bajaking76
Nomad
Posts: 143
Registered: 1-12-2011
Location: San Diego, CA
Member Is Offline
Mood: If Baja calls, I am home.
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I forgot to take my meds again....
There I sit, fixated on her...
Up by the door she waits...
She calls my name...
She can be beautiful and she can be treacherous...
I have yet to understand the attraction...
It is in our nature to be explorers...
Yet, I don't know what I am looking for...
Is it the vast expanse of her elongated body...
Her Azure eyes or her warm touch...
The only thing I do know, I don't hesitate to answer...
She is after all a part of us, something deep and ingrained...
The last great conquest...
She is Baja....and for the few brave and willing she waits...
BaJaKiNg
\"That\'s my thing, that\'s what I do\"
\"Gene Police: You!! Out Of The Pool!\"
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DENNIS
Platinum Nomad
Posts: 29510
Registered: 9-2-2006
Location: Punta Banda
Member Is Offline
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Excellente. Thanks.
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wilderone
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3879
Registered: 2-9-2004
Member Is Offline
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makes me smile at those truths
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Osprey
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3694
Registered: 5-23-2004
Location: Baja Ca. Sur
Member Is Offline
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King, good job. You're not the only Nomad who thinks of this place as though it was a woman. I bet many others do too.
Warning Label
When I saw it, when I realized what had got me, what was causing me such incredible pain, I could not believe my eyes. The plant, called mala mujer,
Bad Woman, luxuriant, lovely looking thing, would look at home in the garden or on the patio. My calf barely brushed it as I walked through the desert
near my home. Mala mujer. Perhaps this whole place should carry such a warning label and a new name to match. Maybe this part of Mexico could be
called mujer mysteriosa, Mysterious Woman; a thing that has indescribable beauty while sometimes meting out profound pain and heartbreak.
I have a sense of the place that embraces not just the spiky land but both seas, the sky above, the immeasurable history. A cruel place indeed for
early travelers – their boats dashed and ruined on the rocky shoals, their feet cut and bleeding from the crippling scrapes and gouges of dagger
plants and nettles. No Cibola here – they would gladly have settled for a wet tinaja, a tiny waterhole.
The early ones might have seen her as a woman. Her moods, her give and take, are not subtle. Modern day visitors need time to learn her moods.
They are lulled into false security, feel less threatened than the adventurers, the settlers and explorers. Yesterday a rogue wave snatched a family
of these new tenderfoots from the beach, a few yards from the sybarite’s pleasure palace on the shore at land’s end. Killed them all.
She is often rough and dismissive with fawning, moonstruck pilgrims – they run north before the chafing winds of misadventure with empty purses and
infected bowels. Many suitors will not be put off. Broken axles and bleeding hearts lie in the dust as testimony to their unrequited fidelity. She
killed all the Indians, the ones with the darkest skin. They found the place full of food they could not gather. Once they were isolated the end
came quickly for these early tourists.
La Mujer still holds the power to embrace, to heal. She mellows with age. Now she lets the dark skinned ones live but she makes them work like
dogs. She allows me some latitude; I know many of her secrets and I can avoid her nags and nettles because I am no longer fooled by her deceptive
hues and shapes and textures. I just have to remind myself that in Baja California nothing is what it appears to be.
When they talk about my end, how she took me down, I hope they’ll say, by whatever name they may give her, that she let me go quietly into the night;
full of her beauty and passion, sated, at peace, knowing I had wooed her, held her if only for a very short while. They may say of me that my fate
was sealed when she let me feel that irresistible sweet spot between serenity and danger.
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DanO
Super Nomad
Posts: 1923
Registered: 8-26-2003
Location: Not far from the Pacific
Member Is Offline
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Osprey
King, good job. You're not the only Nomad who thinks of this place as though it was a woman. I bet many others do too.
Warning Label
When I saw it, when I realized what had got me, what was causing me such incredible pain, I could not believe my eyes. The plant, called mala mujer,
Bad Woman, luxuriant, lovely looking thing, would look at home in the garden or on the patio. My calf barely brushed it as I walked through the desert
near my home. Mala mujer. Perhaps this whole place should carry such a warning label and a new name to match. Maybe this part of Mexico could be
called mujer mysteriosa, Mysterious Woman; a thing that has indescribable beauty while sometimes meting out profound pain and heartbreak.
