Burning Through XV - Completing the Cleanse

Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner leaves San Diego central heading north at precisely 6:00 am. It’s New Years day and half of the passengers are heading for the Rose Bowl game in Pasadena. We speed along the suburb laden shoreline enroute to LA where I transfer to the train that will deliver me 36 hours later to Seattle. It’s fast, efficient and a great way to see southern California at dawn and on this day to learn the betting odds for Penn State versus USC at the Rose Bowl.

North of Santa Barbara the track hugs the wild California coast through a roadless section featuring a colourful visual palate of the invasive ice plant and range wildlife including coyotes, vultures, and deer. The aqua blue pacific mixed with the autumn colours of the ice plant, puffy white clouds and endless sky makes for a memorable stretch of iron highway. I fall asleep somewhere south of San Francisco to an orange sunset and wake up to a snow storm in northern Oregon.

I am anticipating a warm welcome as the friendliest bus driver on earth delivers us to the Canadian border. The last off the bus I am also the last in line from our bus to be interviewed. All the others get whisked through with ease. When I answer that I went to Mexico for a holiday the customs agent quipped, “going by bus to Mexico doesn’t sound like much of a holiday.” I quickly assess that the true explanation wouldn’t wash - that I went by bus because I needed to stay connected to the earth and move on the ground in order to burn through some emotional baggage; baggage which had been obstacle to getting on with my life and which obstructed truly connecting with my inner authority. Yes, it’s fortunate that I held my tongue.

It is rather upsetting when a customs agent leafs through your diary at 12:30 am after you’ve been on bus, train and bus again for 4 days straight, you smell like an Amtrak toilet and your glasses are broken so everything which is normally double because you have double vision is now triple or quadruple. My mind is moving slow but I realize he suspects me of something when he squirts out my toothpaste, reads my hotel and bus receipts, looks at the pictures on my camera and puts his latex gloved hand into my spare socks. When he asks what my wife thinks of me going to Mexico without her by bus I am speechless, but to myself I recall her laughing when I proposed the trip. By the time I am given the OK to proceed my mouth feels as dry as the Baja in August.

I feel my stomach turn over as we enter Vancouver. It’s not the graded snow piles heaped up against curb side cars that upsets me, it’s something to do with somebody I don’t know assuming I am being dishonest, that’s what really hurts. I’m so pathetically sensitive.

After a cold wait for the sky train then a bus to get to Kits, I am back in my apartment. Unlocking the door I hear Elizabeth from the bedroom say, “You’re home!,” and I feel warm and welcome. Over the next three days my body completes its cleanse with a full compliment of stomach ache, endless hiccups, diarrhea and other discharge. By the end of it I feel lighter.

What started out as a passing thought during lunch with colleagues in November 2008 turned into a transformational journey. You never know where your thoughts will take you unless you follow them.

Burning Through XIV – Passport Scanners and a Lumberjack Breakfast

Ensenada before dawn reveals this country's sleepy nature. My lonely walk to the bus terminal on lamp lit streets contrasts the touristy bustle at mid day, now devoid of diesel drenched streets. To my surprise, the 6:00 am border bus fills. As I settle in my seat the driver inserts the first of several videos chronicling 80’s “new romantic” rock. After 25 minutes of Duran Duran vintage bands pounding out spandex stunners, I consider leaping out into the foggy stretch of cliff side highway. This all helps to consolidate my feeling that I truly am done with Mexico.

An orange sun is just rising over Tijuana as we navigate her highways and overpasses. I sit anticipating the border and how I will respond to questions about why I don’t have a tourist permit. The predictable riffs of Spandau Ballet aren’t enough to distract my anxiety. To my surprise the bus trip ends at the Tijuana airport. My protests about promises of transport to the border are met with a blank stare. The driver, white dress shirt, thin Latino mustache and slicked back mullet points to the taxi station. Fifteen US dollars later and I am at US customs, one among the hundreds of Mexican day pass workers heading to San Diego to scrub floors and trim hedges for the wealthy.

I brace as the serious Customs Officer waves me forward. He glances at me then swipes my passport through his scanner saying, “proceed.” Whoosh, I am in the united States of America. I had been imagining this moment since my first pre dawn steps on the bus station tarmac in Tijuana 10 days earlier. I have been creating anxiety raising scenarios since then about what could happen if I am questioned about having no tourist permit.

I sweep past the x-ray machine out of the customs building. Its so clean I feel like I could eat off the sidewalk butting up against the shinny red trolley cars quietly loading to take sleepy passengers to San Diego. Everything seems to hum with precision. I purchase my ticket from a machine with some US dollars I purchased from a rip off money changer 50 paces the other side of the customs officer.

