Santiago
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Life for a Life by Mike Humfreville
Since Mike Humfreville died in 2006, I have been posting one of his stories each October as a small memento. While digging through my very small
wine collection, I ran across my last bottle of Granite Springs 2004 Estate Bottled Zinfandel. This is the last of a case that I bought in 2006,
taking a bottle to Mike in early October of 2006. After dining at his and MaryAnn’s place that night, they stopped by our place in Gecko the next
morning as we were packing to leave. “I had a sip of that wine last night”, he said, “and it was very substantial”. I don’t know crap about wine and I
have no clue if Mike did; but he took the time to stop by my place and thank me. Last I saw of him.
Each year in late October, I open a bottle, pour a couple of big glasses, go on Fred’s site and pick a story to post. Inexplicably, this year I
forgot. Better late than never.
Life for a Life by Mike Humfreville
There are many places we have gone clamming along Baja, but there is one beach we frequent in Bahia de Los Angeles that is my favorite. Our little
patch of sand and stone is near a place we have lived across summers and the clams there are tiny and tasty. I'm told they're called butter clams.
They're about an inch across or a little bigger. Our niche is so filled with clams that you need no scoop of other tools, just a small bucket. We sift
with our naked hands through the shore at the appropriate level and they pop up, brown and tan and glistening in the shallow water and we are careful
to take them conservatively.
On this morning our son Kevin and his friend Carly are with us. We mine clams for 20 minutes and have almost enough. Mary Ann and Deb and Brendan
continue their search. Kevin and Carly are looking through the shallows of a small lagoon. The tide is going out, draining the tiny basin.
"Octopus!" Kevin calls. We all go over to investigate. He's just a baby, maybe 12 inches long and, worried about all the legs he sees gathering around
him, he cowers on the tiny stones, blending in. There were two large rocks a few feet away that he could see but not reach for cover. He was afraid,
I'm sure. But all we wanted was his picture and Carly maneuvered her camera to avoid the midday light reflecting off the shallows. This took her
several minutes.
There was a family nearby, locals from the nearby village, and they saw us gathered there, a hundred yards away, could hear our commotion. Several
young children came running to see what we were doing. I told them we were observing a young pulpo in the shallow water.
"Look," he said in Spanish, holding open a thick burlap sack for us to peer into. "Otro pulpo." Inside was another octopus, the same size as ours,
dead. He indicates that he wants ours, now hiding under the rock of his attention.
I tell the boy that this is our octopus, but he and the other children are persistent and soon are calling to their father and mother to come and get
the beast. We gringos are confused by this brash confrontation. We don't want the octopus to die, we just wanted to observe and let go.
It was a tense moment. The children wanted him for dinner, I suppose. For us he was entertainment. The boy's father was hanging back but working in
our direction. I didn't know what to do but the situation needed managing somehow, before things got confrontational. The children were not buying
into my story that this was OUR animal as we had found it.
I ran to the car and grabbed the net we used to bring in larger fish on our boat. We had brought it in case the tide permitted crabbing. We swept up
the small octopus in the net and ran out of the lagoonmouth, across a small gravel rise and into the open gulf. The octopus, not having a clue, was
slinking out of the net. We slowed several times to get him back inside. We reached the open water and lowered the net below the surface. The children
were right behind us. I just wanted the poor baby beast to let go the net and make for deeper water.
Finally, we got him out; he settled, confused, on the stones in about three feet of water. But he was afraid and wasn't moving. Soon the children are
upon us and circling, a circle within our circle. I knew they wanted to kill him. I told them that they already had an octopus. This one was ours.
"What will you do with him?" They asked.
"We just want to watch him." I said, realizing how silly that sounded to someone who had lived here their short lives and needed, only knew the
octopus as food. All the while the father of the children was hovering nearby.
We all just looked at each other. The dialog stopped and we simply made eye contact. The children had this quizzical, mystified look. The rest of us
didn't know how to resolve the conflict. Was it reasonable to protect the beast when a family was hungry? We were in their land, not our own. We
wanted to let the baby go. They wanted to eat it.
In the end we left the children and the octopus and walked away, back to the truck and left. I don't know that they captured the octopus, but I can't
imagine that they didn't. On the way back to camp we were quiet for a time in the truck.
