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MY LOG FROM THE SEA OF CORTEZ

(I took this trip in spring 1998, fulfilling a lifelong dream to boat in the Gulf of California.  Here are some journal entries from which I've drawn other pieces of writing.  May this account take your imagination to beautiful Baja--Becca.)
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Day One
Oakland Airport

So my trip to the Sea of Cortez begins—on a gray Saturday morning in an airport terminal by San Francisco Bay.  El Nino has brought another storm, a cold but gentle, female rain off the Pacific.  Raindrops pelt the glass facing acres of tarmac outside the building. Last night was nearly sleepless under a big moon with a nagging face. Tonight the same insistent moon will be full, but I’ll see it from Loreto, Baja California, Mexico, with my good friend Louise and the group of travelers we’ll paddle with nearly 100 miles to La Paz.  The moon that moves the tides may seem much more simpatico if we turn ourselves over to its rhythms.

It was Louise’s idea to travel to Mexico to sea kayak.  When I heard she was going to the Sea of Cortez, I signed on,

too.  Boating there has long been among my life dreams. In fact I’m sure I wrote it on a list I keep of such dreams, which I’ve kept since the death of a friend last year.  After he’d been diagnosed with liver cancer, as his strength waned, he wrote a list of Things to Do While Living.  The list included Sail on a tall ship.  Visit  Travel around the world. One time when I walked with him in the woods, my friend said he’d spent most of his life laboring at a job that forced him to suppress his wishes and desires.  He showed me with his hands how this felt, pushing down toward his gut.  Then he pointed to his belly.  And now I’ve got this disease, he said.  Out of curiosity, I search for my list of dreams but can’t find it in the whirlwind of packing.  Louise says the Sea of Cortez is on her list too.  She says, Let’s cross this one off together. I’m deeply exhausted from my world, full of automobiles that crowd when I don’t move fast enough, telephones that badger me to stay connected, computers that seem more master than slave.  How I chose such a mainstream life rather than continuing in my earlier one as a guide on whitewater rivers, I’ll always wonder.  Only a series of smooth moves could have brought such changes.  But Louise is still a river guide, and she wonders about her wisdom.  Quien sabe.  Along with the paddling and camping gear I’ll need, I’ve brought binoculars, birding book, and a list of the birds of Baja California.  I’m hoping to see species I’ve never seen before—life birds.
 
Day Two
Loreto, B.C.
Hooded oriole
Common ground dove
Great blue heron
Turkey vulture
Elegant tern
Little blue heron
Brown pelican
Willet
Wilson’s plover
Snowy plover
Magnificent frigatebird
Double-crested cormorant
Ruddy turnstone
House finch
English sparrow
Early morning.  Loreto vibrates with bird song.  Orioles warble in the palms overhead.  Las palomas, the ground doves that flutter from branches of purple bougainvillea to patches of raked earth, fill the stillness with calm calls.  Louise has risen before first light to stroll the beach and enjoy the peach hues of dawn.  Smooth as the face of a mirror, the sea stretches before our beachside hotel.  Outside the rooms, beyond the sand that reaches east from our verandas, dawn shines over the water and the barren Isla Carmen.  Pelicans float in airy strings through the vastness of sky above the shoreline.  Las pangas, the little fishing skiffs whose silhouettes punctuate the surface of the sea, remain tied to their moorings.  Many of the villagers must be at service in the rock-and-mortar church downtown.  Last night they celebrated the weekend in the streets, keeping time to the pulse of their internal combustion engines and la musica from battery-powered boomboxes.  The moon rose, full and stretched to an oval by the distortion of atmosphere and watery ocean at the horizon.  As the moon climbed higher, it pulled itself together in liquid pieces, regaining shape.  Louise and I walked to dinner along the beachside promenade, where a gentleman offered a view of la luna through a huge set of binoculars.  After accepting his hospitable gesture, with much smiling and exchanging of gracias and de nada, we continued downtown to share dinner out with our group. Afternoon birding was excellent.  Fifteen trip birds, six of them life birds for me.  Louise and I walked the beach to an inlet where a small stream of fresh water met the sea.  Plovers and turnstones skittered and called.  Herons and egrets stood sentinel at their fishing posts.  Above it all flew the magnificent frigatebirds, stately in steady flight.  On the beach lay many reminders of life in the sea, dried bodies of fish, their bones, the feathers and feet of dead seabirds.  This is a place of much life and much death. By dinnertime, we’d already met most of the people on our trip.  Some had been on our flight south from Los Angeles International, on the single airplane per day into Loreto.
 land  Below the border, we’d flown out of the turbulence and clouds of El Nino and skimmed above the Mexican desert scape, with its deep arroyos and spine of sierra in the intense sun.  At the airport, we stepped out into the Baja California air, an oven blast on our skin.  I, who love the rain, had not known how sick of winter I’d become until the moment we descended the airplane stairs into sunlight.  We passed through customs and congregated in the small terminal where Nick Peligro, sea kayaking outfitter and leader of the trip, greeted us.  Then we proceeded by van to Loreto and the lovely, beachside Oasis hotel. I had the feeling that I’d been to the Oasis before, with its lush garden that includes nopal and cardon cactus, palms, and a single shriveled boojum tree.  But I couldn’t have been, my feeling had to be associated with long-held dreams.As I sat beneath the fringed palm cover of a beach ramada, reading John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez, I learned that I’m not alone in my sentiment: Some quality there is in the whole Gulf that trips a trigger of recognition so that in fantastic and exotic scenery one finds oneself nodding and saying inwardly, “Yes, I know.” At dinner we got a good look at each other, the strangers who would be paddling bays, coves, and open seas together.  Headcount for the trip is seventeen—five crew and twelve pasaheros.  Among us are people from Maryland, Idaho, Colorado, Alaska, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and both Alta and Baja California.  We include two mostly retired married couples, Louise, me, another friend and former river guide Jeffe (who was a bonus surprise at LAX), two young professionals traveling alone, two Tsunami Rangers (extreme-condition sea kayakers who live on and boat the northern California coast), a friend of and web-page designer for Nick Peligro, two assistant crew members, and two native guides.  I felt a bit as I used to when first meeting the pasaheros on our commercial river trips, uncertain but optimistic about who they are and how we will like each other.  But dinner went well—we feasted on crab relleno and grilled fillets with tamarindo and raised our first toast of margaritas. Now, in the morning of our departure, we pile into two vans to drive three hours to Agua Verde, our launch spot.  We are all eyes for the stark landscape, with its cholla, organ pipe, and old man cactus and desert scrub.  Jeffe spots a crested caracara on a cardon cactus near the airport.  Others see eagles, vultures, burros, and hawks.  The road is paved and in good condition until we leave the main road for the coast.  Then it’s dirt only, one lane usually, and steep in places.  Jeffe tells long, involved jokes about the condition of brakes on Mexican trucks, which Nick translates for the grinning van driver.  Besame, besame mucho, sings a sweet voice from the van’s tape player as we swing around blind curves and descend like a falling kite toward the ocean.  The smell of burning brakes hangs in the air.  Unlike some of the truck brakes in Jeffe’s jokes, these brakes hold, and we stop above a cliff for an unbound view of the white-capped sea that stretches north, east, south, and out of sight. We decide to walk the last few hundred yards to the beach at Agua Verde, carrying the kayaks.  The vans follow with the remaining equipment.  Agua Verde is a cove of startling aquamarine beauty, separated by a dry spit of land from a second cove that mirrors the first in size and color.  At the water’s edge, we reluctantly turn our attention from the ocean to the task of getting ready, packing our day gear into the six single and five double kayaks that lie side by side like seals basking onshore.  The heavier gear—kitchen boxes, tables, overnight bags, water jugs, port-a-potty—we load onto la panga Chispa (the skiff named Spark), our gear vessel captained by native guide Antonio.  After a brief orientation given by Nick, we tuck solo or in pairs into the boats.  I double up with Jeffe to shove off from land into the south-facing cove.  We glide over the shallow water toward a rocky point inhabited by pelicans, cormorants, frigatebirds, and brown boobies.  When Nick paddles by, grinning and saying he’s once more slipped his hold on land, we follow him down the coast.
 
