Log from the Sea of Cortez May 6th 2014
I’ve never seen a rock snake before. There is one crawling out to sea just south of where we’re camped. It grows when they feed it. Truck after truck of big rocks seem to please it. When it gets long enough they plan to kill it – right there in place. They’ll use its length to capture tourists and feed them into tour boats. They’ll use this rock snake to grow the local economy. With its tail ending at a large reception area built to sell rubber tomahawks, beer, margaritas and things stuffed with shrimp, this attraction is snaking its way into the local Sandy Beach scene. We’ve never seen anything so strange and intriguing. Got to live a long time to even imagine it.
For almost forty years we have felt urges to return to the sea. We’ve been here when high tides and storms almost washed us away. Got our skin burned here. Raised two amazing kids who know more about the tidal pools than a fire worm. We have a home here – well, a tin tube with a microwave and hot shower.
Our trailer is filled with ghosts – some call them memories – gleaned from trips across this continent and umpteen-million trips to get a little sand in our shorts. For the past two decades the trailer rusts here in a corral. It sleeps until we come to wake it and open the windows to the sea air. No one knows how the winter storms and summer heat chill it or roast it. Can’t say it matters as long as it wakes up and offers the king size bed and great Italian espresso for its returned brood.
It is amazing! What a life we have made for ourselves. The sea when we need that fix. In the Colorado mountains by a roiling stream when our needs dictate that joy. Across the oceans, in tin tubes called planes, and over trails shanks mare or in vehicles designed to be rugged and uncomfortable. It is all about nature, but with a major difference. People make the difference. Friends met along the trail. Family makes the difference. Time to share and bond and – this is important – time to experience life as it must be lived: Together. Hey, we get to choose our family
and it is always growing as we find ways to love.
We had many choices as the years rolled by. We chose to wander and see, or work at tasks of some importance, so we told ourselves. Of course what we remember – what I can recall and relive after 75 years – is our time walking in beauty on this planet where we are given such short time to be one with creation.
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