From last week’s blog: It was the simple, enormous experience of walking into Mexico that, like a shift in the wind, shifted the course of my life. There were five other events on that journey that have stuck with me as well. Each of them were simple events that would never make the headlines of even a local Baja newspaper. But in the life of a 13 year old boy, they were telling little moments, perhaps even ballad-worthy in the hands of the right kind of band.  There was the fast VW; the sunrise tortilla race; Stallone and Pele on a sheet in the street of Cabo; the very slow meal and the fast bus; and the old man in a hat.

Each of these five moments offered me the gift of a certain kind of insight at a sweet and wide open young age. They were like little seeds planted in fresh soil that began to grow and were fed by further experience. I suppose this is how wisdom takes root in us. 

The fast VW van with California plates zoomed past us like a hornet late in the night while we chugged down the Baja peninsula, peering out at the lonely highway from our front seat vantage point. The van reappeared two hours later on the side of the road with three young guys holding up a red gas can and their thumbs.  The driver didn’t speak any English, the guys didn’t speak Spanish. He let them in and gave them a ride to the next town. No big deal. Except that as they bounded off the bus at 2 AM to continue their big adventure, the driver was saying something to them that they weren’t tuning into. I didn’t speak Spanish either but I could see that he was asking them to contribute for the ride. They were oblivious. I assume they just thought they were hitchhiking like back home and hooking a free ride.

 But they weren’t back home. They were in another country. 

I tuned into something my mother had been teaching me, which was to be a considerate guest when you visit. As simple as that yet there is so much depth to it. My internal compass shivered in that moment and I understood that one could travel with their eyes closed to the people around them, or have them wide open and put those people first. Those guys were visitors here, and so was I. I silently told myself I wouldn’t be the one who didn’t pay for the ride.  Whatever it took, I would try to figure out how to be a respectful, considerate, and humble guest. And with that feeling inside of me, I fell asleep. 

A few hours later, just before sunrise, the bus stopped on the edge of a tiny oasis of a town in the desert. We had 20 minutes. Scott led me on a speed walking race through the chilly streets until he found a little store where he bought a can of beans and another of jalapeno peppers in vinegar. And then we continued on, me trailing behind his long legs, until he found a cottage tortilla factory with a squeaky conveyor belt contraption churning out fresh, soft, crisp-edged tortillas. I’d never seen tortillas made before. The only ones I’d ever eaten were cardboard-like things made of corn flavored sand.  Or weird, crackly, U shaped taco shells that broke apart in your hand on the first bite, spilling the oily, crumbled hamburger, iceberg lettuce and ketchup-sweet salsa into your lap.  

He bought a kilo for a few coins and we raced back to the bus. I was carrying the warm bundle of tortillas wrapped in butcher paper and they exhaled a moist, earthy yellow scent for the entire walk and right back up the steps into the bus with us. As I wiped sweat from my forehead and the bus pulled back onto the highway, Scott pulled out his Swiss Army knife and made us little tacos with the beans, jalapeños and fresh tortillas. He wrapped each taco with two of the delicate, hot tortillas and we bit into them like we hadn’t eaten in a week.  They were extremely uncomplicated and absolutely delicious.   

In this way, Scott began to teach me the high art of shoe-string travel. The art of doing things simply, having your feet on the ground, spending your centavos wisely, meeting a place eye to eye and the pleasure of fresh tortillas.

A few days later we came across Sylvester Stallone and Pele on a sheet in the street of Cabo San Lucas. During one of our evening wanders we found ourselves on the edge of town and in a dirt field some entrepreneur had set up a movie theater. It consisted of a bunch of folding chairs with a simple fence around them, a guy selling cheap tickets at the entry and a big white cotton sheet strung between two poles. Oh, and of course a two-reel projector. The movie was called Victory starring Stalone and Pele. 

The entire bill was probably about 25 cents, but Scott treated just the same.  Each time the breeze blew off the Sea of Cortez, which was most of the time, the screen would bulge and rumble like a sail. And so would Stallone and Pele. People who didn’t want to pay for a seat stood around outside the fence and watched. If you got bored of the movie you could watch the stars above or look at people coming and going on the street. But the best part of all were the little boys. They had brought whirling, fizzing, sparkling fireworks with them. They would light them and then laugh gleefully and gyrate about as the fireworks spun under people’s seats. 

This may have been the most enjoyable moment of the entire trip. If I think about what I really felt then, it was the fresh air of  liberation. Here there could exist something so simple, playful, utterly affordable and so joyfully human as an outdoor movie theatre. Coming from a country dense with rules and regulations this little cinema with firecracker boys felt like an act of rebellion. But of course it was just another night in Mexico. 