Day Three
Playa La Ballena
Gila woodpecker
Mourning dove
Eared grebe
Osprey
Common rave
American oystercatcher
Heerman’s gull
California gull
Brown booby

One of the Tsunami Rangers, Michael, is working the trip as an outdoor photojournalist.  An energetic fellow, he runs everywhere with his cameras, looking for shots and lining us up for photo opportunities.  He shares his magazine articles and photographs with us, pictures of paddlers facing mountains of surf on the Pacific coast.  The pictured feats impress us—even after a single day of paddling, we feel a healthy respect for ocean boating.  We may not paddle anything extreme on this trip, but the water is lively and we must pay attention. I’d expected the sea to be more calm,
allowing birding with binoculars during the day and the leisurely viewing of fishes below us.  But I find that I enjoy the conditions when they get a little wild.  Perhaps not too wild—I know of the dangerous Norte winds, which can whip the sea to a frenzy that has swallowed entire boats, leaving no trace.  El Norte can blow up in an instant, so Nick carries a barometer and carefully monitors changes in the weather. When the pressure drops, there may be winds but not the big ones from the north.  When the pressure rises, Nick says, el Norte may be imminent.  This is the opposite of what we’d expect, and Nick agrees.  But the winds result from distant pressure systems, related to the Santa Anas up north, that affect the barometer differently here.  In any event, if el Norte blows and we’re onshore, we could be pinned to a beach for days.  Worse would be to be caught out at sea in a squall. Blown only by light winds, and those at our back, we continue on.  We usually have no need for binoculars anyway.  The sea brings its gifts directly to our boats.  Today I see nine trip birds, two of them life birds—the American oystercatcher and the brown booby.  Little rock coves lure us for a closer look at sea stars, anemones, crabs scampering from the surge of sea water.  A pod of dolphins approaches, dives beneath us, and surges back to the surface in our wake.  Their family heads north, ours south, like ships passing on opposite courses.  As they pass by, we sit hushed, touched by a presence. We reach a beautiful, deserted cove, backed by cliffs striped with multicolored layers of volcanic rock, and stop for the night.  Once ashore, we help unload la Chispa and carry kitchen gear up the beach.  Then we disperse for snorkeling, hiking, reading, and napping.  I find that I’m finally relaxed enough to tap into my deep reservoir of exhaustion.  Directly after dinner, I fall asleep watching the moon rise and don’t stir until morning dew lies thick on my sleeping bag.
 
Day Four
Punta Prieta

Northern cardinal
Peregrine falcon
Western gull

Snorkeling seems good at Playa La Ballena, Whale Beach, but Juan Chuy, our other native guide besides Antonio, informs us that it’s not what it used to be.  The schools of fish are smaller than just ten years ago.  Juan’s father and grandfather fished these waters for a living.  They paddled the entire gulf in a wooden canoe, a typical fishing vessel of their time.  They could pull out as many fish in one day as it now takes two weeks to catch.  Many reasons may be offered for the decline in fish populations, but they all seem to add up to overfishing.  At one time, the government handed out fiberglass skiffs to the local people, encouraging them in sea-going livelihoods.  From the new marina in Loreto and others north and south, 100 such pangas may go out on a weekend with sport fishermen, bringing home perhaps 300 fish a day.  We saw some of these fishermen at the airport in Loreto, with their big rods and coolers sealed with duct tape for returning home with their bounty.  And although it all adds up, the sport fishermen aren’t the sole offenders—many trips like ours take their food directly from the sea every day.  Also, shrimp boats will fish close to shore with their nets, scooping up the small fishes we see while snorkeling and scraping coral from the sea bottom.  Breaking the coral disrupts entire ecosystems that center on it for survival, not only the small organisms that build and live within the coral colonies but the fish, sponges, clams, barnacles, worms, and snails that burrow into and graze the coral’s skeletal structure for food. The worst thing for the fishing resource, Juan believes, has been to allow foreign fishing vessels into the Sea of Cortez with their broadcast-net methods of fishing.  The nets scoop up everything they encounter, and the big commercial fishermen simply throw away unwanted carnage, such as dead dolphins.  Such fishing shows no husbandry for the resource.  With the decline in ocean life have come hard times for the local fishermen.  Juan says many cannot read or write and don’t see alternative ways to make their living. Today we paddle from the striped cliffs of Playa La Ballena for five hours or so to Punta Prieta, named for the rocks of the low-
lying point protecting tonight’s camp, la playa bonita, the beautiful beach.  When we ask Juan the meaning of prieta, he says dark and points to the skin on his arms.  Like the tall, dark stranger, he says. I paddle a single kayak today.  It feels more lively than the doubles, riding higher on the water’s surface.  I have much kayaking experience in my past, but it’s rather far back in my past, and it was almost all river kayaking.  So I’m not used to entire days spent paddling with swells approaching from the side.  The side waves in rivers tended to break on me.  These swells pass smoothly under the boat.  Still I find that if I keep my paddle moving fast enough and use good technique—arms extended, paddling from my torso—I not only keep up with the group but stay far enough to the front to take some small breaks. At our lunch stop, Antonio finds a piece of an old fishing canoe like the one Juan’s father once paddled.  The wood is dry and light.  Most such canoes were made on the mainland, near Mazatlan, where large trees grow.  From the wood of a single tree, a boatmaker carved his double-ended craft and braced it inside with struts.  Antonio carries the canoe remnant up the beach so it won’t wash to sea again, a precious relic. When we reach camp at Punta Prieta, some of us wetsuit up and motor out in la Chispa for snorkeling.  Antonio runs us out toward the rocky point, singing bits of Spanish songs.  Nick says you’ll never hear more than a line or two of Antonio’s tunes sung at any one time.  He never finishes them.  Nick also says Antonio’s nickname is el grunion, the grouch.  Antonio does seem to keep his distance, running la Chispa solo and preparing tasty meals, then walking away for a smoke.  But he, like Juan Chuy, always watches to see how people are doing and how he might be needed.  Nick says Juan and Antonio are always the first to know of anything going on on a trip, such as when romance buds up between two trip members.  Part of their skill is that they’re watching quietly all the time, part is that they care. I’m starting to get the hang of snorkeling here, and that is to slow down, relax, and observe very closely.  Then more can be seen than just the larger fishes fluttering out of my huge shadow.  As I fold my arms and float unhurried above the rocky bottom, brittle stars flex and pulse, spines of sea urchins move in changing currents, sea fans wave.  All is silent.  I float into warmer water above colonies of coral.  The sunlight through the shallow water casts a dappled glow on their many-roomed homes.  Gradually I spot more species of fish, with varied shapes and colors—blue stripes, yellow spots, fins top and bottom, lazy long fins, tiny short fins that flap hummingbird fast, orange and purple scales, spiny puffed-up shapes, huge disguised bottom-dwelling shapes.  Eventually, the drama of the sea becomes evident.  As I float I see that the jig’s up for one sunflower star, a large orange sea star with a heaped-up center.  Two Sergeant Majors, bright, active fish much smaller than the sunflower star, attack it repeatedly, flipping it, moving it around, and breaking its arms.  Everything is grazing or being grazed when it’s not directly engaged in activities related to reproduction. Today I see three trip birds, all on shore.
 
