Summary

Prologue – The author journeys with his mother (who is never identified by name) across Texas to its border with Mexico. Along the way, they stop in the national park where the author’s mother had worked as a park ranger. While there, they encounter an employee at the visitor center who knew the author’s mother, and who knew the author when he was a little boy and used to love playing cowboys and Indians. She warns the author and his mother to be careful at the border.

The author and his mother spend time in the park, the author’s mother sharing her knowledge of the place and the lives that lived there – particularly those of dragonflies which, she says, migrate thousands of miles every year. She also wades into a stream, urging her son to “touch the...