Baja Trip Report

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          “Don’t listen to what they say.  Go See.” – Chinese Proverb

I entered Mexico alone at the beginning of February through Tecate, hoping to avoid the chaos of the Tijuana crossing.  Tecate is a much less twisted town, and also the home of one of my favorite beers.  I did not stop at what people say is a pretty little plaza in Tecate, I wanted to get way south of the border and its inherent ugliness.  Along the highway to Ensenada (Mex 3) there is supposed to be a wild hot springs.  I found the turn-off and passed a large vineyard up the correct spur road.  After minimal searching, I could not find the secondary roads which might take me there. I went back to Mex 3 and headed south.

My impression of Baja is that the peninsula really begins south of Ensenada and San Felipe, the twin towns which draw drunken gringos and those who might prey on them.  Experiences in both towns, sometimes as a drunken gringo, and accounts from others, taught me this.  I pushed south and spent the night on the beach near San Quintin, far past Ensenada on the transpeninsular highway (Mex 1).

I made plans to make for Bahia de Los Angeles the next day.  South of San Quintin and its agriculture, the population and vegetation become sparse.  I stopped in a small town for gasoline and some local food.  With a large sack of pork roast (carnitas!) courtesy of Doc and Teddy, all I needed was tortillas, chiles, and a few different kinds of salsa.  I would keep the American food for when I ran out of the Mexican.  My efforts at speaking Spanish thus far were met with English responses.  Was I that bad, or were they just trying to make it easy?

Chile peppers drying in the sun
 
 
 

As I travelled south, I passed several military checkpoints.  I tried my hardest to follow the advice of a friend: "Always smile at the guys with the machine guns".  I found the soldiers at the checkpoints courteous and non-threatening.
 
 
 
 

Bahia

My arrival in Bahia de Los Angeles was met with a howling Norther:  20-30 knot winds from the north.  Hunker weather.  I was hoping to do some kayaking there, but not with winds like that.  The winds blew into the night, not a good sign.  Listening to AM radio from the American Los Angeles, the winds were supposed to die down and the weather to warm up.  The winds lessened some with nightfall, but still shook the truck and camper all night.

Ocotillos, the channel and the old volcano

The next day, the winds picked up early. I had a long effortless siesta in the afternoon, and didn’t quite want to get up.  Must be something in the air.  In late afternoon, with winds abating somewhat, I crossed my fingers and assembled the kayak, hoping to be on the water at first light.  Each night near dusk, a military patrol (Armada de Mexico) drove by to check things out.  I didn’t know whether to be reassured or threatened.  Something about having the Army keep the peace is unsettling.  Are a truckload of 18 year old soldiers with M-16’s better than American cops?  Depends what the threat is, I suppose.

                                                                       Islands near Bahia de L.A.

I started paddling just as the sun peeked over the horizon.  After a half hour I poked around La Punta to see what was happening out in the channel.  The wind was calm but there were moderate swells rolling in from the north.  I paddled the channel upwind for a mile or two and set myself a turn-around time.  In the distance, I saw a plume of spray and looked for the rock that had spawned it, but the plume was far from any shore.  Whale?  Maybe.  (after seeing what I knew for sure were whale plumes later, I think that it was)  The wind started to rise and I turned the boat before the time arrived.  Running downwind was easy but after rounding the point again, I had to lean into the strokes to make any progress against the stiffening breeze.  By 9 AM I was back on shore with the wind blowing hard – too hard to do anything but paddle with it, if one chose to.  I walked out to overlook the channel an hour later.  Blowing like snot:  at least 30 knot winds tearing the tops off the swells.  So that’s all I get is less than 3 hours of good paddling weather a day?

I decided to head for the big island offshore in the morning, across the 2 mile wide channel – not far if the wind isn’t bowling you.  I was up before first light and on the water before the sun rose.  The crossing went easy, but as I approached the shore of the island, the wind started picking up again.  In an hour the snot was running again out there in the channel.  I laced up the boots and went exploring.

