The grind continued. I feel like I slowed down. At least in the mornings rolling out of my bag.
I again packed up, this time from behind the truck stop, and I pedaled on. Mulege barely in the rear view. I would ride up into the central mountains again, going to the deepest villages of my fantasies – Comundu, Carambuche, La Purisma, San Isidro. These places were only a stone’s throw from Scorpion Bay the other way, but to venture across the peninsula and roll into them on back roads became surreal; or that was the course ever since Bahia de los Angeles. I stayed for a few days in La Purisma and San Isidro before pedaling back out of there and on through Comundu. Just sleepy natured villages and ranches out living real slow. I would stay at a ranch one night and then I would eventually climb up to San Javier, the last small mission village of my sojourn. Each place was limited by the harshness of its surroundings but within it there was some kind of lush garden – the reason for its existence. It was like looking back 100 years in time to witness it. To know that down in Baja there are living autonomous villages is otherworldly to me and exactly what I wanted to experience. This would be the peak of my experience in Baja. And so I left San Javier after days of siesta. I ventured south and west and toward Cuidad Constitucion, a place that weighs heavy on my heart because of the harsh truth it brought to me.
What I’ve not stated thus far is that I attempted this ride twice, with the initial effort failing, due to injury, and becoming a completely different story, but it did involved me riding from Todos Santos through the Sierra and over to Ciudad Constitución; after hitchhiking the peninsula from San Quentin. And so now again I had descended out of the mountains and I was arriving to Ciudad Constitution again and again I was staring down the same washboard I had ridden a year ago and planely I did not want to do it. I did not want to venture further south to La Paz and the Cabos and I was still full of stone cold sober anxiety and I made a dashed decision. I wanted to be home with format and containment because I think the most of my anxiety was out there in Baja in the wind and the desert where everything is uncontained and spending too much time out there and you yourself begin to unravel and become uncontained. I came in close contact with my uncontained self and I knew there was a better permutation to be had.
“He told the boy that although he was huérfano still he must cease his wanderings and make for himself some place in the world because to wander in this way would become for him a passion and by this passion he would become estranged from men and so ultimately from himself. He said that the world could only be known as it existed in men’s hearts. For while it seemed a place which contained men it was in reality a place contained within them and therefore to know it one must look there and come to know those hearts and to do this one must live with men and not simply pass among them. He said that while the huérfano might feel that he no longer belonged among men he must set this feeling aside for he contained within him a largeness of spirit which men could see and that men would wish to know him and that the world would need him even as he needed the world for they were one. Lastly he said that while this itself was a good thing like all good things it was also a danger.” – The Crossing , Cormac McCarthy
And so I made a decision there in the ciudad that will remain with me the rest of my life. I went down to the bus depot and I bought the ticket and I ejected out of Ciudad Constitucion for the border. End of story (but not really). It would take me three days to get back into the united states crossing in Tijuana.