An hour later and I am in an American Denny’s surrounded by a lot of very big people, stuffing down a lumberjack breakfast – 3 thick pancakes dripping with sugary syrup, gobs of bacon, sausage and a giant orange juice – with pulp. Molly my waitress, with the friendly pride you only experience in these united States barks – “I’m right over here honey if y’all need anything.” America the beautiful.

Burning XIII – Northern Exposure with Toast

With a white Stetson tipped forward on his dark wizened forehead the old Mexican sitting quietly next to me paints a picture of patience. He’s a silent teacher and I can learn a lot about how to wait for a bus. The San Ignacio depot is a dirty affair, a ramshackle store front office tucked into a concrete jumble of shops. The attendant selling tickets for just the one bus uses this opportunity to argue with her mother via cell phone while her husband sets up an evening taco stand. Such is the enterprising life of San Ignacio residents.

We wait. The old man, his beautiful graying hair and perfectly trimmed mustache, nods and chats briefly with passers by as the sun drops out of the sky. Three hours of this small town Mexican bus depot ‘entertainment’ and I’m jittery. The ‘waiting’ lesson only went in skin deep.

Aquila Lines arrives and I’m all set to roll north - a 10 hour trip to Ensenada. But 5 minutes out of town we slow to a stop at the military check point. Passengers are shuffled out of the bus and told to wait as gun totting soldiers sniff the bus and search bags. I tense knowing I don’t have a tourist permit and know if they ask for my passport I could never explain why I don’t have a permit. My bag gets pulled onto a bench and I am called over. A young soldier empties my neatly packed wares onto the dusty road. “Joo ‘ave any draaggs, any gaanns?” He watches my eyes as I answer and walks away satisfied leaving me to pack it away.

The night ride through the desert begins. I pull out my sleeping bag to drift off and am woken only by the stench of the mud flats in Guero Negro. My dreams are broken and scattered but compelling enough to keep me sleeping. So much so I almost sleep through the Ensenada bus station, but wake suddenly and stumble off the bus. I say "Ensenada?" to the driver who is having a smoke with a bus station attendant. He says “Ci Ensenada ci.”

It’s 5 am and I wander the empty streets a little dazed. This tourist town wakes up early and by luck I find a place that serves good coffee, toast and eggs. The sun rises exposing one of Ensanada’s attractions, a massive Mexican flag which flaps in the cool Pacific breeze wafting a wash of shade over the foreshore. Tijuana is only an hour north. I’ll spend the day here and arrange cross border transport for tomorrow. That will get me in San Diego in plenty of time to catch the train to Seattle. Tijuana … the border … my heart races with the thought.

Burning Through XII – Jesus Turns Sand into Water

What a strange scene with the morning sun on my huevos rancheros. Those palm trees across the street don’t jive with where I am – right in the middle of the Baja. I know Jesus turns water into wine, but can He turn sand into water?

San Ignacio is more than a catholic mission I learn, it’s a true oasis. Life giving water bubbles up from deep below the Sierra de la Giganta. It cracks the surface creating a series of lakes in the centre of this wide desert valley. Desert palms rustle in the breeze beneath scorched volcanic hills topped with cactus.

The mission and it’s village are a long walk from Jorge’s Rice and Beans, the travelers hostel where I spend the night and where I inhale my morning eggs. The magnificent church with its blossoming jacaranda and the shaded central square are also an oasis for me, my body absorbing the tranquility. And inside the church, I see that Jesus really suffered. He’s always so brutalized in Mexican effigies. It’s like they need a graphic reminder that it can always get worse.


This is a lazy town. Old men play checkers in the street side pub where I enjoy a frosty Corona; tourists laze about wandering from buses to the church then over to a café; children laugh as they play a ball game in the zocalo (square); a wizened old couple sort dates in the warm sun, vultures cruise overhead and all around the ever-present craw of roosters.

I seek a higher perch, scramble up a scree slope to the top of a ridge overlooking the valley. On top I find a maze of volcanic rock and cactus. I have my moment of Baja bliss. Warm sun on my face, overlooking the oasis below and rusty hills for backdrop. Church bells below carry a sweetness to up to me, lightening my mind and body. A wispy thought tells me to suck in this moment, fill myself up with it. I know that once I leave this perch, I begin my long grind back to my couch in Kitsalino.

I know then that I have had my peak moment. Jesus created a miracle in the desert, turned the unexpected in to 5 minutes of bliss. Every bus terminal debacle, every bad meal, all the twists and turns that have led to this are worth it. I have a profound feeling that my whole life led up to this moment, but then isn’t every moment like that?