It did occur to me that the local family was going to have octopus for dinner over the next day or two. Two lives, perhaps, lost from this Earth. We,
on the other hand, would be dining on clams, a much smaller animal. Our meal would require the taking of many more lives then theirs. At twenty years
I would never have thought like that. But at sixty, your thinking gets re-wired and you know that everything is expendable and when one life is gone
the world is changed forever and it really does matter. Bummer.
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tripledigitken
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Thank you for posting. It reminds me how much I miss Mike's posts.
Ken
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Marc
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Thanks. I loved his stories on Fred's site. Is he buried in the cemetery in BOLA?
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toneart
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Mike is a person whom I wish I had known. His writing speaks to me and presents the human condition, which is rarely an easy state of being. Mike's
accounting here does provoke the conscience; what would I do?
There is a loving act of kindness: to assist and release a wonderful creature in distress back to its habitat where it can survive and live for
another day.
There is a local family who see the creature as food. They want it. It will surely meet it's demise. Two points of view. A culture clash.
Mike reminds us that there is little difference between his family digging clams for food, and the local family feeling entitled to the Octopus for
food.
I fish for food. I occasionally dig for clams. Some hunt for food. Then there are those who hoard, or take more fish or game than is needed, just for
sport. That bothers me. Why?
The story about the octopus, frightened, cowed and resigned to helplessness bothers me. Why?
Mike's story offers no judgment. The circumstance is what it is. I think we all can act according to our own conscience and do what is right for
ourselves. Others may do differently. The struggle is: what is right for the Universe? Does it matter?
If we can act according to our beliefs and at the same time suspend judgment in regards to others actions, then the circumstance will be resolved the
way it was destined to be. That sounds quite passive. Is that a cop out? is that the line of least resistance? Where do we draw the line of principle?
Do we act or do we accede?
Would it be helpful to know where you stand ethically, in advance so that we don't blindly react in an awkward situation, potentially causing
an uncomfortable verbal or possibly even a physical confrontation?
Life is full of challenges. I prefer to think about these things without being cast in concrete judgment. In order to do this, I have to trust my
inner conscience and principles to serve the situation as it arises, and know that I will do the right thing.
And just what is "the right thing"? I don't know now but I will know it when confronts me.
Thank you Mike. Thank you Santiago.
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David K
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Marc
Thanks. I loved his stories on Fred's site. Is he buried in the cemetery in BOLA? |
Yes, with a view of the bay...
We miss him very much... this photo was taken in November, 2006 not long after he passed.
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David K
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Happier times...
October 2005, we visited Mike and Mary Ann at their new Bahia home... It was a special nice time!
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krafty
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just wow-wonderful story we should all be mindful of-as was yours, Toneart-thanks for that-how would we go about reading more of Mike's Baja missives?
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Bob H
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Thanks for posting his stories. Mike was one heck of a guy. Honest, sincere and a wonderful person. He loved his family first, his dog(s) second
and I do not know where his love of Baja fit in there. I remember sitting around a campfire at Neuvo Mazatlan beach just south of San Felipe (back in
2004 I think), he was telling stories and asking questions. I will remember great conversations with him that night, and during our exploration of
Matomi Falls the following day. He is missed by many people, I'm sure.
Always loved reading his posts.
Bob H
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luckyman
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thanks for posting that story...mike sounds like a neat guy. pretty neat that his writings continue to live on and that you take the time to share
them with us.
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Santiago
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| Quote: | Originally posted by krafty
just wow-wonderful story we should all be mindful of-as was yours, Toneart-thanks for that-how would we go about reading more of Mike's Baja missives?
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Fred Metcalf has quite a few of them here.
In addition, I have a copy of the story of his first solo travel down Baja as a young man in the 60's; here is the first page - if any one wants all
36 pages, U2U me your e-mail address and I will send them to you in a pdf file. By the way, I gave Mike a case of Two-Buck-Chuck for this file and
he remarked it was his first payment for any of his stories. I'm not sure, but I believe Mike posted the entire story in installments on the old
Amigos Board - anyone remember this? BTW: this story is required reading for any newbie I take to Baja - I send them the file a week before we go
with instructions to read it or else they can't go. It really fires their imaginations and gives them a feel of how it was before the pavement.
Epifanio Ybarra by Mike Humfreville
Major Bruce
If I had had any idea of the impact Baja California was to have on me over my lifetime I probably would have treated her with greater respect during
the early years of our relationship, the courtship years. But I had no expectation of our mutual futures, the dangers, the fears, loves, and threats,
the warm moments that I would come to find in Baja over my lifetime. You never know where a budding friendship will lead.
