not want to carry the novel in her bag . I might have also been making too much of her gesture . I never knew , but it was the first real personal interaction we had shared .

Santa Elena finally began to open in front of our boats . I saw our TV station ’ s big satellite truck parked near the river in the distance . The slanted dish pointed at the sky was an absurd technological anomaly in the wilds of the Rio Grande basin . Jerry jumped out in the shallow water with his camera to record the governor leaving her raft and walking to the parking area for a ride up to her hotel in Marathon .

I dragged our boat up on a sandbar and stared downstream at the Chisos Mountains beginning to shimmer with a reddish fire in the lowering sun . The river gurgled across a gravel bed and moved toward the great curve that described its “ big bend ” across the face of the Mexican frontier . The sky was as clear as it must have been before humans started building fires . I saw nothing but pastel blue and darkening ranges . Where was that damn bird ? I ride my motorcycle often on the River Road between Presidio and Terlingua , and I am hypnotized like most travelers by the transcendent beauty of the land . Contradictions , though , are inescapable on the border . Passing through Redford , a weary little outpost just north of the river , I think often of Lucia Madrid , whose grandparents founded the tiny community of a few hundred souls . She was honored by the White House after spending years gathering 20,000 books for impoverished children to read at her house .

“ The river ,” she told an author , “ has never divided us .”

There is also no avoidance of a bitter memory of tragedy where the road bends away from the mesa located just northeast of Redford . Up there rests a 17- year-old boy who was victimized by a military operation designed to suppress drug traffic . Ezequiel Hernandez was shot through the heart while tending his family ’ s goat herd because in a Marine sniper ’ s scope he looked like a drug smuggler . Ezequiel had dreamed of becoming a Marine himself and leaving the border , and in his bedroom a “ few good men ” poster was taped to the wall above where he slept . The spot where he rests permanently was long marked by a handmade wooden cross and affords a sweeping view of the river valley where he had spent every minute of his short life .

I do not know if these extremes in human experience make the U . S . -Mexico border different than what transpires on urban American streets . Perhaps , the landscape gives lives and losses a more graphic relief and power in their isolation . My conclusion from interviewing those victimized by the collision of cultures is that these diminishments seem to be more profoundly felt , and normalcy almost irrecoverable .

The roller-coaster ride along Ranch Road 170 is exhilarating , though , and my memories tend to run toward pleasant imagery . I recall nights in the plazas of Mexican border towns , drinking rum punch and listening to mariachis beneath the palms , running through orange groves and snatching fresh fruit to eat on a warm , subtropical winter morning , laying on the soft sand by my young bride in front of the

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