Suspicious junk

In most places, the junk I come across while hiking off-trail is fairly innocent--rusty tin cans, strands of barbed wire, shotgun shell cases, broken beer bottles, and so forth. In southern Arizona, though, the frequent sight of Border Patrol vehicles on the roads makes me suspicious of many items I find in the desert there. We're currently boondocking about 25 miles from the Mexican border. On one recent hike, I saw the shoe, the backpack and the plastic jug in the photos, as well as a pile of blankets, all in different locations within a two-mile radius.

The shoe was in fine conditions except for a broken lace. Whoever left it must have been in a such a hurry that he or she couldn't afford the time to stop and retie. The backpack was empty and also usable, although it had been repaired in several places. Had a drug smuggler discarded it after delivering the contents to a courier? The plastic jug had probably held water for a desert crossing and was tossed aside when empty. The blankets were under a palo verde tree on a hillside about a half-mile from Highway 85. I envisioned several illegal immigrants resting on them, watching the road from behind the tree, waiting for the cover of night to proceed.

My imagination might have been overactive, but it's a sign of the times that such thoughts came to mind.