My trusty craft

Across the small bay from where I left the boat was a pyramid-shaped rock.  At the top was a pile of sticks and a little hooting bird.  A larger bird approached, landed and disgorged breakfast.  Yum.  Ospreys, they looked like.  I climbed to the spine of the island, sometimes staggering from the gusts.  Islands all around, floating above a battered sea.  One end of the island was an old volcano, the rest looked to be ancient lava flows.  Sharp rock rusting and crumbling like slate.  Below, fisherman dropped what I guessed to be a lobster pot and then sped for a sheltered cove.  I wandered around the island the rest of the day finding all sorts of delights.  There was a mini mangrove swamp with cute stunted mangrove trees.  I found a dead pufferfish washed up and seal bones spread down a shore.  In one cove were the broken remains of a giant turtle shell, poached probably.  On several high points were the eviscerated remains of a small sea duck and lizards and what looked to be some kind of rodent.  Later I saw a pair of what I guessed to be Redtail hawks; maybe they were the hunters.  I don’t know much about ospreys, but I thought they hunted only marine prey.  I came upon a half dozen gulls eating a beached squid.  Lots of dead stuff make the living very happy.

                                                                                    Bay on Sea of Cortez

Up in the passes between the peaks of the island the wind is funneled and forced through narrow gaps.  All the large rocks were missing.  A thick stumped Elephant Tree with bark that peels like manzanita was stretched flat into krummholtz.  I have never seen krummholtz at 500 feet elevation before.  Cholla cactus hissed in the gale.  The cholla didn’t lie down for the wind, it leaned into it, a single trunk with all the laterals broken off.  I thought it probably a lucky cactus in some kind of eddy, but on several other passes there were similar chollas.  Damn, that is stubbornness.  Eating lunch, I watched a Frigate Bird out over the channel 20 feet above the water, holding steady and hunting in the 30 knot winds.  Later, a pelican was chasing a seagull back and forth into the gale.  I guess the creatures out here just learn to live with the wind.

The next morning I was up as usual before dawn and out paddling.  The sea was flat.  No swells, no wind.  Seabirds were everywhere.  Ducks were ducking underwater after fish.  Some kind of large sleek seabird nosedove into the water at high speeds like a spear.  Sploosh!  And up it came flying with a silver fish.  A pelican is more graceful, gliding with wingtips just brushing the water, until it sees a fish and then bloop! it opens its mouth and ditches like a bicycle hitting a curb, sometimes tumbling ass over teakettle.  When it finally untangles limb from wing, it raises its beak and swallows.   A seal eyes me and dives, coming up some distance away.  A bird of prey dips and scatters small waterbirds, looking for the weak and unwary.  This is why people kayak here.  A boat with a motor would miss all of this living.

The wind that day never rose above a soft breeze all day long.  Hmm, maybe I’ll stay a few more days…

                                                                       My campsite at Bahia de L.A.

Planning to go out on a sea seems to breed an unconscious superstition.  Little signs become glaring neon warnings.  Just before dropping into Bahia de Los Angeles, I stopped to look at the town, the bay and the islands.  A cluster of vultures sat before me at the overlook off the highway.  Such things strike you before setting off on the water.  I had several dreams before I went out with the kayak.  Dreams with dark things.  One dream: a black puddle in my palm;  another a daytime sky with a black patch that wouldn’t clear.  Makes you stop and consider what you are doing, especially if you go solo.  Since I needed to start before daybreak, I set an alarm for 5 AM.  In the seconds before the alarm rang, I dreamed of my dog greeting me after a prolonged absence with licks and excitement (now not my dog).  All the bad omens dissolved in the canine joy as the alarm rang and I rushed to get on the water before the wind started.  A good way to start a trip.

