Baja, Mulegé, Cabo San Lucas, watercolors

ON TURNING 35 IN CABO

On turning 35 in Cabo, I reflect back.

In this life, I've stood on pahoehoe and aa,

new lava at the crater of Kilauea, steam forests and ferns.

I've watched the sunset from Haleakala,
a volcano that rises 30,000 feet above the sea floor.

I've seen the tongue of the ocean from the air,
swam in the Caribbean where a shark followed me home.

The aurora borealis glowed, but I didn't understand
northern latitudes when the sun set at midnight.

At the end of California, El Arco,
I watched frigate birds with 8 foot wingspans soar overhead.
I walked in rain forests of Kauaii and the Olympic Peninsula.

From Mount Whitney, the tallest mountain
in the continental US, I witnessed a forest fire.

I stood barefoot at Badwater, 282 feet below sea level,
and I followed worn trails in the salt flats
to hidden streams where pupfish from an earlier sea
still swim.

It took me 20 years to get to Tenochitlán,
the ancient lakebed of Mexico City,
And in the Yucatán, I climbed the pyramids
and crawled inside El Caracól, the observatory
during the winter solstice. The sun danced.

I rode to the stars while on ether, farther than
the combined distance of all my horses.

In Switzerland I climbed the Jungfrau,
rode the highest cog railway in the world
to crawl inside a crevasse in the glacier
to see the layers of ice and striations of every blue imaginable.

At the Columbia Ice Fields, I listened to the growl and hiss
of the great wall of ice that created its own cloud system.

I bathed in the Skeena River on an Indian reservation
where the glacial river numbed my skull til it cracked.

A week in the Sierras, a black bear slept on me,
I was too tired to get up and run. Probably saved my life.

I stood on the lips of Glacier Peak
and Half Dome without a rope or harness.

Half Dome I climb twice because
I forgot what it was like the first time.

At Loch Ness I didn't see Nessie
but I crawled through a dungeon in an abbey.

I had tea with the governor's wife in the Bahamas.

I didn't know that when Taikaido drummers danced
my relationship was about to end
but it took me two years to find out.

My first abortion at 24, my second at 27.
I meddled with nature, paid the price, lost the men,
stayed sick for two years, kidneys, uterus,
then a whiplash. My body weakened. My knee tore.

It took me eight years before I could ski again.

I rode an Icelandic pony called Helgar,
fiercely primitive, like a Celtic pony.

The fossils of clam shells in Central Valley cliffs
convinced me of an inland sea, but at 10,000 feet,
there are freshwater clams, how do you explain that,
or the reef fish in the sacred cenote well at Chichen Itza,
trapped miles from the sea, or hidden rivers.

The circle of candlewax in front of the stela at Cobá,
With the odor of sacred copal we welcomed the New Year.

We saw he two cuatemundis cross the road,
we ran over another one that night,
running over an endangered species.
Third time's a charm. I won't mention the turtle steak.

I saw the edge of night, the bell curve of the earth,
I saw stars and a daytime sky all at once,
sunset from an airplane flying over the North Pole.

From the air, the rift of the Grand Canyon
looked like a vast crack in the earth.

At Tikal, the temple of the Jaguar,
the howler monkey kept hidden in the canopy of trees.

Soldiers stopped our car searching for undesirables,
800 peasants have disappeared in Chiapas.

All for agrarian reform.
In downtown Mexico City, armed guards
in bulletproof vests direct traffic.

And the blood that didn't come with the moon
and the question rises once again.
The end of another relationship.
Few couples can survive the guilt.
Until I return home, I won't know if the slow bleeding
is a sign of division or multiplication.

Guerillas hide in the forests of Tikal,
the Indians, stoic in the face of soldiers,
On the Harmonic Convergence,
we celebrated at the Mayan church of Chamula,
all these roads less traveled,
but the universe unraveled....

November 24/1987
Cabo San Lucas
It looks like a page and the ending was lost, I found this in my sketchpad.
added 10.16 minor revisions.