Burning Through XI - Wind Blasts me Inland

The news from home is of a white Christmas. Snow piling up, travel thwarted - delays. I wake to a cool north wind blowing from Canada straight down the Sea of Cortez. It blows me right off the veranda where I perched to start my day.

Should I stay or should I go? Waiting for the ferry means 2 days in this town and it’s getting smaller all the time. I assess my options and stay. The next days are filled with many hikes up to the top of the surrounding hills, overlooking the town and the desert, investigating the old smelter where I hear the ghosts of all the Mexicans who died making money for the man in Paris. I wander the streets to visit and revisit familiar shops and restaurants. Time slows down as my movement decreases. 20/20 hind sight says moving on would have a better choice.

My plan was to catch the ferry on the 28th and make a run from Guaymas in Sonora to catch my train in San Diego by the 31st. When I made the plan I didn’t know the north wind would cancel the ferry again.

Being immobile for those days had an ill effect. The luster from when I first arrived wore off. Yet the beauty of Santa Rosalia and it’s people stay with me even now. From this distance I see it was not the place but the sense of familiar and lack of movement that began to crowd in on me.

I knew I had to move. The bus for San Ignacio left at 4:00 pm and I was on it.

It is early evening as I roll into San Ignacio. I hop off the bus and instinctually walk down a side street and fumble with broken Spanish asking around for a hotel. An ex heroin addict visiting his family from L.A. leads me down a dirt track to the highway and points in the direction of a hotel. I wander aimlessly and turn back.

I am famished in the fading light and choose a roadside taco stand for a meal. Three generations serve me as I sit and listen to evening sounds. Cicadas begin their evening cadence as fifth wheel tractor trailers roll by, the Grandmother is crying desperately out back somewhere, and the TV is background noise to all of this. A shiny faced kid with holes in the knees of his jeans serves me coke and offers me a Chick let. It was the worst meal I had in Baja, but perhaps the most memorable.

It’s time to find a bed for the night. A waft of refried beans and diesel follow me as I make my way to a travelers hostel I found out about.

It is a long walk in the dark. Dew and desert palms line the road to the hostel - Rice and Beans. I meet a Canadian couple who have spent the past 15 years of retirement in Baja, traveling back roads with their heavy duty 4X4. I haven’t been at a travelers hostel on this trip. There is a strange but familiar ethic among road people here and lots of English. It is a good place to be for a night. Bob and Ruth tell me the catholic mission here is one of the finest in Mexico. I have part of the day tomorrow to check it out.

Burning Through X – Should I stay or Should I go …

Boxing day and I am shifting and moving as I wake. My first thought is imagining the ferry crossing … I know I want to be on the ferry to Sonora tonight. I need to leave today to have enough time to check out some of the places I researched in Sonora and start my journey back to Vancouver. Mental calculations before my foot hits the floor creates an unwarranted sense of urgency.

It’s my anniversary on 2 fronts but that part of my life seems far away. There is a passing thought followed by guilt for the absence of feelings. This is a selfish adventure and I am admittedly self absorbed. It is a trip I have needed to take for a long time. The guilt is quickly replaced by the realization that I am indeed here in this Baja town, that I got here by bus and that I have to get back. There is a lot to work out.

Boxing day is a business day I decide – book the ferry, make arrangements to use my hotel room for the day, go to the internet café and make arrangements to take the train from San Diego to Seattle. I decide on the train recognizing that while Greyhound provides a unique adventure, I’m ready to ride the rails. The bus … been there - done that.



An hour later my plans are dashed – in broken Spanish I learn the “California Star” will not travel on Boxing Day. It is a deflating discovery and it feels like groundhog day – my body remembers my Tijuana bus station debacle – destinations determined by the transportation company instead of by me the traveler. So my trip takes another unexpected swing. Decision time. The next ferry is in 2 days. Baja is long – you either go south or north. A Clash song rattles around my head as I prattle through some huevos rancheros at a corner cafe – “Should I stay or should I go now …”

I resolve my train departure. I have to be in San Diego on New Years eve to take the train early on New Years day. I have five days. It is a tense moment when I hit the purchase button with my credit card number typed in, sitting in a plywood cubicle in a storefront internet café street side in this small Mexican town. The kid next to me is playing computer games and the ever present Mariachi boom box cars chug by outside. The next screen says “confirmed” and I print out my Amtrack ticket. A wave of relief sends me out to the street. Now what …

Burning Through IX - Christmas Gifts and Movement

Veranda conversations keep me awake through the night and then wake me up Christmas morning. I hear English speakers and my ears are perked. I shuffle outside and receive some friendly advice on where to make a phone call and then a surprise offer to share a car trip to the tip of the Baja- Cabo San Lucas - to stay in a condo for free. The American couple who made the offer give me 5 minutest to decide.