Clams

A man was out on the flats at low tide.  He had a shovel, but he wasn’t digging.  He seemed to be leaning on it a lot.  I went down to have a look.
“Hola, mind if I watch?”
“Sure, this is how we dig for clams around here.”  He was chopping the sand with the shovel, as you might chop garlic on a cutting board.  We chatted a little, and then his shovel went clank on something.  He reached down to pull a clam from the sand.  He eyed it and put it back under.  “Too small,” he said.  He moved out into the ankle deep water, and I followed.  “The Mexicans just feel around with their toes to find them, but I’m not gonna do that because of the sand crabs.”
Knowing that crabs don’t lurk under the sand, I started pushing sand about with the toe of my sandal.  (Crabs do dig burrows in the sand above the tideline).  Soon, I bumped something solid and reached down to pick it up.  A large clam.  I went up to his bucket and put it in.  It was the biggest one out of the half dozen he had found so far.  I went back and chatted and dug with my toe, finding several more.  A pretty easy supper.  A few days later I went back for my own, and in a half hour’s toe probing, I found myself a dozen to steam for dinner.  Lucky I brought the garlic butter…

The clam digging man told me about a place much farther south on the Peninsula on the Sea of Cortez.  A place where there is a hot spring in the ocean.  I got out my maps and looked it up: Agua Verde, Green Waters.  Remote and hard to get to, he said.  Sounds like my kinda place.  But first I wanted to see some rock art.

Spread throughout the Baja peninsula are caves and rock shelters where ancient peoples painted figures of humans, animals and abstractions on the walls and ceilings.  Here’s a webpage that describes some of the sites: http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/baja/index.html

Seeing the most fantastic of these requires a guided mule trip and a permit.  I drove into the town of San Ignacio with a handful of Spanish verbs in my mind in an attempt to arrange a trip.  The man at the desk of the Mexican agency that protects and manages visitation of the sites spoke no English at all.  Finally, a chance to put my Spanish to a real test.  With a few long pauses to process his sentences, I was able to communicate what I wanted, when I wanted to go, and that I would be alone.  He tried to radio a few guides and told me to come back in an hour.  When I came back he said that there had been “mucho lluvia” (a lot of rain) in the mountains, and that the guides couldn’t take anyone in for the next several days.  I suspected that because I was by myself, the guides didn’t want to go to the trouble of doing a trip with only one paying customer, but either way, I wasn’t going to see the big rock art galleries for the next week or so.  I headed south in search of Agua Verde.

Agua Verde

The road to Agua Verde drops down out of the Sierra de Giganta in twisted eroding curves.  There had obviously been mucho lluvia here in the not-too-distant past (I thought of a hurricane I remember hitting Baja a few years ago), and the damage had been repaired by men with shovel and picks.  The road was very rough, but certainly passable.  The vegetation became more lush the lower I dropped, set off by the deep windy blue of the Sea of Cortez  below.  At the bottom of the mountains bent sharply at the beach and headed south toward a small fishing village.  I knew that the hot springs were near where the road met the water, so ever more confident in my Spanish, I walked over to a Señora at a small rancho and asked her where I might find it.  I also asked if she wanted money for camping on the beach, and she said yes, a dollar a night would be fine.  (Most remote places in Baja have small ranchos nearby, and the folks who live there usually ask for a small fee for camping.  Whether they actually own the land or not might be a good question, but a few bucks a night is really nothing and builds goodwill.)

                                                                       Road down to Agua Verde

I drove to the beach down the two-track the way she pointed and rounded a corner.  The road dropped down to the beach and followed the bottom of a small cliff…right into the waves.  Or not quite.  It was low tide, and by splashing through shallow pools, a truck could bounce its way around.  Fortunately, I had arrived near low tide.  From the watermarks and the sealife, I could see that at high tide, the “road” would be submerged.

Road to hot spring at rising tide

There were a few gringos camped at the couple of beaches on the other side.  They looked to be folks who came down to Baja and stayed for months.   I met most of them in the hot spring over the next 5 days that I spent there.  The hot spring was the strangest I had ever seen.  At high tide, the pools were completely submerged by the sea.  Fish and crabs swum about in the rings of rocks under the waves.  After the tide retreated, the salt water was slowly flushed out of the pools, replaced by hot fresh water.  The pools were on a spit of rocks which connected a small islet to the mainland.  At the peak of the islet was an osprey nest.  You wait until low tide and then sit in the pools as the tide advances.  Several times, I only left the pool after the sea lapped at the ring of rocks around the pools.  It was magical to sit in the hot pool at sunset, watching ospreys hunting in front of a full moon rising out of the Sea of Cortez.  Then later, through a rising tide, wading back to shore igniting sparks of phosphorescent plankton with each step, mirroring the stars above.  Like walking through the sky.

