Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics

I stirred in my sleep and rolled over to my back. I opened my eyes and saw bright, beautiful, dancing stars framed by the two walls of Santa Elena Canyon. I was sleeping so hard that I forgot where I was and what I was doing. Cozied up in my sleeping bag, I had dreamt that I was back home dozing off in my warm apartment. Instead, I was outside in the cold air, laying on the grass of Camp Gourmet in December 2015. The nearby Rio Grande rushed past the camp, and its swirling current was loud enough to lull you back asleep. I checked my watch—3 am. I’d have to get up in four hours to help start making breakfast for the team and breaking down camp. Thinking about all I had to do kept me awake.

I then thought about how it was the second night of our three-day trip into Santa Elena Canyon. In the morning, we’d paddle out of the canyon and leave the Rio Grande. We’d load the canoes onto the trailer and drive out of Big Bend National Park towards Alpine, Texas. It was two hours away and was the nearest and largest city for miles. Well, large, if you consider a town of about 6000 people large.

The thought of driving to Alpine made me worry. We’d be coming from the Rio Grande, the political boundary between the United States and Mexico. Driving from this direction meant we’d have to go through Border Patrol and be stopped and potentially searched. When people think of a political boundary, they think of a fence, a gate, or even a wall. But none of these things exist along the Rio Grande. There is no sign that says, ‘Welcome to the United States!’ or ‘Bienvenidos a México!’ on the other side. Instead, the barren and remoteness of the area serve as its own boundary and the United States Border Patrol knows this. They wait at a checkpoint a few miles outside Alpine on the main road. They know that since there isn’t potable water for miles, immigrants making the trip to the US would most likely drive to Alpine to refuel and stock up. Tired of thinking about all of this, I turned [End Page 27] over and closed my eyes. I figured I shouldn’t have to worry. I mean, borders are an abstraction. They’re made up. Social constructs. Abstract like a dream. A bad dream. I fell asleep.

I woke up to my cell phone alarm buzzing in the bag beside me. 7 am. It was bright outside as the sun was up too, but with the canyon walls so high our camp remained in the shadows. It was still quite cold. I threw on a beanie, some gloves, rolled up my sleeping bag, and headed towards the camp kitchen. Friends were already boiling water for coffee and frying eggs. I looked over towards the river and saw two people carrying out the water quality sampling kits. Thinking that breakfast was taken care of, I walked towards the two team members to help ‘do science.’ We were here as citizen scientists to monitor the water quality in remote locations along the Rio Grande. There wasn’t a USGS (United States Geological Services) monitoring station for long stretches of the river, and we knew that certain stretches of the river were in impaired zones. In other words, the water quality here was suspect, as heavy contaminants, fish kills, and dumping could be causes of concern. If there were point source contamination, neither the United States nor Mexico would find out until the contaminant was picked up miles away at a monitoring station. We were here to fill in the gaps.

I smiled as I approached the two fellow citizen scientists, and we said our good mornings. I was handed a water quality kit, and one of the members went to the river to collect a few samples of river water. I opened the kit and exposed the two probes: one was for recording dissolved...