BajaNews
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Surveying the Land
http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=e...
By NEIL MORGAN
Monday, Dec. 19, 2005
Flying northward low over the Baja California wilderness in the co-pilot's seat of a small private plane, I listened as my friend the pilot flicked on
his radio.
"This is Aero-Commander niner-three-niner-two Romeo," he said. "Any aircraft over the Baja peninsula please come in."
No voice responded, not even any crackle of static. There was only the smooth easy drone of the engines.
There was no human sign: no village, no road, no boat, no ranch house, no cow; only the Sierra de la Giganta.
Yet the heading along which we traveled is one that is in frequent use between San Diego and the tip of Baja California below La Paz. Especially at
this holiday season, Southern Californians and tourists have been seeking out the smart resorts of Las Cruces at Cabo San Lucas.
Below us was the impenetrable Sierra de la Giganta: mountains and canyons building up in tiers from the Gulf of California in a tight pattern of
increasing height and depth that might have been created by a lunatic devil instead of a god, and put there in a frenzy so that each deeper canyon and
sheerer precipice dwarfs the previous blunder.
The pilot tried again.
"This is niner-three-niner-two Romeo 20 miles southeast of Concepcion Bay. Any aircraft please come in."
No answer.
"Not much traffic today," he said, and replaced the microphone in its bracket.
Off to our right, the Gulf of California shimmered turquoise, with jade green swirls close in to shore where the shallows lie. Across the gulf a
hundred miles, the Mexican mainland rose faint and hazy.
It was from a point south of here, in the village of Loreto, that Franciscan priests set out on foot in 1768 to walk to San Diego and launch the
mission chain from which California grew.
"It's strange," the pilot said. "Over this 800-mile long peninsula you can often see the sea on both sides. Yet there's not a pilot alive who can
resist picking up the radio and looking for company."
Flying southward two days before from San Diego to the Cape San Lucas resorts, we had talked over the radio to a distant voice that grew clearer as
our planes came closer.
Soon we had recognized the voice as that of Abelardo Rodriguez, son of a former Mexican president, who built three resorts on Cabo. Now we talked,
along this lonely route suspended over violent mountain peaks, of the weather, of our families, of marlin fishing, of the resorts and its famous chess
games.
The radio in our plane came suddenly to life. It crackled and a faraway voice with Mexican accent spoke in English.
"Any aircraft over Baja California, can you hear me? This is Mike, in a DC3 departing Scammon's Lagoon for Tijuana." Static drowned out some of his
words.
At my left, our pilot responded quickly, introduced himself and gave our position. Five minutes later, he and Mike were calling each other by first
name, and the Mexican had promised to visit him at his bank in La Jolla.
The canyon of Santa Rosalia's once great copper mines opened up below us, and we gazed down at the isolated village that refused to die. In the 1920s,
this was the world's richest copper mine; but then the veins of copper grew scarcer and scarcer. The French owners abandoned the mines.
When several thousand of the townspeople could not or would not leave, the Mexican government opened the mines again, and a U.S. mining expert went to
Santa Rosalia under the Point Four program, and now smoke was rising again from the copper smelter of Santa Rosalia.
The village faded out of sight and we were over the great flat central desert of Baja California. The swooping arc of Vizcaino Bay, midway the
peninsula on the Pacific side, made the sea look like a massive inland lake, bounded on the outer west by the freakish woodlands of Cedros Island.
Far to the north, as the setting sun from our left purpled the Sierra de San Pedro Martir at our right, little green valleys began to creep up from
the Pacific side of the peninsula. Dry-land farming began around San Quintin, and the subtle tints of the Baja barrenness gave way to greens of
cultivated areas and to earth reds heightened in their intensity by the slant rays of the sunset.
There were more planes in the air now as we drew closer to the border cities. Radio voices grew gradually into a babble. There were more people below,
and the hunger for contact was gone.
In earlier decades, the mysteries of this sparsely peopled peninsula captivated the authors Erle Stanley Gardner and Max Miller. More recently, they
have become the scientific focus of an enlightened management at the Natural History Museum of San Diego, which released the museum from its
century-old provincial research. It made itself -- through change of name, budget and goal -- the natural history museum of the two Californias, Baja
and Alta. It is evidence of the closeness of the land of north and south California, divided only by an arbitrary political border that was drawn to
ensure inclusion of San Diego Bay as American property.
In 1697 Loreto was the capital of both Californias. Now it is a dusty and remote Mexican town deep in the wilderness over which we had been flying.
Mexico gave up Alta California, that part from San Diego northward, in 1848, and a window in the national military academy at Mexico shows a map of
Mexico as she once was, her border snug against that of Oregon. The only revenge of the losers is in the heritage of names the Mexicans gave to
Southern California: names like Azusa, Cucamonga, Malibu, Ojai, and Pismo.
For San Diego, it is a humbling footnote of history to learn that San Diego and Tijuana were separated, long before their existence, by an incidental
clause in the treaty ending the Mexican War in 1848. All that the U.S. negotiators considered significant was the natural harbor of San Diego, then
barely settled. The international border was therefore drawn in a straight line across the desert from the Fort of Yuma to a point just south of San
Diego Bay. Today, the crossing between Tijuana and San Diego ranks as one of the several busiest in the world.
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Bob and Susan
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Azusa was named by local Indians not Mexico...
The Shoshonean Indian, locally known as the Gabrieleno when the area of Azusa was first inhabited by white emigrants and homesteaders.
Their community was known as Asuksa-nga. Supposedly, Azusa was derived from the Indian name.
We used to think Azusa= "Everything from A to Z in the USA..."
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bugdude
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Bob and Susan:
I used to live in the San Gabriel Valley. As you mentioned, I had always heard that Azusa meant "A to Z in the USA" as well. The ethno-historic
etymology is interesting. Thanks for the education.
I believe "Malibu" is derived from the Chumash Indians???
[Edited on 11/12/2005 by bugdude]
A man\'s reach should exceed his grasp - or what\'s a heaven for?
Robert Browning
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Mexray
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I never tire of learning something new...
...here on the Nomad Board...maybe it should be required reading in our schools...
Never mind, too may young'uns would be bugging their folks to jump in the family machine and head south, squeezing us out! 
According to my clock...anytime is \'BAJA TIME\' & as Jimmy Buffett says,
\"It doesn\'t use numbers or moving hands It always just says now...\"
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comitan
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Well the guy didn't do well on spanish names,the only spanish names were Cucamonga, and Ojai. Malibu and Pismo were derived from the Chumash Indian
Names. Azuza as above.
Strive For The Ideal, But Deal With What\'s Real.
Every day is a new day, better than the day before.(from some song)
Lord, Keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.
“The sincere pursuit of truth requires you to entertain the possibility that everything you believe to be true may in fact be false”
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vgabndo
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Mood: Checking-off my bucket list.
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Yeah, I'm not so sure about "dusty and remote towns"
with an international airport either, but the prose was a nice effort. 
Undoubtedly, there are people who cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. Sam Harris
"The situation is far too dire for pessimism."
Bill Kauth
Carl Sagan said, "We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
PEACE, LOVE AND FISH TACOS
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