I have a sense of the place that embraces not just the spiky land but both seas, the sky above, the immeasurable history. A cruel place indeed for
early travelers – their boats dashed and ruined on the rocky shoals, their feet cut and bleeding from the crippling scrapes and gouges of dagger
plants and nettles. No Cibola here – they would gladly have settled for a wet tinaja, a tiny waterhole.
The early ones might have seen her as a woman. Her moods, her give and take, are not subtle. Modern day visitors need time to learn her moods.
They are lulled into false security, feel less threatened than the adventurers, the settlers and explorers. Yesterday a rogue wave snatched a family
of these new tenderfoots from the beach, a few yards from the sybarite’s pleasure palace on the shore at land’s end. Killed them all.
She is often rough and dismissive with fawning, moonstruck pilgrims – they run north before the chafing winds of misadventure with empty purses and
infected bowels. Many suitors will not be put off. Broken axles and bleeding hearts lie in the dust as testimony to their unrequited fidelity. She
killed all the Indians, the ones with the darkest skin. They found the place full of food they could not gather. Once they were isolated the end
came quickly for these early tourists.
La Mujer still holds the power to embrace, to heal. She mellows with age. Now she lets the dark skinned ones live but she makes them work like
dogs. She allows me some latitude; I know many of her secrets and I can avoid her nags and nettles because I am no longer fooled by her deceptive
hues and shapes and textures. I just have to remind myself that in Baja California nothing is what it appears to be.
When they talk about my end, how she took me down, I hope they’ll say, by whatever name they may give her, that she let me go quietly into the night;
full of her beauty and passion, sated, at peace, knowing I had wooed her, held her if only for a very short while. They may say of me that my fate
was sealed when she let me feel that irresistible sweet spot between serenity and danger. |
Damn, George. My work day is now shot to hell. If I'm lucky, I might be productive for another minute or two. Thanks a lot.
\"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.\" -- Frank Zappa
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baitcast
Super Nomad
Posts: 1785
Registered: 8-31-2003
Location: kingman AZ.
Member Is Offline
Mood: good
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From the very beginning it was the fishing and water that lured me south but after a time I realized there was far more,the people the land roads to
nowhere,the feeling of exploring,I was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition,I knew what Daniel Boone must have felt like
After a few trips I could not get Baja out of my mind,and so it went for many years,the siren call,you both told me many of the things
I haven,t thought of for years.
Thank you.
Rob
Anyone can catch fish in a boat but only \"El Pescador Grande\" can get them from the beach.
I hope when my time comes the old man will let me bring my rod and the water will be warm and clear.
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shari
Select Nomad
Posts: 13049
Registered: 3-10-2006
Location: bahia asuncion, baja sur
Member Is Offline
Mood: there is no reality except the one contained within us "Herman Hesse"
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bajaking...great stuff...you should forget to take your meds more often!!!
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bajalera
Super Nomad
Posts: 1875
Registered: 10-15-2003
Location: Santa Maria CA
Member Is Offline
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And here I've always thought of her as a he. Sheesh!
\"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest never happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.\" -
Mark Twain
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BigOly
Senior Nomad
Posts: 524
Registered: 10-1-2010
Location: Los Barriles, Bandon
Member Is Offline
Mood: Easy Birder
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Bajaking, they say a picture can be worth a thousand words. Your words create a thousand pictures for me. Thank you!
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Iflyfish
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3747
Registered: 10-17-2006
Member Is Offline
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Amazing writing both on and off your respective meds! Haunting! We are blessed to have such wonderful writers here who can express what we only sense
is there. Thanks.
Iflyfishinawesometimes!
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Marc
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 2802
Registered: 5-15-2010
Location: San Francisco & Palm Springs
Member Is Offline
Mood: Waiting
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John Steinbeck couldn't have done better!
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Pappy Jon
Nomad
Posts: 494
Registered: 8-27-2003
Location: Wrong side of the Continental divide.
Member Is Offline
Mood: Temp rising.
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Oh my. I really needed that ... and didn't. Count down until two weeks on the peninsula. How the heck am I now going to be productive in the last few
weeks before I leave?
[print] [Post above desk]
sigh
"The association of flowers and warm-blooded love is more than a romantic convention; it is based upon one of the great advances in the evolution
of life." Ed Abbey
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