Baja Journal, Sea of Cortez at Playa del Amor, 12/2/1985

The launch circled the sea stacks by the arch at cabo San Lucas, where California plunges into the sea one last time. At Playa del Amor, a wave mounted and crested at the arch and the sun slipped off to the west. We rounded an outer sea stack, admired the frigatebirds, on the ledge, a napping seal rearranged himself and scratched his side, so human. And stopped to watch us pass. The Pacific Ocean was an ethereal blue within blueness, as if lit from within, and it rose up and down the face of the cliff like an enormous breathing beast. One could hear the soft exhaling of the sea. Feel its beating heart.

12/2/1985
Cabo San Lucas
added, rev. 2/18

Baja Journal, La Páz to Cabo 11/30/1985 (photos)

From La Páz to Cabo we travel with Julie and her boyfriend Guillermo in the luxury of her car. No more Tres Estrellas buses with urine rivers from the bathroom running down the aisle.

We stop off at El Truinfo, a small mining town. This place was the original treasure of the Sierra Madre. It's hard to believe that this ghost town was once the largest pueblo in Baja California Sur. French cannons were placed at the base of a goldmine in the 1880s. When the French left, they left the cannons, the pianos, and the tall smokestack designed by Eiffel.

Blue morning glory against the sky, like pale stars. Opuntia, chollas, and giant cardón cactus in bloom—even though December approaches. A cactus with spent blossoms like draped sea anenomes. Strange cirios, or boojum trees twist and writhe every which way, remind me of mad, upside-down carrots. A kind of ocotillo, they're the only member of their genus.

We stop to stretch our legs. Julie says Hello crow, hola cuervo! He observes us with glinty eyes. Cardinals and bluejays: azul y rojo in this stern landscape. To see a cardinal here in the desert is like the shock of seeing the blood- blooming opuntia. This feathered flower flies from bush to bush, an odd ritual of spring on the wing in midwinter. I make a quick drawing of a crested cactus hawk standing sentinel on a large cardón. He has white circles on his underwings, and a banded tail.

We pass skinny cows and talk of tequila. Agave swords. Vultures stand on a dead cow seem to be congratulating each other on finding such superior roadkill.

The next two days are hazy. I am unable to write, but my Spanish comprehension improves in leaps and bounds. I lose my fluency in English. I become non-lingual and write nearly nothing. But I dream in Spanish.

We had a good giggle over the poorly translated menus and La Páz  and Cabo, for example: grabs and clamps crabs and clams. We passed a house made of woven sticks, like a basket, open to the sky. I tell John I want to live there.

At the Tropic of Cancer, near Todos Santos, John sits on top of the big boulder painted white with a blue stripe, to write a poem about an idea in the wilderness but this artificial boundary is a manmade concept. We are here at the wrong time of year to see the sun stand still, directly overhead at its zenith. Tropic means to turn back. The sun is no longer in the constellation of Cancer, but, Taurus. And there he sits on his cement boulder, the bull. No turning back now.

11/30/1985
added, rev. 2/18
first two photo scans were from slides, and I thought they were bad. The color negative film, last photo, fared even worse.

Baja Journal, Autobús, Mulegé - Loreto 1125/1985

The old road was made by hand
The cow sleeps under the mesquite
What are you waiting for?
That the ripples of the sea
should weave us a blanket,
a net for our dreams?
At night, the snails compile slow mathematics.
The starfish creep through the twilight.
We're content.
The wind spells itself forward.
The owls sleep in the sun
and devours the darkness.
But there are paths in the water.
The saguaro points to the sky.
The guidebooks didn't show us this,
so let's go, carrying sea turtle shells
on our shoulders.
What more are you waiting for?

Autobús, Mulegé - Loreto 11/28/1985
translated from a collaborative poem written in Spanish with John Oliver Simon and me





Azul del sol
mangroves egrets
el agua se calle
El Viento no sigue
La tortuga no mira
las montañas secas
azlan el viejo
El camino no se llama
por el nombre
las montañas de la muerte
y ellas de la vida
bailan con el autobús
Porque? Preguntalo
al chofer. Las islas
flotan en el aire azul
con las nubes.

Blue sun
mangroves egrets
the water is so silent
the wind follows the sun
the turtle watches
as the dry mountains take flight
and the road calls us by name
the mountains of death
the mountains of life
dancing with the bus
why asks the driver
islands floating in the blue air
with the clouds.

11/25? 29? 1985
I wrote in spanish then translated it.

walking along the malecón at La Páz at sunset