El Pinche Desierto - Part 4
It’s my first time couch-surfing. It’s her first time…being a couch? Tess is older than her profile. She works at the local diary company and as a yoga teacher in the evening. Her two best friends are with her as she arrives at the bus station to pick me up. One owns a beauty salon. The other is a single mother. We buy groceries and cook dinner. There is a lot of chit chat before I retire to the guest room. After nearly a year of sleeping in dormitories, this is luxury. I wake up to Tess getting ready for work. It involves a lot of makeup. A stroll outside reveals, well, nothing. As one might expect of a residential zone in a small city. Antonio picks me up in his car soon after and gives me a tour as well as an ion-cleaning of my feet. He tells me about his efforts to become a life-coach. I stand outside drinking a soda and smoking while he attends to clients. It’s miserably hot. There are no buildings more than three stories high and thus the Sierra Madre Occidental is clearly visible. Later in the day, I join my host’s asana class. I remove my shirt mid-way through. The other ladies are puzzled. Bikram this is not. She has plans with her boss (and lover) later, but orders a pizza for me. Dominos.
The next morning, I observe Tess again. This is a strong woman. She has struggled to build the life that I’m mooching off. Her friends don’t come by today and so, like a seventeen-year old, I spend the day on the phone with a couple of acquaintances. They both went to my alma mater, but I met them fourteen years apart. One is an Italian-Indian electrical engineer. We met in the first year of college and he had promised me his sister in marriage. Still waiting on that. He researches solar vehicles and has settled down with to a seemingly lovely southern girl. Like most men our age, he’s having a bit of a mid-life crisis. The other is a Chinese-American millionaire I met while driving for Uber a few months ago. He made his first fortune selling imported medical devices. His trophy wife took it all. As a trophy. Lol. He made it back though and is working on another start-up. In different circumstances, I might have been following similar career trajectories. Or that of a Big 4 management consultant. Or one of a product manager for a cryptocurrency based out of the Caymans. But that’s what happens when your vata is out of control, I guess. Tess, the incredibly gracious and generous person that she is, tells me can I can stay as long as I’d like. It’s time to leave though.
The next morning I make my way to the bus station but there are no seats remaining. Me and another man wait for the officials to work out a solution. I offer him a biscuit. We board the bus paying a small fee and sit on the floor next to the toilet. It’s a four hour journey to mile marker 267. The bus stops and my companion gets down and walks towards a dirt road about a kilometre away. He has a plastic bag in his hand, a spring in his step and the same grin on his face as the first time I saw him. He’s returning to his home. I’m standing by the highway with a massive backpack, a tent that had been gifted to me and a bewildered look on mine. It’s fucking hot and I have a cold. My phone rings as I start walking towards a ranch I see in the distance. A man is trying to direct me towards a gate, but I jump the fence and enter the property. His name is Javier, he’s the caretaker and he’s been expecting me. We chat briefly. I eat some beans and take a siesta. Or more accurately, pass the fuck out.
The sun is setting. Javier is sitting on the front porch taking in the transition with a beer. He is not wearing a shirt, thereby exposing his absolutely glorious belly. I wonder if it receives the same treatment as Killer Mike’s. The ranch is a large stone edifice with a salon, a kitchen, a few rooms and a dormitory. Out back, the scene is less prosaic. Scrap parts from defunct agricultural and industrial machinery have been used to create an expansive garden and campground. As I walk back in a little while later, I hear grunting. “¿Oye Javier, estás viendo un porno o qué?”. "Yo, Javier, are you watching porn or what?" He is. 90s hardcore. Big-breasted bimbo and bare-chested buffoon bang. Is it a DVD? No. Satellite. There are actually two adult channels. The second appears to be soft-core. We watch for a bit. He occasionally makes a comment about tetas. Breasts. They are large indeed. I go to sleep outside.
And wake up at 6:30 inside. Javier is already up and about. I’m so groggy. I pack in a rush. Fuck. My phone isn’t fully charged. And the back up has only 10%. Unbeknownst to me, it’s been recording audio for the last three days. We make our way in an old Ford pick up to Javier’s house in the nearby village. It’s quaint yet elegant. Again, all the best flourishes are saved for the outside. Rocking chairs facing west. Bougainville. The man is an artist. Inside, his wife serves us breakfast. She doesn’t care much for my presence. I don’t care much for her eggs. They are runny. Javier can sense my disappointment. I wish I hid it better. A younger lady enters the home. She gives his wife insulin shots in the other room. We drive to another house a few minutes away and wake up the young man that lives there. He sells us 400 pesos worth of petrol. Our final stop is a tienda as we approach the highway. Snacks, cigarettes and fruit. No time for niceties. We’re finally on our way. Javier cautions me about what I’m trying to do. His tone is serious. “Lo sé. No quiero morir”. "I know. I don't want to die." I laugh nervously. Half an hour later and just before a toll booth, we turn off the highway onto a mud road. We say goodbye. I also say that I would call the next evening for a ride back and begin walking. It’s overcast. Heavy. Unexpectedly, a pickup goes by. I hop in the back. The vehicle belongs to CONANP. Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas.