Day Five
Punta Villa

Black-throated sparrow
Verdin
White-throated swift
Scrub jay
Semipalmated plover

Each morning, one of the first of our group to rise is the second Tsunami Ranger, Dennis.  He is a strong paddler and extremely fit—obviously he works out at home.  Before sunrise, he prowls the beach, smoking discreetly and wearing a watch cap and camouflage suit that looks government issue.  My first thought is that he’s fond of guns, maybe a survivalist or a life-long Marine.  I’ve never even known, much less traveled with, anyone who wears full camouflage. We’re toughening up from the paddling and seem always to be hungry.  Louise especially wants more food, and more often.  Nick supplies all the food as well as cerveza each evening.  He thinks we’re big eaters and remarks that it’s a good thing we don’t drink as much as we eat.  Louise and I decide to start drinking more cerveza during happy hour to help curb our appetites until dinner.  It seems to work, and we get to know the trip members better this way. The married couples—Bill and Debbie, Gary and Mary Ann—are the least experienced paddlers in the group.  Sometimes they pair up in doubles with other partners to form more experienced teams.  One of the paddlers they team with is Dawson, Nick’s friend and web-page designer.  Dawson seems to be a powerhouse of energy, rising early to hike, first out in the water in his snorkeling gear.  He likes to birdwatch, too.  More than once as I’m wandering up an arroyo looking for birds, I’ll happen upon him, already looking. The two young professionals traveling alone seem contented.  Peter, a graphic artist from Berkeley, chooses a single kayak each morning.  He’s quiet and observant, photographing the trip diligently.  Joanne, from Idaho, seems relaxed and
lazy, moving slowly.  As Louise and I quaff cerveza and chat, we find that Joanne’s just finished chemotherapy for a recent bout of cancer. This is her first adventure trip, and she says she’ll be making many more.  She was always told to save her money for retirement, but now she’s spending it, having had such a scare about her life. Nick’s young assistants, Kristian and Suzy, are competent paddlers and friendly guides.  They smile indulgently at the stories Jeffe, Louise, and I tell about guiding in Grand Canyon.  We kid Kristian and Suzy about getting out of guiding while they’re still young, while there’s still time for a good life.  They say they might hang in there long enough to grow as silly as we are. In the chaparral above the beach and onshore, I identify five more trip birds.  All are desert dwellers familiar to me.  No life birds the past two days, although Nick has seen some that I haven’t.  I walk before dinner to enjoy the shorebirds and the surf hissing onto sand.  I see more signs of surrounding life—raccoon tracks, the still-articulated front legs of a deer or goat perhaps fallen from the cliff above, the feet and headless body of an eared grebe washed to the beach, the bleached and dried bodies of spiny pufferfish. Hermit crabs are tucked into crevasses in the rocks everywhere, under little overhangs, between boulders.  In her wanderings, Louise finds two crabs locked in some sort of embrace that doesn’t appear to be mutually pleasurable.  One keeps the other clinched so it can’t move.  When the trapped one makes some attempt at escape, the dominant one clamps down harder.  Louise watches for a long time, fascinated, waiting for some end to the deadlock, some clue to what’s going on.  Does the dominant crab need the shell of the trapped one?  It can’t be, he’s got one.  Soon Nick comes along and breaks it up.  He can’t stand the torture.  But when he tells Louise that the ritual she’s been witnessing is the male wearing down the female so she won’t fight and they can mate, Louise wonders why Nick interfered. Nick is an amazing musician.  He has brought along una guittarra, on which he plays the most pleasing songs to accompany his singing.  Juan and Antonio build up a campfire after dinner so we can enjoy la musica.  Jeffe, too, plays and sings beautifully, belting out tunes passionately, and we join in.  The still night fills with song.  I don’t want to go to bed until I’m sure we’ll sing no more.  Fortunately my wakefulness provides a chance to watch the stars above.  There are more than I’ve ever seen, more even than in the dark skies of Utah and Arizona canyon country, where the bright stars contrast so sharply with the deep black of night.  Here in Mexico, the visible stars seem to be surrounded not by total darkness but by a brightness that goes back into the night forever.  Such light in an unpeopled land.  It looks like layers and layers of more stars behind those that we see sharply, stars that go on into endless space.
 
Day Six
Punta Colorado

Snowy egret
Bonaparte’s gull
White-eared hummingbird
White-winged dove
Northern mockingbird
California quail
Cactus wren
Black-tailed gnatcatcher

Louise and I paddle together in a double to Punta Colorado, where the trip is laying over for a day.  Nick is a bit nervous about the weather, because the barometer is rising.  Could el Norte be coming?  Louise and I attempt to match our styles of paddling with little luck.  With our attempts to get in sync comes constant paddling to maintain stability, and we have trouble staying behind Nick.  He tells us not to push him because he has to maintain a pace that keeps the group together.  Soon passing Nick Peligro is known as crossing the line of death.  We support the team effort by not crossing this line. The coast north of Punta Colorado looks especially wild and lovely, with the mountains of the Sierra de la Giganta rugged and tumbling close behind.  At lunch break, I walk out onto a rocky point of tidepools to get a better look at three elegant terns with their flat, swept-back hairdos.  The three terns tolerate my curiosity for a while, facing with their bills upwind, their black crests shifting and blowing.  I tiptoe in as close as possible, noting their features—black legs, orange bills, black eye patches that extend back to black crowns.  One instant they’re patient, the next they’re startled and fly off.  I follow them at a stumbling run, rounding the point in hot pursuit.  Then I stop, open mouthed.  The vista that greets me is stunning—a long, deserted white beach pounded by windblown surf, framed by a rock arch at the point’s end.  Incredible isolation.  We’ve paddled by it, but looking upshore from the point collapses the coast into something even more remarkable to view.  The combination of wild coast, red and white rock arch, indigo sea, and sunlight muted by a growing cloud cover heightens the scene’s beauty, added to the joy of stalking terns with nappy crests. I return to the lunch table a happy woman, to find the others engaged in shallow-water shark observation.  The shark is about four feet long, grazing in a few feet of ocean.  A wax shark, according to Juan Chuy, who doesn’t know it by any other name.  We get a good look at the shark’s fins breaking the water and its slow, relaxed style of locomotion.  Jeffe runs to grab his face mask for better shark viewing, but before he returns someone has stepped in the water.  Their big legs like two tree stumps scared away the shark.  Abruptly it swung off into deeper water. We reach camp, set up tents for the layover, and disperse into serious pursuits such as reading, napping, and exploring.  Eventually, Dennis walks the beach dressed in camo.  After enough cerveza, Louise and I dare to ask him about his outfit.  He confesses that he was in the military and that’s where he got the suit.  The surprise is that he served as a nurse because that’s his profession.  He had to pay for the camo with his own money, so he’s going to wear it, damn it, and when he’s camping is about the only time he
dares pull it out.  The fabric is light, of high quality, and invisible to infrared sensing.  Dennis turns out to be not scary at all, but sweet and funny. He says Michael the photojournalist invited him along so there’d be at least one pasahero amenable to being photographed.  He jokes, I’m a mere prop on this trip.  His morning prowls seem to be related to his desire to get downwind of us, to not wake the camp with his cigarette smoke. We rise to a cool, cloudy morning on our layover at Punta Colorado.  El Norte is blowing—not full strength, but blowing—and has whipped up the surf on our beach.  Spray from the breakers mists the camp, welcome moisture on our skin in this dry, hot land.  Nick has planned a hike up one of the few arroyos in the area with fresh water to the ruins of an old mission called Nuestra Senora de los Dolores del Sur.  The mission is one of several established by Jesuit padres in the 1700s, missions that were forebears to the Francsican route of missions established by Junipero Serra in Alta California.  We hike back up the coast toward the arroyo.  Where it meets the sea sits a lonely hacienda, with garden and horses.  We talk to one young ranch hand preparing to saddle up, horse tethered and waiting and leather chaps on the ground.  He says the family that lives there is away, but he accepts the presents Nick has brought and will pass them on.  We continue up the trail toward the mission, joined by the family’s two cow dogs.  The trail takes us past mesquite and cardon a few miles to a clearing that once was tended but now lies fallow.  Lime and other fruit trees ring the clearing, and upcanyon breezes carry the sweet scent of citrus blossoms.  Nick says there were vineyards here, pointing to the braces that held them.  He leads us to a wine cellar that extends back into the hillside.  Farther up the hill on an old stream terrace is the mission, its roof gone, its walls crumbling.  From the mission are good views of the oasis below, where the arroyo runs with aboveground water.  Down in the lush growth are hummingbirds, gnatcatchers, canyon wrens.

We descend the trail into the overgrowth, sometimes losing the main stock path we’ve been following, which isn’t very worn.  At a junction of many stock paths, we stumble upon a man and his son, the man carrying a rifle, the boy wearing knife sheaths and a slingshot around his neck.  Their straw hats and light pants and shirts are stained from sweat.  Seeing the weapons, our group automatically falls into a cautious hush until we shake hands and pass the awkward moment with buenos dias.   Nick converses with the pair for a bit.  The man smiles broadly while responding.  They are looking for their stock and any game they might find.  The slingshot is for hunting las palomas.  After showing us the best trail and blessing our hike with bueno suerte, they continue down the arroyo.  We pursue the trail upcanyon into a canopy of palm and fig trees, soon reaching an irrigation canal of rock and mortar.  Where the canal ends, a waterfall tumbles close to a cliff face, overgrown and hidden.  We rinse off and lunch with the cow dogs in the shade of a fig tree with such thick, fanned roots it could be a banyan. After lunch we must leave the oasis and head back to the beach, but I’m reluctant.  I’m sure that if I hang back I’ll see life birds.  I’ve heard the fly-by buzz of hummingbirds that I probably don’t know—there are other strange calls that lure me.  If I were brave, I’d let the others leave without me, follow my urge to stay in this life.  I’d do as Steinbeck yearned to do: And on the shore the wild doves mourn in the evening and then there comes a pang, some kind of emotional jar, and a longing.  And if one followed his whispering impulse he would walk away slowly into the thorny bush following the call of the doves.

Still, I stay with the others so I won’t be left in this remote arroyo, unable to speak more than broken Spanish to any armed campesinos I might encounter, with no one there wearing camo to protect me.
 
Day Seven
Punta Colorado

Today is the day we cross to the Isla de San Jose.  To get there we must paddle south along the peninsula, then cross the ocean to the east to a beach with a lighthouse of sorts, more a light station.  Unfortunately, the north winds that blew yesterday during our hike have not stopped, and the surf still batters our beach.  Nick thinks we shouldn’t paddle out into the surf, especially the novices in our group.  However, if we carry all the boats and equipment about a quarter mile up the shore to a more protected spot, we may be able to get out and make the crossing today. Tsunami Rangers Dennis and Michael, along with former guide Jeffe and young assistant guide Kristian, decide that they can paddle out in these conditions.  They volunteer to bring the boats around, leaving only the kitchen and overnight gear to be carried up the beach.  Nick agrees to let them try it.  This makes for much excitement in camp, as the Rangers, Jeffe, and Kristian prepare their boats to go. The strategy works for a while.  Dennis and Michael succeed in punching through the breakers in two singles, which they paddle up to the end of the beach and surf safely back to shore.  Then young Kristian, who is perhaps the strongest paddler on the trip, pushes out into the surf in a single.  Unfortunately he’s launched directly into a big incoming set.  He paddles out through most of the breakers, seems to be home free, then capsizes just before getting out past the surf zone.  A few attempts at an eskimo roll brings him upright, and we cheer him on as he makes it outside.  Jeffe shoves off after him, arms churning, and scoots outside with no problem.  Together they shuttle down to the end of the beach. By then Rangers Dennis and Michael have returned to try a double.  They paddle like crazy from shore, building momentum and moving fast.  They top the breakers, one after another, two, three, four, until they’re almost home free.  Then one of the last big ones capsizes them.  The double immediately swings parallel to the surf.  After a few attempts at rolling, they’re out of the boat, one Ranger holding to each end of the kayak.  See how they’re staying with their gear, says Nick.  These admittedly crazed Tsunami Rangers have become a safety lesson, keeping track of both the boat and their paddles.  The Rangers continue to stay with the kayak as it travels south in the longshore drift.  Then one breaker grabs the double and surfs it back toward shore at about twenty-five miles an hour, the Rangers still attached.  When it’s close enough, we grab it, and Dennis and Michael stagger toward shore.  It’s getting bigger out there, they say.  Soon a half-dozen bilge pumps are in action emptying the boat of ocean water. We spend the rest of the morning carrying the remaining boats and gear down the beach.  The boats aren’t light, nor are the kitchen boxes, so we team up as much as we can to carry them.  We make ten or so trips each to shuttle all the gear, then rig a tarp to sit in the shade.  We might have to camp here another night, and if so, probably another.  All there is to do is wait out the wind. During all the boat shuttling, Juan and Antonio have had trials of their own.  They’ve run la Chispa from its mooring in some of the quieter water near our beach back to the hacienda we visited yesterday.  Their charge has been to find more drinking water for the trip.  Up at the hacienda, which has a well, the breakers are too rough—the guides can’t get to shore.  They return without water, scratching their heads about what to do.  Although they’re strong and willing, they don’t think they can carry the 100+ pound jugs of drinking water back over the mesa between here and the hacienda. We seem to be in irons, but sometime after lunch Nick seems encouraged.  His barometer shows the pressure dropping.  He believes el Norte won’t get worse today, that we’ll be able to get off the beach.  Juan and Antonio have told him that the ocean is not bad out past the breakers.  The wind is moderate, not strong.  So Nick sends Juan and Antonio back out in la Chispa to find water perhaps farther up the coast, and we prepare to make the crossing to the isla. Nick busies himself pairing paddlers together into strong teams.  I’m hoping to be part of a team with someone at least as strong as me, but it’s not to be.  There are too many inexperienced paddlers who need partners.  Nick asks Louise or me to go with one of the weaker paddlers.  I demur—I don’t feel strong enough to compensate for another’s mistakes in a wild ocean.  But I can take a single so the others can be properly doubled up.  Louise agrees to do the same, although I know how she feels about it.  She is solemnly silent, even when spoken to.  We select our singles, condemned women.  I remind myself of all my paddling experience, even in big-water rivers, assuring myself that it’s okay that I haven’t been in a kayak for over ten years. We take turns launching those who feel ready, watching them paddle out briskly, like wind-up toys with arms circling.  Soon it’s my turn to shove out into the wild surf.  As Mary Ann helps launch me, she says, you can do it, you’re a professional.  With her words in my heart, I’m off, paddling for the outside, giving it everything, reaching for all the water in the ocean to pull it behind me.  I hear the cheers from shore as I make progress, then Dennis’s voice shouting, rudder!  Thanking him and God, I release the rudder so I can steer out through the breakers.  I aim for the opening in surf that Nick has shown me.  Once at the opening, I face the waves head on, still paddling, never stopping, never letting down my guard.  Then it’s fierce paddling, not forgetting what happened to Kristian 		even when he seemed home free. Up and down, up and down, catching some air on the backsides of waves, slowed by some breaking caps but not stopped.  Then the waves smooth out and become huge swells, and I realize I’ve made it outside the surf zone. I’m sitting like a duck in some storm-riled pond with the others, hushed and waiting for the last kayaks to come from shore. We proceed across to the Isla de San Jose.  Nick has told us that we won’t be paddling south along the peninsular shore before crossing after all.  Instead we’ll head straight for the isla, counting on the north wind to move us south and even with the light station.  We are like little corks at sea.  Great swells buoy and drop us.  When the swells pass between us, we’re out of sight of each other, waiting for their passage so we can stay connected visually.  We travel as a group across the gulf, with Nick out front and young Kristian in the rear in a double with Mary Ann.  Louise and I paddle on either side of Kristian, but far enough apart that in each swell we disappear from view.  We take a southwest course through the wave troughs.  Occasionally the waves crest and break on us, and then it helps to throw a side brace to stay upright.  Generally, however, the swells pass beneath us as we progress across the windy ocean. About an hour into the crossing, my back hurts.  In a few places, only degenerated disks remain in my spine, ruined from heavy lifting during all my years guiding.  My lumbar region aches from the strain of sitting and paddling without a break.  My feet go numb.  I use the usual tricks of shifting position in the boat, varying my paddling stroke to engage different muscles, but the pain worsens.  I raft up occasionally with Kristian’s double and Louise’s single, which helps us all, but we don’t sit long.  If we rest indefinitely, we’ll be pushed downwind of our target on the isla and will have to labor upwind to the light station.  Paddling with the pain is difficult, but I have to continue and reach land.  Stay strong, I whisper, you can do it.  La Chispa is nowhere in sight, Juan and Antonio out on their own in the ocean. After another hour or so of paddling, we see the light station of the isla over the tops of the white-crested swells before us.  Kristian estimates we’ll be there within a half hour, even considering that Nick has had to chart a slightly headwind course to make for the light station.  The pain throbs in my back.  Remember—arms straight, paddle with the torso.  I wiggle my toes to regain sensation in my feet.  The light station grows larger in our view, and larger, and then some of the first kayaks land onshore.  I yearn to be among the paddlers who have pulled up boats and flopped on the white sand of the isla.  Soon Louise has landed, then Kristian and Mary Ann, then me.  I unkink my body and collapse in the sand near Louise.  She says she’s glad we took the singles across because we know we did it. Juan and Antonio show up in La Chispa.  They’ve had their own hairy crossing, but they were able to pick up drinking water from a point north of la hacienda.  Juan asks how the crossing went.  Big-eyed, surprised, he asks, no one went over? The Tsunami Rangers congratulate Louise and me.  Michael, who’d also paddled single, said it was tough out there.  Out in the swells, he’d wondered how those of us who don’t sea kayak regularly were doing.  We’re impressed, he says.  Still exhausted, still in pain, I reply, Good.  We’ve been wanting to impress you guys all trip, and we’ve finally done it. Isla de San Jose