The location was glorious.  I had the sea at my feet and the Sierra de Giganta at my back.  When the wind blew hard, I took long hikes up into the creases of the Sierra.  When the sea was calm I paddled out across the warm waters to watch birds and crab and fish around the islands.  The plants of the area are much like Arizona, but richer.  Present were the usual triad of Cordon cactus (cousin to Saguaro), ocotillo, and cholla.  But also white barked ironwood and gentle wild figs.  Stumpy elephant tree and blooming smoke tree in the washes.  Plus many cousins of mesquite, straight spined and catclaw.

                                        
       Hot spring at low tide                                                                   Hot spring at high tide

The sea was even thicker with life.  I walked down beaches and climbed bluffs to watch the seabirds hunt.  When a school of fish was near the surface, the birds would congregate and pick them off.  A trio of birds I didn’t recognize would rise 30 feet into the air and then make like dive bombers, one by one pealing off and spearing into the water after the fish.  I could see the bubble trials penetrating what must have been at least 10 feet into the water.  Then came the pelicans, lower but with much bigger bills.  The gulls would follow, and after the pelicans caught a fish, would scream in their faces and peck at their bills in the hope that the pelican would drop the fish.  The pelicans rarely did, but once I saw a pelican get so irritated with a gull’s pestering that it grabbed the gull’s head with its long beak and spun it completely over.  The gull seemed unharmed but chastened.

I could stay at such a place a month and not get bored, but there was more of Baja on wanted to see on my first trip this far down, so I packed up and headed over to the Pacific side to see the whales.

Whale Breath

Whale breath smells like bay mud, salty and rotting.  When you come upon whales in a kayak, soltero, you hold your own breath.  With not much more than a snort they could put you in the water, or slap you silly.  They are like icebergs.  They breath in the sunshine, but truly exist below.  Where we cannot see, and can only begin to imagine.  In Mexico, I feel a need to speak to the animals in Spanish.  Hola, las ballenas grisas.  Son sympatico?  The only other boats on the lagoon are pangas, 20 foot open-top launches with 75-horse motors.  They carry 8 or 10 paying touristas.  They must think our breath smells like 2-stroke outboard exhaust.

The whales that I saw are shy of the pangas, especially the mother and cub pairs.  The cubs were born about 2 weeks ago, here in this lagoon.  When the pangas approach, the mother and pup take a few breaths and then move underwater a great distance away before surfacing again.  The males are more tolerant, and rise higher out of the water for the cameras anyway.

The pangas come and go and I struggle upwind to explore a panga-free stretch of water.  Chasing whales is not a smart thing to do.  It would be like trying to stare down a grizzly. I feared they have bred into them an instinctual response to being chased in a lagoon like this after being pursued to the brink of extinction last century, although they are almost universally “friendly” unless you get between mother and cub.  Some will approach the pangas and allow people to touch them.  There are so many ballenas here that a paddler only needs to be out on the water.  Without warning a whoosh-plume appears over your shoulder where no whale was a minute ago.  They seem less shy of the kayak, and may not know I am there until I stir the water with paddling, or they are close enough to see me.  The day is warm and cloudy and I don’t cast much of a shadow below the water.  I drift with the wind, far from the pangas.

