My latest reporting assignment for the Epitaph involves all-terrain vehicle riding – something I gave up when I was 16 years old because I wound up in the emergency room with my dad yelling at me. I had flipped my birthday present, a Honda 250 ATV, leaving me with 16 stitches in my leg, much like the candles on a birthday cake.

But this past Saturday, I asked to ride along on one of Tombstone’s ATV patrols.

The deep, buzzing rumble of the Arctic Cat engine blurs with the whipping sound of the nipping wind as I try to keep my baseball cap from flying away.

The ride is less than smooth as Deputy Jose Olivas and I speed down a dirt service road in the two-seater Arctic Cat ATV, keeping an eye out for anything suspicious.

The sun is still out but my knuckles are red and my fingers are starting to tingle along with my nose.

“It’s usually not this cold,” Olivas says, grinning from behind his sunglasses, trying not to shout but still trying to be heard over the wind.

I nod, as I tighten the hood on my less than warm, novelty pull-over sweater. The last thing I need are burning, red ears.

At 5:30 p.m., the sky is blanketed with clouds. Marshal Larry Talvy suggested I bring a jacket with me, just in case. Had I known, I would have packed something similar to Olivas’ Alaska-like parka.

“When the weather starts getting rough that’s when the illegals start coming out, because of course they get hungry or they get cold or they’re just tired of walking, because they’ve been walking for so long,” Olivas said.

ATV patrols are now part of the Marshal’s Offices’ to-do-list and lately have taken up about 10 to 15 hours a week. The patrols are part of Tombstone’s contribution to Operation Stonegarden – a federal, state, tribal and local effort to reduce illegal border activity – the ATVs help catch illegal boarder-crossers trying to avoid the highway checkpoints.

“What’s happening is that in order for these illegals to circumvent those areas they try to get in between the checkpoints and trench across the rough terrain,” Talvy said.

And places like the washes and trails I was riding through are the new highways into the United States. And ironically, just like American highways, trash is everywhere.

“Illegal dumping,” Olivas mumbles, as we slow around a sharp turn, the back tires grinding under the crunchy gravel. He points toward a damp-looking, pale yellow loveseat, stained orange and black. But that’s not the sort of illegal trash I had in mind. Backpacks and water bottles were in my mind.

“It’s always out there,” said Lance “Beaver” Crabtree, a local avid ATV rider.“You can always see signs where they tried to go off road and get through the trails and then they get stuck in their trucks,” he said.  He’s even found abandoned vehicles on the trails.

But if one goes riding every day like Crabtree, one is bound to find something.

“The only thing I really see a whole lot of is Border Patrol,” Crabtree said. “We don’t see the (migrants) personally, but we see the remnants of them being there. We’re so loud, they’re gone before we even get there.”

Crabtree is one of many avid riders in Tombstone who enjoy the local terrain. They might not be looking for illegals but they do notice some new hindrances when it comes to getting around in the back country.

“Here it’s nice to ride, because it’s so rural and there’s so many trails. The only problem is (Bureau of Land Management) has been putting up a lot of fences,” said Denisse Bororquez, co-owner of Perez Performance, an ATV shop based in town. “Where you don’t even know, they just kind of creep up on you and before you know it, somebody’s hitting the fence.”

The Bureau of Land Management may be keeping ATV riders out but it may not be keeping everyone out. Fences are not a hindrance to illegal boarder activity, Talvy said. “Illegal immigrants cut it all the time.”

Fences are nothing but scarce as we ride closer to the big wash behind town.  By now I’ve almost fallen out twice. I keep reminding myself that these things don’t have seat belts.

Olivas slows again as we enter the wash.  This is where he found a couple illegals the night before.

“They were dropped off by the person taking them to Phoenix (who) told them to wait in a section of the wash because they were going to bring them food back and the guy never returned,” Olivas said later, after we had parked back at the Marshal’s Office.

The migrants had been there since noon and Olivas picked them up around 7:30 p.m. “They were hungry and thirsty,” he recalled.

“These are just crossroads on their path; these washes here. They load somewhere and they drop them off here to avoid checkpoints,” he said. “You’re not always going to go out there and find something, but you may go out there and find something big. Nine times out of 10 you won’t find anything.”

Olivas pulls a skilled U-turn. The sun is now setting deeper behind the thick clouds as the cold is now biting through my fleece. I can’t feel my fingers anymore as we head back. A mile away from town, Olivas spots a detour, and veers a quick right. The faded trail is rich in branching vegetation, some of it barbed as it swipes the ATV and nicks at my arms and cheek.

“I’ve never been this way,” Olivas says as we drive down and out of one wash after another, heading into the hills behind town.

To our surprise the trail spits us back out on to the highway and the ATV picks up speed.

Calling it a day, Olivas parks the Arctic Cat behind double doors, right behind a 4-wheeler in the shed.

“(Smugglers) have made some elaborate schemes to avoid being caught.” Talvy said. They use mountain look-outs and cheap, portable radios. “They communicate very well with one another and we just need to try to stay one step ahead of them,” he said.

“ATV’s can be very valuable, to get into areas where we just can’t send vehicles. They’re made for those types of situations.”

As the sun finally sets, I could now feel the blood warming my fingers and nose as I stand inside the Marshal’s Office. My return to ATV-ing wasn’t what I expected. And as a 16-year-old, I never thought riding down washes, kicking up dirt with my tires would ever be more than a pastime.