There are topographies that I equate with catharsis. Mountains. With their slate sky showcase and rapid motion clouds. And more and more – high desert. That in-between land where the tenacious, scraggly trees and shrubs fight like hell to grow.
Where hard men and women win the right to live amongst this rugged grandeur because they agree: It will not be for the lazy, for the entitled, for the weary of heart. Where every truck is covered with ruddy dust and a half dozen kids laugh and wrestle in the flatbed. Where you watch a sweep of horses run across the spine of a hill until you lose them behind a bank of eucalyptus and olive trees.
Where we roll to the top of the next hill and I could stretch my arms out and spin and spin and not hit the shadow of a city in a hundred orbits. Where I can breathe in the land, greedy and frantic, consume it all for myself and the family that lives at the hacienda at the bottom of the valley will not mind. They will understand.
The coast was striking too – almost Mediterranean. And we drank our tart margaritas cliffside and ate ceviche and queso fresco at roadside stands and paid it its due. But the decision to turn inland was like remembering your way home. A long day lost in those arid foothills and ranches and humble glory and I am a new woman.
Occasionally, a stretch of time is more than you could track or justify on paper. It’s not the hours or miles it covered but its collection of 83 independent moments that deliver you from your wallowing mire. A day crying. A day smiling. A day laughing aloud. Again. Oh, again.
I don’t think we rolled up the windows for three days; My hand must have sliced through a hundred years of Mexican air, happy as a dog’s head. My hair whipped and tangled like forgotten old barn twine. Round the craggy rise and fall of the Baja California coast, driving too fast. Out in to that encompassing heat of the high desert and surprise vineyards that rose up like oases.
Sometimes you can’t wait for the next step to come. You have to fly to the border and set out after it like your life depends on it. You have to choose a road partner who gets it; Who knows to turn up the mix cd just loud enough and play it until you know the songs by heart. Who sings along and lets you stare out the window, quiet but grinning for a dozen hours. Who pats your leg occasionally, stops on a narrow little cusp so you can take a millionth photograph of the sea and makes a little fun of you until you laugh at yourself (and that has been so long!). Who accepts your impractical suggestions, your irresponsible judgment because he knows you well enough to know you need this. Who says, “Why not? Why not let’s stay for two more days?” instead of the half day or so we discussed.
Why not keep heading south away from the states? Back to the girl you remember being. The people we really are.
Who brings you to a land that brings you back to life and so happy to be so.