We stop at their office building. The driver gets out and points me to a tiny ejido. There are four houses. A lady in one of them allows me to pitch a tent near her now abandoned guest house. She says it’s prohibited to camp in the conservation area and that it’s thirty kilometres away. Had it not rained yesterday, she would have taken me by jeep. I reconsider my “plan” or rather David’s plan to walk there. After taking a nap however, I start. I follow the trail until I don’t. It’s overcast. The air feels heavy. An hour in, I encounter thick shrubbery. My body tenses up. Walking through it is not a wise move, but I do it anyway. A few scratches later, I emerge on the other side and spot another trail a few hundred metres to my left and decide to take it. It leads me around some cerros and, hours later, to a desolate ranch.
The skeletons spread around confirm the aforementioned desolation. Everything here is dying. Or already dead. And I almost kill the one living creature around with my human clumsiness. An earthworm gracefully glides across the parched earth looking for nutrition while I bumble around seeking what exactly?
I notice that I’m being watched. It’s a vulture perched upon a cactus. It flies away when I look at it. Not yet, my firiend. Suddenly, the clouds part a bit and the panorama opens. Leaving behind the ranch, I’ve reached a point where I’m hours from civilization and where what lies ahead is pure unadulterated unknown. I orient myself. Sun – East. Hills – West. Got it. I’m amped. Assisting in that process is a soundtrack by Andrew Bayer. Let’s fucking go. Everything is an experiment. Don’t die.
It isn’t long before the sun disappears in the horizon, but I keep walking. From sunset to twilight to dusk to night. Step after step. Until the goddamn matarral gets in the way again. And unlike last time, there isn’t a way around. Or through. It’s unclear how far it extends to on either side and I’m not willing to risk it. I pace back and forth. I’m stuck. Without a flashlight or a plan. I don’t want to use my phone for concern of being without charge later. So, I decide or have it decided that I’m going to stay and wait till sun comes up again. I grab a stick and try to do some math on a Cost of Being Alive Index to pass the time. It’s starting to get cold and I’m obviously not prepared for that either. Temperatures in deserts can drop significantly at night as the heat from the day dissipates into the usually dry air. I lay down and squirm around, but can’t get comfortable on the cold hard ground. So I just stand. And wait. For hours. Eventually, I’m fatigued enough to crash on the ground. I’m not asleep nor am I awake. The senses are too alert to rest, but the body is too tired to stand. In that state, I suddenly observe a set of lights. Could they be from the highway? I’m miles away from it though and surely I would have seen others. The lights keep coming closer and closer. They’re a set of two orbiting around each other. Closer and closer. Until they’re so close and bright that I have to close my eyes. And when I open them again, the lights are gone. Weird.
Eventually, day breaks and I’m vertical again. The path around the thorny thicket is obviously closer and simpler when you can see . I start walking again, hoping to make ground before the temperature starts rising again. I soon enter a biosfera rich with life. Or at least birds. I spot a rabbit. And it spots me. There is no greater feeling than being recognised by an animal. I continue to trod along, but the sun is now bearing down on me. I’m running low on water. I take a massive shit. It looks almost radioactive in comparison with the dull brown desert sand. I begin to realise that I might not have the physical or digital reserves to make it all the way to silence and back. Nor the time. And the compass on my phone stopped working a while ago. And I had told Javier I would return later today.
And so, heavy hearted, I begin the long walk back. It is a brutal one. I barely have any water left. Unlike the previous day, there are no clouds to shelter me from the searing sun. There is no shade. And no trail either. I just trudge in the general South-West direction. And trudge is the appropriate word. Step after step. Hour after hour.
It is approaching six in the evening when things start to go awry. I’m completely exhausted. Dehydrated. And panicking. My brain is fried. Where the fuck is that goddamn village? I stagger around aimlessly. Defeated. I had expected to be back by know and I’m anxious about having told Javier the same.
Javier! There is 1% left on my phone. And it’s picking up a signal. I call him.
S: Tienes que venir por mi, Javier. Voy a morir. (You have to come for me, Javier. I'm going to die.)