                                       A barnacle covered male surfaces for a breath

A poof-piff appears downwind.  Twin shapes in the water, large breath small breath.  One barnacled and one jet-black with a tiny dorsal fin.  Mother and cub.  I drift closer.  The cub frolics, turning upside down, one flipper then the other.  The joy of being alive in a world renewed.  It rests its baleen-snout on the mother’s back and she rises out of the water, giving the cub an elevator ride.  It flips off backward, but never strays more than a cub-length away from her.  I am near, but still distant.  I hope that the metal clanking of my rudder can be heard by them so that they are not surprised.  The wind will not take me upon them, but past them.  The mother takes a deep breath and the large form of her spine rises from the water and floats.  The baleens and the fluke stay submerged.  I can see most of her back, spotted in yellow patches with barnacles.  The mother doesn’t breath.  The cub disappears for a half minute, takes a quick breath, disappears again.  Repeats.  The mother arches her back and still does not breath though the cub continues diving.  After 4 or 5 dives by the cub, the mother takes a breath and the frolicking starts again, more energetic.  The cub was nursing.  Too cool.  Before that moment, I thought there was only one thing I really needed to see before I pass on:  a mountain lion in the wilderness.  And now I have experienced the second before I realized it was something I needed to see.  I feel like I am invading their intimacy, and I have drifted from them, so I start paddling away.  The mother immediately pokes her baleen-snout from the water to expose her eye and give me a once-over.  She slowly leads the cub away, but not in the long run that I saw happen with the pangas fulla peoples.  That is all the whaling that this man needs for a day.

A weeks-old whale cub frolics on its mother's back

I paddle over to the barrier island and set off across it on foot, still spinning from the cub nursing.  After miles of dunes I come to the open Pacific.  What a scary world this must be for the cubs when they are finally led from the shallow lagoons.  There is a beached shrimp trawler some ways up the shore.  I walk to it, and find it stripped and abandoned to the surf.  Unfortunately, the crab and beach roaches cannot clean its bones white like they might a beached whale.  Half-fiberglass, it will rot here for a century.  On the sand, under its already-obliterated name, I write with the toe of my sandal the score for the day “Humans –1;  Whales +1 --> the right direction.”

(I am aware that whale mothers and offspring are correctly called cow and calf, but I cannot equate what I saw in the lagoon with the man-bred stonestupid things we run on our range land.)

Over the Giganta

After a few days with the whales, the cold and damp Pacific air started to chill me.  I got out the maps and found a route back to the Sea of Cortez  that would take me through small mission towns way off the beaten track.

                                             
An huge oven used for purposes                                     Palo Verde tree in the lush Baja desert
                      unknown

Think of the worst roads you have ever driven on.  Rutted and cobbled and jarring.  Cut by washes and twisting through a dry landscape.  Imagine many relentless miles of such routes.  These are the main roads in the Sierra de Giganta.  What’s worse, every year there is a road race, the Baja 1000, that follows some of these roads in its course.  So not only are the roads bad to start with, but they are torn all to hell by gringos racing through at high speeds.  Dotted along these roads, and redeeming them, are small forgotten mission villages.  At the center of each is a church built some 400 years ago, which places them among the oldest buildings on the continent still in use.  The villages are built near reliable water and they are cool palm oases after many miles of sun and dust.  Little creeks trickle and the fronds rustle in breezes.  Children play and cows graze contentedly.  Life there changes very slowly, it seems.  In the US, people are proud of living “off the grid”.  In these mission towns, the grid is a distant humming that cannot be heard, and may never be.  Mexico has instituted a program of providing towns such as these with solar electricity.  Some of the houses have little solar panels which could only provide electricity for lights at night and maybe a radio.

400 year old church at San Javier

Some have tiny café’s where travelers can sit a while and drink a warm cervesa and maybe be served lunch.  The café’s are just the porch of a house that happens to be near the main road through town.  It was in one of these that I ate goat meat for the first time, in a hand-made tortilla, fried with onions and peppers.  Mmmm, I can still taste it.

After a few days exploring the towns and canyons of the Sierra de Giganta, I landed back on the Sea of Cortez, where I would spend the last weekend of my trip.

