Osprey
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3694
Registered: 5-23-2004
Location: Baja Ca. Sur
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Disney South
Disney South
I’m not well traveled but the concept of time and place came clear to me before I grew to manhood. When we travel, we are slave to happenstance. To
make my point I’ll conjure up a couple of guys with similar dispositions who have both been to Chicago but only once.
The first guy goes in April for the nice spring weather but has a bad auto accident in a blinding rainstorm, sprains his wrist, breaks his collarbone,
has a lot of grief over the car damage. Second day there his mother in Boston dies and he can’t get home for the funeral. He hates Chicago and won’t
never, ever go back.
Second guy goes in May to interview a famed authoress visiting from Russia. She is a charmer and he tours all of Chicago’s attractions with her and
her aide. They fall in love, later meet at his home in Santa Fe and are still happily married years later. They both love Chicago.
Which brings us to the rough and rugged peninsula of Baja California. I traveled the length and width of the place, now and then from 1969 till 1995
until I retired here full time (I have not been back to the U.S.). Like Chicago, Baja is “How you find it” if you’re just there for a short visit, if
you’re just passing through.
Like me, many of you have, in your home libraries, books written by famous Baja explorers – you’ve read many colorful accounts of the challenges the
land held out for very early travelers. You’ve enjoyed page upon page of descriptions of rock and sand and scrub, things that can kill you, scare you
silly, sprain your wrist, break your collarbone, your will and your heart.
The journals in books and on the internet give us vast and detailed descriptions of the rigors of the place by famous authors, naturalists and others
such as Baegert, Ten Kate, Steinbeck, Gardner, Crosby, Kutch, Pepper, Hanc-ck and many more. Those adventurers/authors paint the place closer to hell
than heaven.
I’ve traipsed and Jeeped through the Laguna mountains, the Gigantes but I missed the rough and rugged San Franciscos. Mr. Crosby took me there in his
special books – sleeping with the mules is not my thing. They make me feel uncomfortable and inadequate; strong, smart, surefooted, they are all the
things I’m not.
Here in the southland while Mexico was suffering the worst drought in over 70 years I was witness to everything around me slowly dying from 7 years
here without the wonderful wet stuff we all need. Then the rains came and in a flash I saw from my bedroom window the eye-popping renewal the authors
never enjoyed. It was the set for a movie, Bambi, Bambi without Thumper.
The huge Fire Tree, the Flamboyant was ablaze with claret blossoms exploding out of a green as green as trees are permitted to become. The showy
bougainvillea backlighted the big tree while clouds of sulfur butterflies rose in unending squadrons to counterpoint the crayon colored orioles,
cardinals, doves and flitting Golondria as they celebrate the resurgence. The plumeria, in a more bashful shade of green, frame the set nicely.
Sea and sky keep their distance, cartoon blue with dazzling white cut-out clouds showing their subtle respect for those stage center, front.
It strikes me that those vaunted explorers could make a hundred trips to this little zone and never encounter this miraculous convergence, this
storybook panoply to offset the stygian scenes they remembered and recorded as they slogged and clambered about in this very sometimes place.
[Edited on 10-1-2012 by Osprey]
[Edited on 10-1-2012 by Osprey]
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Pescador
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3587
Registered: 10-17-2002
Location: Baja California Sur
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When I visited the Baja every year I always missed the perspective of what went on while I was gone. I never realized that when the water comes, life
renews itself with a vigor usually only experienced by love sick college students on a spring break. I have witnessed plants and animals in such an
abundance this year as a result of the rains and fortunately everything came slowly so that we did not have the destruction normally associated with a
Hurricane. I have also come to learn that the sea is constantly changing in much the same way. We have seen almost no Humboldt Squid for several
years now and the dorado have been off of their normal patterns. We like to assume the humans are so powerful that they are doing that with their
destructive netting and longlines, but maybe we are not as in touch as we should be and there may well be some other things happening. Most of the
"Scientific Information" about the migrations of the fishes comes when the " snow birds" are elbowed up to the bar discussing how the sardine seiners
have caught all the Yellowtail or Marlin.
Kinda reminds me of how my Dad used to say, " Son just be still and listen".
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cessna821
Nomad
Posts: 148
Registered: 9-17-2010
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Desert Perfume
Well said Osprey.
If we lived in a perfect world how could we derive the pleasure that comes after experiencing deprivation.
One wet Springtime, after a nine hour drive up Mex1, we got out of the car near El Rosario to stretch our legs, and the scents from the desert plants
hit us ..... It was phenomenal ......like being in your own perfume factory.
Never experienced it again but we remember that special day with great affection.
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watizname
Senior Nomad
Posts: 792
Registered: 8-7-2009
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"a green as green as trees are permitted to become."
Beautiful descriptions. Another good one Osprey. 
I yam what I yam and that\'s all what I yam.
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vandenberg
Elite Nomad
Posts: 5118
Registered: 6-21-2005
Location: Nopolo
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Mood: mellow
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Our resident lyricist done it again. Great work Jorge.
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BajaBlanca
Select Nomad
Posts: 13237
Registered: 10-28-2008
Location: La Bocana, BCS
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poetically beautifully written.
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Iflyfish
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3747
Registered: 10-17-2006
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Goddess that man can write! You capture the awe and wonder of it amigo. There is indeed magic in Mexico!
Iflyfish
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