J: Chinga te vas a morir cabron. Vengo por ti. Dónde estás? (The fuck you are, asshole. I'm coming for you. Where are you?)
I try to describe what I see, but the phone cuts out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I cry for God. And my mother. I try to start a fire. But fail. I hang my shirt on a cactus, fall to the ground and wait. And try to calculate if and how Javier could find me. This is what despair feels like. I rummage through my backpack. There’s a rotten avocado. I put it in my mouth. I break a piece of Nopal enduring a few cuts and suck water from it. Luckily, the espinas don’t split my mouth wide open. I now have enough energy to scramble up a hill. Slowly. And there it is, the ejido. For fuck’s sake it was right there. You dumb fuck.
Savage, my ass. Just another preening, pretentious and pathetic pendejo. As far away from a mind of such beauty as I am from all other pursuits. There is no relief or gratitude for being alive or other such Hollywood bullshit. Only anger and annoyance. For feeling anxious about having to return at a particular time. For probably making Javier come all the way out here. For the lectures I’m going to have to listen to. For not having died. Not died died. There was no possibility of that. Either Javier would have found me. Or I would have passed out for a few hours and woken up just fine. No, the death might have been of a part of myself that won’t let go. That only for a fraction of a second allows me to feel that after millions of years of evolution, I am this creature on this planet. And that even deeper within, I am a tiny fleck of infinite cosmos.
Finally, my tent. The bottle of Toronjada is still there. Surprisingly, it’s not that warm. Gulp, gulp, gulp. I then make my way to the senorita’s house. Unsurprisingly, she enquires about my whereabouts and informs me that a CONANP official wanted to speak to me. The sun has set by the time he comes so I can barely see his face, but I can tell that he’s in his early thirties. He explains that it’s not permitted to stay overnight in the restricted area. He speaks in a matter of fact tone and with great respect for the place we’re in. I explain what happened and retire to my tent.
It’s soon morning and the senorita offers me a hearty breakfast of beans and eggs. Her husband rides off on a horse to tend to cattle and she offers me a ride into town. On the way, a man hauling melons hands her a few. I chug down a chocolate milk while waiting for Javier. I greet him with a big smile when he arrives. “Mucha risa, cabron” are the first words out of his mouth. “Very funny, bastard.” We drive back to the ranch where there now a few other people. The most prominent of whom is a silver-haired, denim-clad quinquagenarian named Benjamin. He informs me politely that my shenanigans cost him two hours of Javier’s time and the petrol they used to search for me after my SOS phone call. However, aside from that amount, he says that I don’t have to pay for my bed or for food and that I was welcome to stay there as long as I wanted. He then returns to being a raconteur to his guests. And he is an impressive one, enunciating all the right words. There is a couple in their forties, a man named Andrés who’s an amateur photographer and a teenager, Cesar. They’ve all arrived from the city of Chihuahua on a weekend tour organized by Benjamin. I rest as the group leave for the day’s activities.
A ceremony is planned for the evening. It involves a temazcal and is being led by a young shaman named Amrit. He looks about 25. He is also a yogi and changed his name after a trip to India a few years prior. He begins by heating volcanic rocks till they are almost glowing red. They are then placed inside the structure and water poured over the hot rocks. Before we enter, Amrit offers us a cactus called peyote to eat. When he hears that I had walked over thirty kilometres, he points out that I could have just walked behind the ranch where the peyote grows assuming wrongly that this cactus was the reason for my quest. It’s fleshy and extremely bitter. I eat one gajo by gajo. We then enter the steamy temazcal. The couple, dressed in traditional clothes, can’t tolerate the heat and leave. Only Cesar, the teenager, and I remain. Amrit provides a primer on huichol philosophy and the importance of the five elements; earth, fire, water, wind and ether. The peyote soon begins to take effect. The connection I feel with the ground below is immediate and intense. This mud, this very mud is my home. Not the land to the north I left behind. Nor maybe the land of a billion people born in the name of god that I left as a teenager. I take the earth in my hand and rub it on my face. I alternate between sitting and standing to experience the varying temperatures. I feel cleansed. We eventually leave and head back into the ranch. I see Andrés setting up his camera to capture the night sky.
The morning begins with Amrit showing us his talent with the violin. An excursion to a nearby hot springs follows. By afternoon, the ranch is a flurry of activity as everyone prepares to return to Chihuahua. And soon, it’s just Javier and me once again. We don’t want to say goodbye. He asks what I want to do. Not sure about staying and yet not ready to leave. The refrain of every traveller. I eventually pack my things, walk out to the highway, stick my thumb out and let the road decide.