My first trip to the interior was in the 1960’s. It began with a roommate, Bruce Scott. Bruce’s friends called him Major Bruce after a traffic
helicopter pilot in the LA basin during those years. Major Bruce was an educated, literate guy I had been rooming with since I was discharged from
the Marines and he was discharged from Arizona State University with his degree in history in the early sixties. Major Bruce liked to read and he
liked school but he didn’t really care about being tied to a full-time permanent job or about climbing anyone else’s ladder. Major Bruce liked to sit
and read. In fact he liked to sit and read so much that we had to rotate the cushions on our couch every month so they didn’t go flat where he always
sat. Major Bruce also owned a 1960ish Volkswagen Bug. I didn’t know it then, but Major Bruce had in his possession the perfect vehicle for Baja
California before they paved it.
At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Southern California, I was doing low-end computer operations stuff on second shift, number crunching spacecraft
telemetry and ephemeris for Ted Pavlovich, the world’s first computer programmer. I worked with a couple of guys, Vern Williams and Bud Kiesow, who
had done some of the original stunts for a parachuting TV series out of the ‘60’s called "Ripcord." Vern and Bud had been to parts of the Baja
peninsula and had returned with some stories just built for my ears: Baja was tropical and subtropical in its flora and fauna; it was green and lush
in some parts, it had dramatic mountains, inland deserts, thousands of miles of coastline (as any fool could see from a map). It was unexplored and
just beckoning for my attentions, according to my pals Vern and Bud. These guys were responsible for my first interests in the heart of Baja. The
images they painted of hidden hanging valleys, of thousands of miles of dirt roads filled with rocks the size of houses, of remote places taking weeks
to reach, of fly-in resorts in isolated places, and of a lost mission. All these began to work on my romantic side.
A year later, still working, I was progressing at The Lab and had a group of computer programmers and technical personnel in a facility that supported
the processing of spacecraft telemetry (the science and engineering information that is downlinked from the spacecraft to earth). In those years it
was mostly lunar stuff, some planetary fly-byes, and trying to do a soft landing on the moon rather than crash into its surface at 18,000 MPH. I was
sinking into that black hole of work that demands everything and coils around your other interests like a python. I needed an escape. I had worked
two or three years straight, climbing the ladder I had been taught to avoid. I needed a break. Baja beckoned.
I approached Major Bruce about taking a trip, perhaps to Baja, in his Volkswagen bug as my MG was out of the question. My MG was shiny and had new
paint and was too low, anyway, for dirt roads. After we’d turned the couch cushions a couple of times, we agreed to discuss it further and do a
little research. The research seemed reasonable as we were considering entering the heart of the mysterious and dark Baja. We broke out an Auto Club
map of the peninsula and began to stare at the dots of towns that populated every inch or so of the single black line that represented a worn and
eroded dirt road and traversed the entire mysterious land. How bad could the road be? How far could it be between dots representing towns or cities?
How extreme could the weather be? How hostile the people? Our research consisted of analyzing the problems we might experience on the trip.
Answering the questions raised by the analysis was not to be included in our plan. Being thus prepared we decided this was definitely in the cards
and set a date for our adventure.
Of the two of us, Major Bruce was free and clear. He didn’t need to ask anyone’s permission, make excuses, apologize or perform any other rights of
exit. He just packed his duffel bag with a few clothes and a book or two and was ready.
I was busy saying goodbye, excusing myself, calling in sick, scheduling vacation, buying emergency supplies and signing my last will and testament.
If Banana Republic had been in business, back then, I would have been a shareholder. I bought food supplies of dried milk and canned tamales, gallon
bottles of water for drinking, 5-gallon jerry cans of water for the radiator (the VW was air cooled of course!).
We packed, evaluated our needs, I added more stuff, we re-evaluated and saw the VW bottomed-out on it’s springs. I removed several thousand of the
emergency goods I’d contributed. We left Major Bruce’s single bag untouched. We left Southern California heading even further south, toward our
border with Mexico on the western edge of the United States. We were undertaking an adventure to explore unknown lands. Two hours later we found
ourselves in Tijuana, Mexico.
[Edited on 12-22-2010 by Santiago]
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David K
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July 4, 2001 Las Flores
One of my favorite photos I took of Mike...
He has a piece of a cholla cactus and examins it with such intensity here... as it to design a mars lander from it...
[Edited on 12-22-2010 by David K]
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