The tale of the very slow meal and the fast bus unfolded on our last day there. After a week of eating beach picnics curated from grocery store shelves or dining at street stands or little hole in the wall eateries, Scott decided we should celebrate with a fancy meal. So we went to a tourist-grade restaurant with tablecloths (albeit covered in clear plastic), napkins and archways. There was even a waiter. And what we did there, more than anything else, was wait. Which might have been fine, slow-food movement and all, except that we had a homeward-bound bus to catch in an hour. No worries said the waiter. There was only one other table with customers in the entire place. But time passed and food didn’t appear. Scott insisted more, and when our meal finally arrived we wolfed it down without tasting it and ran out with our bags to the bus station. The bus we were catching was to take us three hours to La Paz where we’d catch a plane to fly back to Tijuana. It was the only bus leaving that afternoon. And, as it turned out, it had already left. 

We stood there with belly aches in the hot sun, despondent with our backpacks drooping in our hands. I thought it was all hopeless and that we might be stuck here forever. But in no time, Scott hit upon a solution. This is why it’s smart to travel with wise elders. He hailed a cab, pointed toward La Paz and said “catch the bus!”.  After a nail-biting eternity, which probably lasted 30 minutes, we did catch the bus. 

Perhaps an hour and a half after that I was throwing up from food poisoning in the back of the bus. Between waves of nausea I reflected on the irony that the “best” restaurant we ate at was the worst. 

And so began my less than noble return from my first journey to Mexico. But the rough ending did nothing to distract me from the life -expanding feast of experiences and insights I had during that week. When I got home and my mom asked me how it was, I said with all the brightness of a young boy, “It was really cool Mom!”.  Which is a thirteen-year-old’s way of saying I fell head over heels in love with that place.  

In retrospect I now know that Tijuana and Baja were just the outer, and somewhat tattered edge of a resplendent symphony of tumultuous, vibrant, ferile, ancient, non-linear, earth-infused humanity called Mexico. But even the outer, tattered edge was an unbelievable feast to my hungry soul. And it was more than enough to open my eyes to possibility. 

There was one other experience that has stayed in my memory from that trip that I want to share. It was the simplest of them all, lasting no more than a minute and it happened at the very beginning of the trip. We were on that first long bus ride, perhaps 3 hours south of Tijuana. Night had fallen. Scott had the window seat, I had the aisle and was gazing out the window at the endlessly flowing night road when someone’s voice behind me caught my attention. I turned and saw that across the aisle and one row behind an old man in a hat was leaning forward saying something to me. His face was wrinkled from age and weather. His hat was made of palm, tattered on the edge, sweat stained around the brim. He had white eyebrows and gentle and kind eyes. 

“Niño,” he said, “Niño, de donde vienes?” 

I looked at him blankly, not understanding a thing and digging through my mind for some wisp of comprehension.  He smiled at me and repeated his question.

“De donde vienes, niño?”  

I turned to Scott, “What’s he saying?”

“He’s asking you where you’re from.” 

“Oh!”, excitedly I turned back to him, “Um, I’m from Genoa, Nevada.” 

He smiled and nodded, kindness and curiosity emanating from his eyes. He said something else, chuckled softly, nodded again and leaned back into his seat. I smiled back, wishing I could say something he’d understand, feeling awkward and rather helpless. Having no words to make, I turned back to watch the road go by.

I wanted to talk to that old man. I didn’t know about what.  Anything really, but I did not have the ability. Yet something within me suspected that he knew things that might matter.  It was a quiet feeling, slow and peaceful like a sleeping whale in a tropical sea. And once again my internal compass shivered, knowing that there was something here with meaning and that I should pay heed. 

And I did. Years later I figured out how to build the most beautiful parts of my life around what I call Patio Work. Patio Work involved sitting in the patio shade of some Mexican village house and chewing the fat with an old timer.  They were quiet places where I could feel the earth all around holding me. Open-toed leather sandals, dusty feet, the earthy smells of wood smoke, clay, sheep must, donkey manure and the warm yellow waft of cooking corn. Some far off radio with tuba-driven ranchera music and nearer still the pat, pat, pat of someone making tortillas. By hand. Time and again I’d sit in the shade with old-time people and talk about the weather, cutting firewood, digging for clay, how the corn was growing, or where I came from. 

In between the words, those old timers, quiet, humble and with calloused hands, who materially had little but were full of peace and presence, role-modeled for me an antidote to the hurried hollowness of the world I’d come from. And that has been priceless for my soul. 

The old man with the hat on the bus was my first taste of Patio Work and intuition told me to search out more of that. But first I had to grow a bit, learn Spanish and figure out how to return to the land of fresh tortillas, open sky cinemas and fireworks. 

The gateway to all of that turned out to be in the rainiest corner of California. But that’s a story for next week.