![Sunset at Governor’s Landing overlooking Amistad Reservoir. Image by Seth Dodd/NPS.](https://i0.wp.com/openrivers.lib.umn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/3880a6c2-7ea0-4382-b52a-dad26a988baaOriginal-scaled-e1707432414604.jpg?fit=330%2C132&ssl=1)
Not a Border, But a Path: Swimming Across the Rio Grande
On a cool November day, I floated in the middle of Amistad Reservoir, a lake formed by a dam on the Rio Grande. I was swimming from the United States to Mexico and back, a ten-mile round trip. From the middle, I could see two of the widely spaced buoys that mark the path of the river under the reservoir, one on either side of me; up on the dam, I could see two flags waving in the wind, one for each country. But in the water itself, there was no way to tell if I was in the United States or Mexico, no line to mark the boundary between the two nations. My body floated in both countries and in neither. There was no border; there were only the water and the sky.