Neighbors and Royalty

I walked down the shoreline of the Sea of Cortez at the start of a day’s hike.  As I rounded a point, a woman paddled ashore in her whitewater kayak.  I had met her and her boyfriend the day before when I arrived.  After chatting with them, I had given them their privacy on that beach and drove around to the one where I camped.  He was probably early 30ies, tanned with a good start at a beer belly.  She was at least 5 years younger.  They had been in Baja for the last 2 months.  She pulled her kayak up the beach and met me as I passed.
 “Hola,” I said.
 “Hi, looks like you are off on a hike,” she asked.
 “Yeah, it’s a little windy for me to be out.  How is it out there?”
 “Big swells getting bigger.”
 “Uh huh.  Are you and your boyfriend river guides?”  I asked.  I could see their Utah license plate.
 “No, neither of us.  He’s the real river runner.  I’ve only done two so far.  Do you kayak?”
 “I have a sea kayak.  Whitewater’s more of an adrenaline sport.  I like to look around as I paddle.”
 “Me too.  My boyfriend is the adrenaline junkie.”  She bent to pull her neoprene spray skirt off.  Her shorts were pulled down along with it.  The first hairs below her navel were exposed.  She looked down and brushed sand of her belly.  She left the shorts where they stood, so to speak.
 “Uh huh,” I said, my eyes wandering momentarily.  “Was that your boyfriend I saw paddle south earlier?”
 “Yeah, we are, uh…on a different schedule today.  Where are you going to hike?”
 “Along the water and then maybe inland on the way back.  There’s great stuff anywhere you wander down here.  I like to just go explore.”  I may have been blushing.
 “Me too,” she said.
The exposure of her pubic hairs had somehow made me conscious of whether I was just having a conversation or whether I was flirting.  Plus, the hint of nether regions had also flustered me. Perhaps their trip had worn on these two, I thought. Whatever was going on with the two of them, I wanted no part of it.  Or perhaps there was nothing going on.  I glanced down again.  There was certainly something going on, but maybe in my own head.
 “What’s your name?”  She asked after I didn’t say anything.
 “Chris.”  I offered.
 “Mine’s Danelle.”  She stuck out her hand.  It was cool to the touch.  I subtracted a few years from my guess at her age.
 “And your boyfriend?”
 “Oh, he’s Kenny.”  She said.
Ken-ee?  Not Ken, not Kenneth, but Ken-ee.  I stifled a smile.  The thought of someone speaking of me as ‘Chrissy’ came to mine.  “Well, I better get going…”
 “Have a nice hike.”  She paused.  “Stop by on your way back, if you want.”
 “Uh huh, have a nice day,” I said and turned to go.  I shook my head a little as I walked away and wondered if that had just happened.  After twenty or so more steps, I turned my head to look back in confirmation of reality.  She was still standing where we had talked, watching me go.  She saw me look back and she waved, as if she were waiting for me to do just that.  No pillar of salt, I continued down the beach.

                                                                                                               Boojum cactus

When I returned from my hike, there was a new sailboat anchored in the bay, a trimaran.  I squinted to read the name.  “Hagar” it said in large red letters arched on the side of the boat.  Could it be the Red Rocker himself?  One of the newest additions to the ever-growing clan of ex-Van Halen frontmen?  Somebody was certainly trying to advertise themselves by putting the name of the boat on the side instead of the traditional stern.  Sammy Hagar also owns a gringo bar down in Cabo San Lucas, so sailing up here, just north of Loreto, wouldn’t be out of the question.

With visions of frolicking young groupies I sat down with the binoculars to give the boat a closer look.  Alas, the deck was deserted.  Perhaps sleeping off tequila hangovers, I thought.  There was no home port stenciled anywhere that I could see.  And besides the lettering, nothing else on the boat was red.  That was unlike the Sammy I knew.  Besides, I’d think he’d be a little more creative with the name.  Something red-themed and punny, like “Sailor’s Delight; Cabo San Lucas” or somesuch.  Ah, someone is coming on deck.  I focus in.  It is a man, yes, but he is wearing a white T-shirt with a bikini swimsuit.  He looks middle aged and has gray hair.  Not the blond tresses pulled in a ponytail that I was expecting.  Besides, Sammy’s style is more long flowered swim trunks and a tank top.

