BajaNomad

Looking at OUR Baja

Baja Bernie - 4-29-2011 at 07:35 PM

Most of my post here have been simple attempts, on my part, to share the Baja I have known over the past 45 years….Those memories have never been clouded or ruled by the laws of man but much more often by the common sense of the Mexican people and their guests.

Over the years many of us have chosen to place our hearts in Baja for assorted reasons. Some we understood but others we can only marvel. One of the overriding reasons, I believe, is/was the desire to escape the cluttered and highly regimented life in the United States. A place where common sense no longer prevails and one that is ‘ruled’ by judges and attorney’s—I didn’t mention politicians because saying that would be redundant.

Many recent threads have convinced me more than anything else that the end of a naïve and simple era is over, done, and for all purposes gone. I am must thankful that so many of us have been allowed to experience the simple pleasures of Baja and its wonderful people. That we were allowed to wander around this paradise at will—stopping to savor its quietude, the hot winds of her deserts, the sun and waves of her seashores. The hurricanes that thunder ashore around the Cape, the bounty of the Sea of Cortez and so much more.

We have been allowed to sip of a culture that has taught many of us that time really has no meaning unless it is spent with friends or its passing has added to our understanding and enjoyment of life. We were blessed to see a blending of the two cultures and the emergence of a third that somehow is more than the sum of the two.

I understand—but do not appreciate the fact that many of us ‘visitors’ do not feel comfortable without our definitive laws and rules that control most of the functions of our lives. Those very things that have driven many of us into her arms are now engulfing Baja and changing her forever! Her simple and free pleasures are, more and more, forced to conform to a more orderly society where folks require the security of the much more complex society that we had thought to leave behind us as we escaped to Baja.

I am sure that one day soon the lovely towns and villages of Baja will mirror such cities as Tijuana, Cancun, or Acapulco where the free life of the individual is sacrificed for the ‘good’ of the many. These changes will end up swallowing up those folks who would ‘march to a different drummer’—or in the case of some—dance to a piccolo player.

Watching my footprints being washed away by the tide has always been a magical moment for me and I just hope that my passing will be washed out to sea as were my footprints in the sand—rather than being held captive in a slab of concrete.

Yes! I know that ‘progress’ is good—but losing the freedom to roam around mi Baja is not progress and may not be so judged by anyone’s standards.

Bernie Swaim—August 2007

No, no! I am going nowhere—yet.

I should tell you that I have made 6 trips into Baja so far this year and do not plan on stopping until the waves wash my foot prints out to sea.

Mike99km - 4-30-2011 at 08:58 AM

Berry I forgot you wrote that, that does sum it up well.
MMc

BajaBlanca - 4-30-2011 at 09:04 AM

really nice read Bernie - and I agree that the sum of both cultures creates a fuller 3rd one.

Osprey - 4-30-2011 at 05:50 PM

Benny, I'm confused. Four years ago you told us with this old post that the Baja you knew and loved was lost forever (you hinted for all of us).

Now in your more senior thoughts you just had to tell us again but just didn't have the juice to say all that again so you just ran the old piece to remind us we all got here too late. Do I have that right? How about a brand new piece with real feelings for today's world (and complete sentences).

Those of us still alive and moving around and thrilled to be here, to visit here, RIGHT NOW, might be offended by your two in a row approach to misplaced sentimentality.

805gregg - 4-30-2011 at 06:37 PM

I had the exact same feeling when I was in Baja in 2007, and after 48 years of Baja travel, I understand the need for Mexicans to progress but some of the side effects are not worth the the progress. I've consoled myself that the early 60's Northern Baja I knew and the 1973 Cabo I saw will never be the same. But thankfully the memories will always remain, I know I didn't miss the great Baja I was there. To me now it's like a shadow of it's fomer glory. Too bad I'm off to Fiji and NZ next. You have to look ahead.

[Edited on 5-1-2011 by 805gregg]

Eugenio - 4-30-2011 at 08:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Osprey
Benny, I'm confused. Four years ago you told us with this old post that the Baja you knew and loved was lost forever (you hinted for all of us).

Now in your more senior thoughts you just had to tell us again but just didn't have the juice to say all that again so you just ran the old piece to remind us we all got here too late. Do I have that right? How about a brand new piece with real feelings for today's world (and complete sentences).

Those of us still alive and moving around and thrilled to be here, to visit here, RIGHT NOW, might be offended by your two in a row approach to misplaced sentimentality.


Osprey - actually YOUR post offends me. You're obviously articulate enough to express an opposing view with courtesy and dignity - and you chose not .

Bernie - ignore this guy. Repeat away if that's what pleases you.

Roberto - 4-30-2011 at 08:46 PM

I am sick and f'in tired of hearing "baja veterans" criticize places that I would be willing to bet they know nothing about - like Tijuana. There are plenty of wonderful people and places and things to do and culture and ... in Tijuana. Get a clue, or STFU. All this is elitism. Bunch of rich guys driving by and thinking "oh my, can you believe how these people live?". And then where do you go in the "good Baja"?

Packoderm - 4-30-2011 at 09:35 PM

I think if it is from the heart, it is good. This one, even if it may or may not be re-posted, seems to be from the heart. While there is nothing "wrong" with Sacramento or even San Francisco, I would hate to see, say, Fiddletown or Bodega Bay resemble either of these cities more than need really be. I think that is what Bernie is alluding to. The sentence fragments, to me, are used for effect. All in all, you can't attempt to get rich without selling your soul, and that's what's happening all around us, and many in Baja do not seem to care to be spared of this. I believe the biggest bringer of this kind of change was the advent of the automobile, the telephone, and TV. Before those things, Baja was really Baja.

Oh, if Steinbeck's "The Pearl" is any indicator, Baja wasn't any more perfect back then than it is now.

[Edited on 5/1/2011 by Packoderm]

Eugeno

Baja Bernie - 5-1-2011 at 08:39 PM

Thanks...I have been ignoring them for several years and will continue to do so!

What I write is always from my heart even if some think it is not correct.

I try to write like most of us talk and have never listened to the high 'Priests' who spell out the rules for all of of us folks who attempt to write ( or is that right).

Oh! Well, we continue to wander, happily, around Baja and will continue to do so unitl we have no breath left.

We do leave Tijuana to the more hearty and reckless folks. I don't wander around most of Los Angles for the same reasons I bypass TJ

Regards to almost all of my fellow Nomads.

Skipjack Joe - 5-2-2011 at 11:31 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Baja Bernie

Many recent threads have convinced me more than anything else that the end of a naïve and simple era is over, done, and for all purposes gone.



I feel like that very often about baja. That the old baja is gone. But then I read ursidae's trip and realize that it's still there. It just takes more effort to find it. You can't just pull up to Pt. Escondido, lay out your belongings, and be in heaven. Now it takes maps and will power to find 'old baja'.

DENNIS - 5-2-2011 at 11:58 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Skipjack Joe
I feel like that very often about baja. That the old baja is gone.


If you were there, it's never gone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6oHxq77_MI

bajalera - 5-2-2011 at 09:10 PM

I'll second that, Dennis.

Skipjack Joe - 5-3-2011 at 04:02 AM

Yes, that's well put, Dennis.

Eli - 5-3-2011 at 05:54 PM

Ditto from me, well said Dennis.

drarroyo - 5-3-2011 at 05:57 PM

yaaawn

DENNIS - 5-3-2011 at 05:59 PM

Thanks. Nice to see at least some of us can remember more than three weeks back. Just have to spend a bit more time these days untangleing memory from imagination.
Oh well....it's all good. :lol: