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The Road Less Traveled

The Last Baja Sunset
by Alastair Bland

april quarter, 2005

It is May 6, 2004. I am in the desert with not a soul around. Overhead, the sky is pure blue. To the east it meets the peaks of a high mountain range, to the west a smaller ridge of mountains. The terrible sun has heated the country to ninety-five degrees. Though I am walking along a road, I don't expect to encounter any vehicles. I have walked all the way from Mulege, over on the Gulf. I've walked 80 miles in a week, not a car in site. The silence is overwhelming, and, for a moment, I can't help but wonder what I am doing here.

This is the Vizcaino desert in Baja California. I have been traveling the great peninsula for the better part of a year now, on foot, carrying a spear, and living out of my backpack. I have spent most of that time south of latitude 28 - the state border - and north of Cabo San Lucas - Land's End, at 22 degrees north.

Half of me hopes that I can walk this road all the way to its end without encountering a car. Then there is one quarter of me that hopes a pickup will come along and take me to the highway at San Ignacio where I can freshen up and collect myself before continuing on a new road. And the last quarter of me is hoping for a ride with some California surfers who are going all the way to San Diego. If that quarter of me gets its way, I'll be swept out of this desert dreamland of mine and magically transferred to the metropolis of Southern California by nightfall. I am at very loose ends. I am tired and lonely, and I miss home. Yet, I dread the idea of leaving the desert.

Of my many months in the desert, only during the past week have I begun to realize that my self-induced life of poverty is really quite silly - something of a false bubble I've put around myself. In reality, which I have tried to forget, I have a bank account and in my pocket is an ATM card, and it even works here in Mexico in the towns that have cash machines. I did run out of money once, though.. And since I spend a lot of time filling my head with stories from Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck, when my wallet ran dry that day it was, oddly enough, like a dream come true.

I am tired and lonely, and I miss home. Yet, I dread the idea of leaving the desert.

Running out of food is another fantasy I have entertained frequently, though in this warm land where strangers call you "friend," going hungry just doesn't happen. Yet, somehow this morning, I found myself sitting at the roadside scarfing my last spoonful of whole wheat flour. I washed it down with some water from my plastic jug, and for the first time in a year I had nothing left. I was going hungry. I sat down at the side of the road for fifteen minutes and seriously pondered what to do. Then, faintly, my ears picked up the calls of a rooster and some goat bells. I stood up and followed the sounds up a dry river bed to a quiet little ranch. I went to the gate, called "Hello!" and out of the small old shack, through the dusty yard, came a small old man, chickens scattering before him. He regarded me for a moment, then asked, "Coffee?" and opened the wooden gate.

I needed something more than coffee, and I asked for water and if I could buy some flour. But the old man, Jesus, gave me a gift of some old, warm cheese and some stale tortillas. It was nearly all the food he had at the moment, but he saw that I was in a predicament. Jesus told me that the next ranch down the road was called El Cuarenta, eighteen kilometers away. "They make excellent cheese there," he assured me. "You won't go hungry." After he provisioned me I told him I appreciated his charity and that I would not forget him. Last I saw him, Jesus was standing inside of the gate, watching me go. He was born there, he had told me, and I imagine he will die there. I have met many people like him in the Baja ranchlands, and it warms me to know that there are friendly human hearts beating in this lonely desert.

But I wonder at their homes, these humble shacks with their wooden fences and the animals outside, the few skeletal trees in the yard. My own home is in the city of San Francisco. It is a different world, but I am of it, and I miss it. I am dirty, alone, and hungry, but even after so many months I have not managed to break free of my urban American roots. I find myself longing for games of chess with my dad, movies with my mom, and going out for coffee with my brother. The big city is undeniably my home.

During these moments, as I walk along the dirt road, reminiscing on my experiences here and nibbling at my cheese, I just can't help but wonder what I am doing here. This is the Vizcaino desert. The sky above is vast and empty. The mountains around me are dry and forbidding. The terrible sun beats down on me. I am a stranger in a strange land. This country is Jesus's homeland - not mine. I have forsaken all the conventional ambitions of my culture. I have no job and no plans for the future. I have been going about for months now, living out of my pack day by day, wondering each morning what misadventures might befall me. The aspirations of my desert life are simple and easily met: meet some new people, have some coffee, buy some cheese, and perhaps spear a fish for dinner. But is this what I have been looking for? What kind of life will leave me truly fulfilled?

I am still hiking along, wondering if I can reach El Cuarenta by nightfall and maybe get some real food in me, when a roaring motor comes from out of nowhere behind me. I whirl around and find four pairs of eyes staring at me. It is a pickup truck, filled with American surfers. They skid to a stop. Their boards are on top. They have room in back for me. They are going to San Diego. Three quarters of me doesn't want to do it, but I find myself climbing aboard.

"We'll be there by ten PM!" one of them shouts back at me cheerfully through the sliding window, and then we're off, racing northward at fifty miles per hour. My spirits sink to rock bottom. I nestle into their pile of bags to escape the wind. My pack and my spear are all I have, but they have everything: food, sodas, beer, tents, surfboards, and much more. Again, my silly, dirt-poor lifestyle suddenly seems so futile and so fake.

In minutes we are zipping by El Cuarenta. The guys up front don't even notice the ranch, but I do. It is a humble cluster of wooden shacks. I see some goats in the corral and some skeletal trees in the yard. I want to shout, "Hey you guys! They have cheese in there!" but that life is over. We'll be home soon. There will be freeways and skyscrapers and banks. I can go to the ATM machine. Then I can buy all the cheese in the world. The land of plenty is just hours away.

The desert vanishes behind us. The western sky turns orange, and I watch the Baja sun sink for the last time. El Norte, the United States, lies just ahead. To think that poor Jesus is still sitting in his humble little shack! This life--this truck bound for San Diego--would be a dream come true for him.

But I, with America looming ahead, begin to cry.