I recorded no birds yesterday.  I forgot about my life list while crossing to the isla.  But somewhere on the open sea, Nick spotted storm-petrels, small, dark, strictly pelagic birds flying close to the water.  I’ve never been out to sea before.  I’ve never seen storm-petrels.  Some are no bigger than sparrows.  Identifying them must be like identifying warblers—challenging, puzzling, and deeply satisfying when done definitively.  Fortunately we’ll be crossing open water again, perhaps in calmer conditions, and I’ll have another chance to spot them.  I vow that when we cross a second time, I’ll keep a constant vigil for the little seabirds. Last night we camped near a single mangrove on a south-facing cove on the isla.  It’s a popular spot with some fishermen.  The water surface there roils with the movement of dolphins, flying fish, and schools of jumping small fishes, probably mackerel or anchovy.  Just at dark we heard the wail of an outboard motor and a scraping sound, like a plow pushing earth.  A family of fishermen had run their panga ashore for the night, a man and his two sons.  Los pescadores greeted Juan and Antonio and stayed to chat for a while.  After dinner, when Nick pulled out the guittara, los pescadores joined the campfire without any hint of shyness.  Soon they asked for the guittara, and one strummed while all three sang in strong, sincere voices, mostly about unrequited love and other types of romance.  We joined in as best we could, then applauded their efforts heartily.  When they returned the guittarra, los pescadores requested Beatles’ songs.  To their delight, both Nick and Jeffe knew some, and everyone sang.  Later, after most of our group had gone to bed, los pescadores lay in the sand next to la panga to sleep.  From that camp we saw the only night glow from industrial or city lights we’d seen all trip.  I assume we were seeing the lights of La Paz, over fifty miles away, but Nick said it’s from a closer source, a phosphorus mine that operates around the clock.  Its glow lights a corner of the night. In the morning, los pescadores putter out early in la panga.  I walk the beach in the cool before breakfast, muy contenta.  Now that the relative heroics of the crossing are done, I can return to my nerdy birdwatching self.  By the time I’m back to camp, los pescadores have returned with a roosterfish.  Young Kristian, who has been to language school learning Spanish, explains that Spanish-speaking people have two different general words for fish—el pese for a fish that lives, el pescado for one that is dead.  Los pescadores deliver el pescado to Antonio, who guts it.  Tonight’s dinner.  Antonio throws the entrails to a crowd of gulls who’ve waited all morning for this moment.  They’ve been polite for gulls, but their etiquette goes out the window when the guts hit the beach.  Then they compete for it, all squawks and hisses, aggressive even toward a huge brown pelican who wants to share the action.
 
Day Nine
Isla de San Jose

Sage thrasher
Spotted sandpiper
Whimbrel
Red-tailed hawk
Common poorwill
Loggerhead shrik

From here on, Nick says, the wind can blow as it will.  Now that we’ve reached the Isla de San Jose, we’re protected from el Norte all the way into La Paz harbor.  I paddle with Dawson at an easy pace, skimming close to shore to watch shorebirds.  We spot more least sandpipers, spotted sandpipers, willets, a whimbrel.  As we study the birds, Dawson notes their features, cataloguing them thoroughly and aloud, helping
emblazon identifying marks on our brains.  When we’re out of shorebirds, we paddle farther out and surf south on some small breakers to catch the other paddlers. We camp a second night on the Isla de San Jose, on a long, unbroken crescent of beach.  Artifacts we haven’t seen thus far on the trip litter the shore of the isla.  Louise picks through the shells and bones on the cobbly sand.  Juan and Nick identify them—pelican breastbone with huge sternum, whale vertebra, turtle rib.  Rough, white pieces of coral lie entrapped in the tangled green filament of a fisherman’s net.I wander up an arroyo toward the center of the island, looking for birds.  Such a changed view from here, the stripes of flat-lying sediments running unbroken along the low, southern sierra.  Sunset over the sea now to the west behind forests of organ pipe and cholla cactus.  An osprey enjoys a meal of triggerfish or pipefish atop a cardon, and then flies off with the remains of its slender catch, reminiscent of a hawk carrying a snake.  I let the arroyo pull me higher up its course over an alluvial fan until I can see past the southern tip of the isla toward the Bahia de la Paz. On my way back to camp, I startle up a pair of sleeping nightjars.  They divide and scatter.  I track one from its first hiding place to the next and next.  After following it to about a half-dozen hideouts, I’m sure the bird’s a common poorwill and not a nighthawk.  Then I leave it in peace to recover its mate and rest for evening hunting, less than an hour off.  Another life bird stumbled upon.
 
Day Ten
Isla de San Francisco

Mangrove warbler
Royal tern

Today I team up with young Kristian to paddle the remaining shore of the Isla de San Jose.  Paddling with Kristian is like having a motor in the rear of the boat.  But he’s not just strong and energetic, he’s observant.  He spotted a blue-footed booby yesterday, a single bird with feet so sharply bright blue against its body they could have been painted on.  We cruise beside Gary and Dawson, and Gary asks me how I keep my life list.  He and Mary Ann enjoy birdwatching, too, and they like to record a joint list on their computer.  I tell him my method, begun more than twenty-five years ago, which doesn’t involve electronics.  I just mark what I’ve seen in field notes that I copy later to a bird diary at home.  If there’s something special about the occasion on which I’ve seen a particular bird, I note it in the margins of the home diary.  My devotion to the life list is not like that of some people, who travel the globe to score life birds.  But I like to remember each of the little creatures, with their hard-beating hearts and fragile bodies, and the life list helps.  My bird book tells me that such lists are a source of great pleasure, enabling you to look back and remember the first time you saw a bluebird or an eagle. Nick tells us we’ll be paddling through a mangrove estuary today at the south end of the isla.  I ask him if he’s seen the yellow mangrove warbler, found only in the mangrove swamps and estuaries of Baja California.  Nick says he has, and we might spot one today.  When we reach the estuary, a still, buggy channel, Nick spies one of the small, dark-green birds among the branches of a mangrove.  He identifies its sharp chipping call.  Paddle ahead of the group, he advises, try for one.  The mangrove warbler is dark green with an orange cap, much like an orange-crowned 		warbler but with brighter green plumage.  Young Kristian and I paddle ahead of the group, sliding past the clicking roots of the mangroves, scanning the rare places where a bare branch can be seen among the yellow and green foliage.  Here it’s easiest to bird by sound, and I’m lucky enough as I target the call to glimpse one of the warblers as it hops to a branch within view.  Immediately the bird hops away.  By the time young Kristian, who’s sitting four feet behind me, has skimmed into range, the warbler’s gone. At lunch, on a still, hot spit of beach, low tide has exposed fields of barnacles closed to the sun.  Nick notes that this part of the isla gets up to 150 degrees in the summer, that any exposed creatures must be able to withstand temperature and moisture extremes.  He also notes that the barnacle has the longest penis of any creature approximately its size.  He relates this fact more than once, to several members of the group, at various locations on the shore.  Louise and Mary Ann explore, turning up rocks to see what clings to their undersides.  On this apparently dormant spit, they discover snails, brittle stars in motion, a little crab so covered with fuzz that it looks like a walking featherduster.  Louise says, I wish I could remember everything I’ve seen in this life.  I need a life list. On our way to camp on the Isla de San Francisco, we stop to chat with a small group of Mexicans that inhabit the village of El Pardito.  The village sits on a treeless, waterless (but also bugless), approximately 100-yard-long rock island.  As we approach, a few villagers toss several dead fish from the beach to make room for us.  Some of the residents sit near shore, some peer from the open windows of adobe houses up the hill.  At the crest of the island, about fifty feet or so above sea level, stands what looks like a tiny white church, not much bigger than a child’s playhouse.  One of the hillside dwellings sports a brightly painted mural of sea creatures, and a woman, the only one I can see, watches us from that building’s window.  Kristian and Suzy tell me that the men of the village are trying to recruit more women to live on their island.  I doubt they’ll have much luck—there doesn’t appear to be much to do here.  A lot of junk seems to be lying around.  Nick wonders how the villagers handle any urges they might have to go walking.  Juan and Antonio seem to know the people of El Pardito.  Antonio parks la Chispa on the beach that’s now clear of dead fish, and he and Juan stay to visit.  The rest of us paddle on to camp.  A few hundred yards offshore, a sea turtle skims beneath us.  We see him surface for a look, up once, then twice, his little head a brown globe on the water, before he moves out to sea
 
