By the time we catch up with the migrant caravan, the group has already spent 10 weeks in the media spotlight and played a starring role in the midterms. Yet we are still unprepared for what we find—5,000 Central Americans camped in a small neighborhood rec center that reporters like to refer to over and over again as a “stadium.”

Keith Bowden and I had met up in San Diego and headed south to the border. Keith, 61, has lived on it for three decades—in Langtry, Texas, a town of 13. His Tecate Journals is an epic border tale, a chronicle of his canoe adventure down the Rio Grande. I got to know him early this year while I was traveling the U.S.-Mexico border by bicycle for this magazine. When I asked him in November if he wanted to go down and see the caravan first-hand, Keith responded within hours, “When do we go?”