And then I notice the name again.  Above the first “A” in Hagar are those two dot thingies from German writing.  What are they called?  Umlauts or something.  Sammy is definitely not an Umlaut kinda guy.  Now that rings a bell.  Isn’t there a comic strip with a name or a character called “Hägar”?  The one with the fat viking guy who is a sort of cross between Homer Simpson and Archie Bunker.  Maybe it’s the cartoonist.  Perhaps he has just drawn the strips for the week, faxed them via satellite phone, and is now ready for a siesta?  Do cartoonists have scantily clad groupies?  One way or the other, we have royalty in the harbor, and I am awed.  Besides actors, rock stars and cartoonists (is there a difference?) are the only royalty we can muster in the good ole US of A (or E. U. A. as they say down here).  Maybe I’ll paddle out for some champagne and lobster later on.  Pass the caviar, Sammy!

Feathered Gods

The gods down here are feathered.  We of the Western mindset like our gods to be omniscient.  (I say this not because I know for sure that non-Western thinking is different, but because I am not sure that non-Western thinking is the same.)  As I was saying, we like our gods to be omniscient.  Our heavens are upward somewhere, and seated there is a presence whom we want to see into our hearts.  The true believers actually open their hearts, but mostly we like to think that our gods can peer in one way or the other.  The idea of desire is a very important one, because most of us find it very difficult to believe unless we want to believe.  Forced belief is oppression and slavery (another pillar, it seems, of the Western way).  We want to believe and we want others to believe the same, this is the history we have lived in the West.  Right up there with progress and linear thinking is needing others to believe as we do.  To deny this is to deny our history (linear thinking at work).  We like think we have risen above forcing others to believe as we do (progress at work), but a minute’s consideration of any divisive social or political issue will show different (abortion for example).

So we believe that our gods can see into our heart.  To do this, our gods need some loftiness.  A perch on which to peer and judge.  However, we like to believe that our hearts are on the pure side.   Peer/Pure.  Pure hearts imply a white-feathered observer, noble and righteous, like our hearts.  Right.  Something egalitarian, like say…an eagle.  Or perhaps innocent, like a turtle dove.  No luck out here folks.  In the Baja desert the feathered gods can indeed peer in whether you want them to or not.  There’s not much to hide under.  Oh, sure, there are a few mission chapels to feel safe from their steely gaze, but they are a day’s march apart.  That leaves much time for them to peruse you inner secrets.   Trouble is, your choices here are black and black.

Ocotillos in Baja are more like trees than shrubs

Turkey vultures, who in the US seem aloof and distant, are here as thick as pigeons.  There are plenty of dogs too, but I think I saw way more turkey vultures than canines.  They roost in groups on the beaches next to your camp and they circle close.  “OK, OK,” you say “look at my closest held secrets all you want, just stop sitting on the cactus like that staring at me!”  Anonymity in the desert is as scarce as fresh water.  It’s share and share alike out here.  The puddle you lap is lapped next by the coyote and then bathed in by the gray cooing mourning dove.  Lay it bare, the cholla says, because if you don’t we’ll stick you to get a taste anyway.  I can just see that red hooded beast neck deep in me tugging and twisting at the morsel that was grown by hurting a friend out of self aggrandizement.  And where the vultures leave off, the ravens take over.  The ravens are more the highway patrol of the feathered god world.  The vultures circle and check, circle and check, but the ravens court you, engage you in conversation.  “Krock! Krock! Krock!  May I see your disregard for others card and your inconsideregistration please?”  No!  I gave the army guy at the military checkpoint a pepsi in the heat of the day, will that clear me?

And you don’t EVEN want to hope for something white, like a seagull.  He’ll circle in, screaming in your face.  “What?  What?  What?  What do we have here?”  They are heartless scavengers, stealing even from the vultures.  The want to be first in line to see your purported purity.  They will grab it and run, fighting over it in flight, and then disembowel it later, picking through for the really juicy parts.  Mmmmm, hypocrisy, the fattest little morsel of all.  Goes down sloppy in one gulp.  Any more of that in there?  Sure there is!

Seems heartless, but after a few days walking in the hot sun, it makes all the sense in the world.  Get it out there, strip it bare.  Let them have it.  Let it get eaten before it gets ripe and rots.  Something should eat it so it doesn’t stink up your life.  Redemption through consumption.  Much better than it hiding inside to fester and grow.  Everyone should go for a walk in the Baja desert once in a while.  Good for the soul.

Click for A Baja Odyssey, a fable I wrote while in Baja