Day Eleven
Isla de San Francisco

Great egret

We lay over on the Isla de San Francisco, in a beautiful cove of turquoise water.  We are now in the presence of others—people on yachts that have come over from the mainland.  They’ve come over pulling skiffs in their wake, as motor homes on land pull tiny shuttle vehicles.  These are monied people, hailing from San Diego and Los Angeles, drawn by the same indescribable lure that drew Steinbeck, that drew us: . . . and we have talked to rich men who own boats, who can go where they will.  Regularly they find themselves sucked into the Gulf. Music from their radios drifts across the water.  From our nightly campfire, we see the yachters searching the steep hillsides of the isla with spotlights.  Only later when we’re in our sleeping bags do Louise and I guess at what they’ve been looking for, the source of the same curious noise we now hear up in the hills.  At first it sounds like someone snoring, then we realize it’s too far upslope to be anyone on our trip.  We write off the sound as the bleating of goats and fall asleep. In the morning, Nick wants to climb to the highest point of the isla.  Some of us accompany him in his quest for the summit, up goat trails through volcanic scree on steep slopes and in ravines.  No well-worn paths on this isla.  Up top, we’re rewarded by striking views of the Isla de San Jose to the north, the wild waters of the gulf to the east, and the long line of peninsula to the west.  Little green coves ring the isla.  Las 		pangas dot the surface of the surrounding ocean.  A group of sea kayakers heads across the gulf for the peninsula, looking a bit like a school of fish, the edges of their pod always shifting.  We can’t see mainland Mexico.  We do see the goats we’ve heard, though, not up close but watching us from a distance.  They’re big, feral animals with barrel chests and narrow horns.Back on the beach, afternoon snorkeling lasts for hours.  Bill, who has dived all over the world, finds a sea snake, as well as a sculpin or scorpionfish.  Jeffe and Dawson spot more than one kind of eel.  The soft forms of penicillate jellyfish drift through shallow water like swarms of parachutes falling to earth.  Among the small fishes, which seem more varied here than along the peninsula., Louise and I observe some of the Sergeant Majors changing color from mostly yellow to deep blue as we approach territory they don’t want to yield.  Almost always the fish that shift colors before our eyes are backed into little rock nests.They won’t budge, they’re not mobile like the others.  Louise thinks they’re spawning, the color change signaling their great alarm at our huge forms.  The color change sweeps over their scales in pulses, as if the fish are blushing blue and you can watch the fear or anger rise and fall in them by turns. After dark, a forty-foot tour boat, chartered by Nick, putters into the cove, only its bow and stern lights visible.  Nick usually finishes his trips with a paddle back across to the peninsula, but this time our plans include a boat ride for the remaining forty miles into La Paz, by way of Isla Espiritu Santu.  I don’t want to leave the beach or the sea, but the arrival of the tour boat seems definitive.  Our time here is nearly gone.  Juan and Antonio amble downshore to greet the boat’s captain and crew.  A light shines from the cabin of the boat for a while as the men talk.  Then all is dark again except the lights atop the masts of our tour boat and the yachts, and at their bows and sterns.  In the morning we’ll say our good-byes to Juan and Antonio, who will run la Chispa back to Loreto.  Taking leave of them will feel a little like removing a limb.
 
Day Twelve
La Paz, B.C.

