Rambling Down South...

First, I'd like to apologize to all my friends who followed my musings over the last many months. I was embarrassed to realize that I haven't posted since January. Shame on me. We should never be too busy to spend a little time with our friends. Lo siento mucho...

Many of you know that I am now spending a lot of time down in Mexico. We are still doing a lot of preliminary work on getting our northern Baja project up and running, and my last couple of trips down have involved a lot of running around the peninsula, going places that I've never been, meeting new people (some friends, some not), and getting more immersed in this new culture.

Having just wended my way through the time change in the states, I had the opportunity to do it again just yesterday here in Mexico. When you throw in my sojourn a few weeks back through Arizona, land of the eternal mavericks, I guess it's understandable that I have no frigging idea what time it is. My body is telling me that if I'm going to keep screwing with it like this, I'm gonna have to let it set the clock and I'm the one that will need to adjust accordingly. So far, so good. Can't much fight mother nature, and she manifest herself most directly through our internal clocks, metabolism, etc. She's also telling me I need to work on my abs, but that's another story...

So, last night as we were driving up to Los Barriles for dinner, I had the unique experience of almost running down a wild burro on the road. Yes, seriously. He wandered right out in front of us, stopped, looked me square in the eye, as if saying, "Come on, gringo, I dare you." If he'd known how sketchy the brakes were in the truck I was driving he might not have been quite so ballsy. As it was, I really though I was goin to bump him before I brought it to a complete halt, but I never felt a thump and he grinned over his shoulder as he sauntered off into the brush. I told my partner that I'd seen dozens of signs all over these parts warning about cattle in the road, but hadn't seen a single head actually on any of the "major" thoroughfares I've driven, although they of course wander up and down the dirt roads in the periphery of the villages like they own the place. He couldn't explain why there were no "Watch out for wild burros" signs...

So one of my joys of being here is walking the beaches, collecting shells and rocks from the sea, and just communing with nature. Tonight, as every night, the stars are brilliant and breathtaking, and it would be easy to get lost staring up at them while listening to the waves slapping rhythmically onto the shoreline. I can't make that a habit, or I'm likely to forget that I'm here primarily for work. I fear serenity might be terribly addictive...

A few thoughts that have come to me in the past few days as I take my morning strolls on the beach? Well, sure...

One is that walking on the beach for a relative novice is at the outset a scientific experiment. Mind you, my walks tend to be several miles, and walking on wet sand soon makes you keenly aware of things you wouldn't ever have cause to consider walking down a hardpack trail or along city sidewalks. You need to learn which levels of sand will bear your weight, and which will give way and leave you mired ankle deep. You need to learn what footwear, if any, is appropriate. Beach sand, like unwelcome houseguests, arrives unexpectedly and doesn't leave readily. And it's highly abrasive. If surf socks (which are great for swimming and surfing)kept the sand out to begin with, they would be ideal. Unfortunately, they let it in more slowly but NEVER give it up. Flip flops, which the natives like to wear, don't trap sand. However, they do an incredible job of flipping sand up the back of your calves with each and every step, have the attachment piece between the big and second toe which I find terribly annoying, and don't allow for a very efficient stride. In the end, bare feet are likely the best, and if you're blessed with wide feet, as we would all likely have if we'd not started binding them in shoes centuries ago, there is no question. Because in the end, when you or I, being 70 percent water, walk along the shoreline of a sea or ocean from which our ancient ancestors first emerged, we are comingled as nearly as we can be with our planet, which is amazingly, seventy percent water. Crazy, huh?

On a related but slightly different note, it occurred to me this morning, for perhaps the first time in my life, while walking along one of the most pristine shorelines in North America, that I was walking along water which was joined with every other great body of water on the planet. I gazed out at an opportune moment to spot the giant back of a whale emerging from the depths - a whale which likely had swum many of the great oceans of the earth. I shared this tale and realization with my wife this evening - that if I were inclined I could just keep walking - south to Cabo, then northward up the coast to California (the American one), on to Oregon, Washington, and all the way up to Alaska, where later ancestors (than those which first crawled up on land) wandered across the land bridge to what is now called Russia. Thoughts such as these are really not hard to come by when you're wandering alone on a ogrgeous stretch of beach - not a sign of civilization anywhere (if you ignore the tire tracks in the sand...)

Did I mention that before I headed out three young Mexicans drove down to the beach, one emerging from the truck, wandering down to a rocky parch on the shoreline, only to emerge mere moment later carrying a very attractive lobster? Even crazier, huh?

And yesterday I had a visit with a couple of German tourist ladies lounging under a palapa in front of a seaside hotel near town. One, a retired Lufthansa flight attendant, said that she wasn't much taken with this piece of Mexico - that it was too hot and dry and there was no culture - nothing to do. I just shook my head as I walked away. Nothing to do? How crazy is that? She could always go for a walk on the beach. Barefoot...