BajaNomad

Escalera California

Osprey - 6-15-2011 at 02:35 PM

Escalera California



Junipero Serra and his followers envisioned a steady stream of Pilgrims disembarking from hundreds of Spanish ships that might brave the angry seas of the Raging Fifties , guided by the fires of Tierra del Fuego around Cape Horn to follow him and his Indios north to a new land. He would send out his scouts to find green, wet tinajas in a most unforgiving barren place and if they found enough water there he would rest and build a place with and for his Californio heathens and those who he hoped would follow in his footsteps up the prickly rungs of the shaky ladder through the Calida Fornax, the Hot Furnace.

He called them Missions but they were mostly designed as hospitals because he believed the heathens and his followers would need succor from harsh trips like the one he and his rag tag group of pilgrims had suffered. He was building a ladder for tourists from Spain to travel safely north, Escalera California.

Most of those missions have crumbled into dust. What a waste. The ships never came – when the Queen learned none of her explorers found the fabled Cibola, struck cactus, not gold, she lost interest.

Today the beaches of the long, hot land are filling with tourists who also need care for the body and spirit. They come here to heal, to lay down their burdens of the new world – the race, the pace wears them down, fills them with pain and angst and anger and here they can use the warmth and solitude as balm and bandage. They run another kind of daunting gauntlet on the way down; frustrating rigors of waiting, inspections, fees, fines and red tape stand between them and a few days or weeks of life-saving rehabilitation.

Like Father Serra they are wondering if it is worth the trouble, the risk? Now it’s Cibola! The sunsets are golden, even the fish are golden, the silence, the serenity are uniquely golden. Frail and frazzled patients quaff a golden medicine made from the juice of a native lily, Tequila, while they need only present the caregivers with a small plastic card of gold. The miracle elixir clouds and softens memory of new world suffering.

The new Queen has learned about all the gold and now the ships will come. A huge harbor is being built to welcome them, to keep them safe through tropical storms. The harbor will bear the name of a former queen’s first envoy. Cabo Cortez marina will commemorate the adventurer and the fact that the harbor lies near the tip of peninsula. I think Ensenada Tesoro Dorado would have been more apt but that’s just me. By any name you would be wise in future to bring your gold card (Platinum if you got it).

Pescador - 6-17-2011 at 07:03 AM

For years I assumed that settling in the Santa Rosalia area was the safest place I could imagine to settle since the fishing was good but the place looked a little like a bombed out industrial zone. I knew that people would be attracted to the areas of Conception Bay and south to the palm lined streets of Loreto and figured that we were but a entrance point to the beauty of Baja that lay to the south of us. So I would not have to close the door behind me and stay awake at night sweating the "Curse of Development" since the hotels and golf courses could be built in other locales.
But I did not count on the other Gold (the one they dig out of the ground) and in our case that may have a worse effect than a few golf courses and marinas being thrown up to only waste away in a few years. The boys at Boleo are churning up dirt, developing infastructure, and greatly changing the landscape north of Santa Rosalia. Now they are buying houses, renting rooms, buying groceries, filling the watering holes, and greatly making their presence be known.
So maybe it was not the missions that were to happen in a modern day setting, but Cabo with its influx of tourists, Loreto with its Bay development, and Santa Rosalia with its mine.

[Edited on 6-17-2011 by Pescador]

Iflyfish - 6-17-2011 at 07:21 AM

sic transit gloria mundi

I have pondered the perspective of Serra, padre planter of dreams and concluded that he was indeed deluded.

Salud Amigos e Viva Baja!

Iflyfish

woody with a view - 6-17-2011 at 08:42 AM

that 4th paragraph is, in my opinion, one of the best your have produced, Osprey!

well, after the attacking dolphin anyway!:light:

Bajatripper - 6-17-2011 at 12:58 PM

Nice story, but...

Serra never came around the route you describe, the trip across Mexico was much easier. And he certainly didn't want a bunch of pilgrims following him because he came to the new lands to save the souls that were already in situ. Spanish colonists of the era ALWAYS wanted to make the indigenous populations work for them under the encomienda system, which most religious orders opposed since it cut into their own native manpower. And Serra certainly didn't have the means to feed lots of incoming immigrants.

But, perhaps most importantly, Father Serra was real quick to realize that Baja California was indeed Hell on Earth (from a colonist's perspective; it took almost 200 years of trying before a viable colony took root in Baja, at Loreto under the Jesuits (Serra was a Franciscan). Serra spent a grand total of around one year on the peninsula before hauling burro--and everything it could carry--north to today's California (basically looting the Jesuit missions that were operating before their expulsion to finance his trip to San Diego). The only mission in Baja that he had anything to do with the founding of was San Fernando Mission, which was established on his way north (really, he only held a service at the site before moving on).