Storm-petrel Rising at dawn here has been easy, because the sea is full of such strange and wonderful sights.  Our last morning is no exception, although the day’s first event seems more strange than wonderful—the lights of a cruise ship crossing from the peninsula.  The ship looks small at first, a marvelous miniature, but as it approaches I see that it’s huge, and it’s heading for our cove.  The ship is the gaudiest entity I’ve seen in days.  Its arrival before sunrise accentuates the brilliance of its lights, not just perched bow and stern but shining from railings and deck and cabin windows in the gray-blue of morning.  Within the hour the ship has pulled alongside the yachts, although several fled the cove as soon as they saw it coming.  A door opens in the side of the ship, and a huge hatch drops, disgorging a skiff.  A crew member buzzes about in the skiff to the ship’s bow and stern, spotting anchors that feed out, dragging clanking heavy chains.  Soon the skiff has become a shuttle boat to bring los gringos to shore.  They land on the beach in great herds that mill about on the sand and snorkel the cove. With the advent of the ship, we’re ready to leave.  We climb aboard the tour boat just as two men from the village of El Pardito arrive.  They’ve caught a shark in their net, another four footer.  They show us their catch and chat merrily with the tour boat’s crew.  During the crossing to La Paz, I keep my storm-petrel vigil.  Fortunately I see one—a single black bird, flying close to the water, flight direct but wingbeats erratic, like those of a bat.  The bird seems to have little substance, as if hanging by a string and flapping its wings for whimsy.  And yet it makes progress over the sea.  The storm-petrel passes within 10 yards of the boat, and I point it out, but even with Nick and Dawson witnessing, we’re not sure which kind of storm-petrel it is.  We just haven’t seen enough of this kind of bird.  We keep looking, hoping to see another one, hoping to see everything.  The captain of the ship tells us he hasn’t spotted whales today, which is rare this time of year.  He says they might be closer to shore, off toward the peninsula. For lunch, we visit a rock island favored by dozens of sea lions.  They sleep in the sun or sit up barking as we arrive.  Nick encourages us to swim out and play with them.  We’re not sure about this until he assures us they’re not threatened by swimmers, people have been swimming here every day for twenty years.  We just have to be cautious not to crowd them or challenge the bulls’ territory.  The pups like to play, he says, but they’ll become bored with us easily, so we have to stay interesting.  Jeffe jumps into the water first, followed by me, Louise, and Dawson.  Soon we’re surrounded by moms with their pups, rolling, diving, somersaulting, spiraling.  We hang in the water upside down, making faces at the pups, then emerge laughing and gasping.  More of our party dive from the boat to engage with the sea lions.  At one point, I follow a mom and her pup, and my attempts to appear interesting are misinterpreted.  A small bull swims for me, teeth bared.  I call to Louise, who has seen 		the vampire look, too, on a bull showing its white fangs to her above water. Kristian swims longer than the rest of us, staying in the water for some time. He’s gone off toward a rock arch, following a single sea lion.  As we wait for him, we speculate that he’s found a mate and will sire a selkie with her.  Perhaps he’ll never return.  But he does eventually, and we find that our guesses are not far off base, that he’s communed with a female lion who has led him under the rock arch to play.  No mating seems to have taken place, but Kristian looks deeply affected.  I’m in love, he says. I’ve found my soul mate. Onward to La Paz, and most of the group sits up front in the sun and spray off the boat’s bow, determined to soak up as much as possible of the sea.  Louise and I climb up to the crow’s nest to ride the last miles above the ocean, its side-to-side rocking motion exaggerated by the swinging height of the mast.  The houses and trees of La Paz come into view.  I’m startled at the sight of this large, low-lying city, its cars moving on distant roads.  To be in the presence of hills draped in anything but rock and chaparral feels foreign.  Nonetheless I feel a deep soul satisfaction as we ride the boat in, while we’re still out to sea, still riding a boat on the Sea of Cortez. When we reach the outer edge of La Paz harbor, we’re joined by a pod of dolphins that hangs in our wake, bow and stern.  They ride just below the water’s surface, pushed or drawn by the boat, effortlessly keeping our pace.  The dolphins escort us for a good ten minutes before they disappear all at once, as if in response to a signal. La Paz is a lovely, friendly town.  After the heat of the day passes, Louise and I stroll the streets looking in shop windows and enjoying the beachside promenade.  We are encouraged to see fewer tourists than expected.  This town still belongs to its people, senoritas dressed for their jobs and senores in pressed pants and summer sleeves.  They nod and smile with genuine delight as los gringos greet them with buenos tardes.  And we wondered why so much of the Gulf was familiar to us, why this town had a “home” feeling.  We had never seen a town which even looked like La Paz, and yet coming to it was like returning rather than visiting. At the docks, a magnificent frigatebird sits atop a light pole, his red throat pouch puffed out for breeding display.  The sun drops, and lights come on in town.  At our hotel, Los Arcos, we meet in the bar for a drink.  The walls are lined with photographs of celebrities who came to fish the gulf in the really good days.  One of my favorite pictures shows Clark Gable standing with cigarette in hand in front of Los Arcos.  He’s the mature Mr. Gable, with graying sideburns, in casual clothes.  The ever-present rogue lock of hair graces his forehead, and his proud smile illuminates the entire picture, the whole room.  From a wooden frame beside him hangs a 200-pound marlin, bill down.  Maybe people can still catch fish like that out in the ocean we’ve just paddled through.  The fishermen still come.  For my part, I wouldn’t need to catch them, I’d just like to know they’re there, silver tails flashing in the sun as they jump.  Their power giving life to the sea that feeds them, stirring its surface with an energy that’s gone when they’re gone. A trip like this does not end, it unravels.  In the evening, we share a last supper.  We raise a final toast of margaritas, none of us the strangers who began the journey.  Later we’ll say goodbye in stages.  Some will leave our group on the sidewalk outside the restaurant.  Some will last be seen at the hotel.  Some, like Tsunami Rangers Michael and Dennis, will share a plane ride with Louise and me back to LAX.  In the taxi ride with them to the La Paz airport, I remind myself there’s still time to see life birds.  I check the poles, hoping to see a crested caracara as Jeffe has, but my heart’s not truly in it.  I’m too absorbed by the company of my new friends.
 

Day Thirteen
Home

Flight and baggage delays turned my three-hour layover in LAX into a tight connection to my shuttle to Oakland.  So as soon as we passed through Customs, I had to run for it.  My good-bye to Louise was rushed and inept, as I jogged with the Tsunami Rangers toward the domestic terminals.  When an airline representative directed Michael and Dennis in one direction and me in another, I felt the last threads of our team pull apart.  Feeling wrenched, not wanting to leave them, I blew a kiss toward their grinning faces and ran out of sight. Now, back at home, I put away the trip.  I pack away sleeping bag and pad, wash the sea salt from my clothes, hang my wetsuit back in the closet.  When Louise calls to ask if she’s dreamed it, I can still point to physical evidence that we’ve just been engaged in an adventure.  We can remind each other		 that we can cross this one off together.  my list of thirteen new life birds from field guide to home diary takes me back to particularly incisive moments in Baja.  A storm-petrel glimpsed in flight north of La Paz.  Nappy-headed elegant terns near Punta Colorado.  Brown pelicans flying in formation through the still air at Loreto.I flip through my files and pull out a second life list, the one I couldn’t find before departing on the trip.  It’s my version of Things to Do While Living, including Own the perfect sailboat.  Build a home from the ground up.  Canoe the Boundary Waters.  Visit the Great Barrier Reef.  To my surprise, the very first goal, at the top of the list, is Boat the Sea of Cortez.  Why it’s uppermost on my life list I can’t explain.  I know the world has more varied and exotic lands to explore, but few have made my list.  Perhaps wanting to boat the Sea of Cortez goes back to Steinbeck’s “trigger of recognition,” some feeling of association we’ve always had with the place. Trying to remember the Gulf is like trying to re-create a dream.  This is by no means a sentimental thing, it has little to do with beauty or even conscious liking.  But the Gulf does draw one . . ..  And since we have returned, there is always in the backs of our minds the positive drive to go back again.  If it were lush and rich, one could understand the pull, but it is fierce and hostile and sullen.  The stone mountains pile up to the sky and there is little fresh water.  But we know we must go back if we live, and we don’t know w  I file the list away, crossing off nothing.