Although he may be a hero of sorts in California for establishing missions there, IMO Serra was a pussy who didn't have what it took to make it on the peninsula. He was no Jesuit, that's for sure!

Aside from that, nice story.

David K - 6-17-2011 at 01:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bajatripper
Nice story, but...

Serra never came around the route you describe, the trip across Mexico was much easier. And he certainly didn't want a bunch of pilgrims following him because he came to the new lands to save the souls that were already in situ. Spanish colonists of the era ALWAYS wanted to make the indigenous populations work for them under the encomienda system, which most religious orders opposed since it cut into their own native manpower. And Serra certainly didn't have the means to feed lots of incoming immigrants.

But, perhaps most importantly, Father Serra was real quick to realize that Baja California was indeed Hell on Earth (from a colonist's perspective; it took almost 200 years of trying before a viable colony took root in Baja, at Loreto under the Jesuits (Serra was a Franciscan). Serra spent a grand total of around one year on the peninsula before hauling burro--and everything it could carry--north to today's California (basically looting the Jesuit missions that were operating before their expulsion to finance his trip to San Diego). The only mission in Baja that he had anything to do with the founding of was San Fernando Mission, which was established on his way north (really, he only held a service at the site before moving on).

Although he may be a hero of sorts in California for establishing missions there, IMO Serra was a pussy who didn't have what it took to make it on the peninsula. He was no Jesuit, that's for sure!

Aside from that, nice story.


Gee Steve, haven't you heard that a good writer never lets the truth get in the way of telling a good story!

Thanks for the fact check... You are correct from my research, as well. Serra, so I am led to believe from Baja Bucko (Teddi) had the cargo trail built up from Gonzaga Bay to bring supplies to San Fernando Velicata (it bypasses Mision Santa Maria to the north and can be seen from the road we drove last year just east of the peninsular divide).

The Franciscans (or their native workers) also built the better El Camino Real route, out of the canyon below Santa Maria, and kept it up on the rim. Serra and the Jesuits before him had a real problem in the canyon using the Indian trail to get to the mission.

Osprey - 6-17-2011 at 06:12 PM

Thanks for all the nice comments about my little piece about Gold.

Tripper, thanks for setting me straight about Serra and some other things that I got wrong or skewed.

Iflyfish - 6-17-2011 at 09:21 PM

Perception is reality until reality rears its ugly head.

Iflyfishinperpetualwonder.

Iflyfish - 6-17-2011 at 09:27 PM

I Am Waiting
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting for someone
to really discover America
and wail
and I am waiting
for the discovery
Of a new symbolic western frontier
and I am waiting
for the American Eagle
to really spread its wings
and straighten up and fly right
and I am waiting for the Age of Anxiety
to drop dead
and I am waiting
for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe
for anarchy
and I am waiting for the final withering away
of all governments
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the second coming
And I am waiting
For a religious revival
To sweep thru the state of Arizona
And I am waiting
For the grapes of wrath to stored
And I am waiting
For them to prove
That God is really American
And I am waiting
To see God on television
Piped into church altars
If they can find
The right channel
To tune it in on
And I am waiting
for the last supper to be served again
and a strange new appetizer
and I am perpetually awaiting
a rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for my number to be called
and I am waiting
for the Salvation Army to take over
and I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth
without taxes
and I am waiting
for forests and animals
to reclaim the earth as theirs
and I am waiting
for a way to be devised
to destroy all nationalisms
without killing anybody
and I am waiting
for linnets and planets to fall like rain
and I am waiting for lovers and weepers
to lie down together again
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the great divide to be crossed
and I anxiously waiting
For the secret of eternal life to be discovered
By an obscure practitioner
and I am waiting
for the storms of life
to be over
and I am waiting to set sail for happiness
and I am waiting
for a reconstructed Mayflower
to reach America
with its picture story and TV rights
sold in advance to the natives
and I am waiting
for the lost music to sound again
in the Lost Continent
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting for the day
that maketh all things clear
and I am waiting for retribution
for what America did to Tom Sawyer
and I am waiting
for the American Boy
to take off Beauty's clothes
and get on top of her
and I am waiting
for Alice in Wonderland
to retransmit to me
her total dream of innocence
and I am waiting
for Childe Roland to come
to the final darkest tower
and I am waiting for Aphrodite
to grow live arms
at a final disarmament conference
in a new rebirth of wonder

I am waiting
to get some intimations
of immortality
by recollecting my early childhood
and I am waiting
for the green mornings to come again
for some strains of unpremeditated art
to shake my typewriter
and I am waiting to write
the great indelible poem
and I am waiting
for the last long rapture
and I am perpetually waiting
for the fleeting lovers on the Grecian Urn
to catch each other at last
and embrace
and I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Iflyfishatcitylightsoncoldnightsembankedinfogandredwineattosca