I assess the offer. Does this fit with the ideals I have set for this adventure? The trip is about recognizing and learning from the decisions I make apart from familiar influences. Its about listening to my body and burning through to know my authority. So here I am faced with a major trip changing decision and virtually no time to decide. I walk away and stand by myself, looking out at the sea feeling into my body. My frugal mind is assessing - tropics, free accommodations, good company … I feel my body lean slightly to the right. Then a tingling from my legs and a knowing that to go would mean a very different kind of trip than I want and need. While a free bed in a Cabo condo is an attractive proposition, this trip is about movement, inner and outer.

I feel a slight shift back to centre and I know I must graciously say no. Doing so produces a kind of elation that carries me through the rest of Christmas day. It is my present to myself.

Later I make a Christmas call from a confectionery store to snowy Victoria and connect with Elizabeth. The call leaves me feeling warm and blessed for our friendship and her amazing support for my personal adventure.

After a coffee from the corner taco stand I take a morning trip to a another grave yard and spend several breezy hours scanning the deep blue Sea of Cortez. The sweet smell of the sea , the celebration sounds from the town below and the feeling that all is right are another gift on this day. Sitting there I feel the pull of the Sonoran desert beyond the reach of my vision. I feel the pull and know I must take the ferry on boxing day.

This trip is about movement and when I stop moving I feel the dull familiar start to creep in. Movement has the effect of a big steel wheel on a rail, producing enough heat and inertia to burn through to my core.

Burning Through VIII – Feliz Navidad - Firecrackers Blasting till dawn

Saying good bye to Guerro Negro was not difficult. I am happy to be moving knowing that tomorrow is Christmas and travel would be impossible. I step on the bus and I look ahead to the 220 km of desert between the grey Pacific and the deep blue Sea of Cortez.

Sandy rust covered hills and desolate towns dot the distance between coasts. Besides an enormous hydroponic tomato factory most of what you see at first are skinny cattle, cactus and lonely stretches of ranch fence. A couple of hours out, the bus descends into a humid valley filled with desert palms. San Ignacio – an oasis I find out later. A guy in Ensenada told me there was a catholic mission here. From the bus the place looks like a truck stop.

Increasing elevation in the centre of the Baja peninsula and the cactus grow bigger, a result of Pacific rain clouds that sweep across and dump. The Sierra de Baja California mountains cut through the Baja and create remarkably different climates from one coast to the other. The dry Sonoran desert creeps onto the Sea of Cortez shore and up the east side of the Baja. As we roll along I am anticipating a view of the Sea of Cortez. We crest a ridge and there set against the dry Sonoran desert is a deep ultramarine blue stretching into the distance. I feel both a lift and pervasive anxiety as we roll down into Santa Rosalia. Another town, another change.

I sense the ghosts of campesino labour that worked at the now burnt out smelter as the bus rolls past to the station. The haunted feeling is quickly replaced by the anticipation of Christmas and the joy of the holiday.

After getting off the bus I make my first foray into town. Its narrow streets are filled with bustle, a combination of commerce and music. Street vendors are on every corner among juice stands, bakeries, beer stores and a big central plaza with its nativity scene. I begin my search for a bed. This place is alive. Vehicles endlessly idle up and down one way streets stretching into the narrow valley containing the town. Its the night before Christmas and all is not quiet. Every second vehicle passing me booms out funked up mariachi music. Every second shop I pass has an exterior stereo system doing the same. My noise threshold has diminished from 6 years of Ashram life. Silent Night this will not be.

Santa Rosalia boasts French influence, particularly in its architecture. A French company founded the town in 1884 and exploited copper mines till 1954 when they shut down. They installed a metallic church building, argued to have been designed by Gustave Eiffel, the architect of the Eiffel Tower. The mining company director found it disassembled in Belgium, bought it in 1894 and then had it shipped over to Santa Rosalia prefab, most likely to alleviate the nostalgia of the French community who missed all things European. Yet no official blueprint of the church exists and there are serious doubts about who the actual architect was. Frankly, the building looks like it could be a machine shed on a Saskatchewan grain farm. Even so, a machine shed designed by Eiffel brings an allure and mystery.


I get a place with a great veranda adjacent to what I hope to be a quiet street. I’m drawn to the hills. I want to get up high and see the length of the place. I scramble up the hillside to a cemetery and the perch provides the view I am after. It is Christmas evening with the desert light descending and the Sea of Cortez in the background. In that moment the whole journey is worth every peso, bus line up and road side meal. The town below is full of music and light, the townsfolk are radiant with holiday spirit. I feel a quiet satisfaction. Moments like this in life are rare and they always come with a price.

Later in the evening I attend the service at the church. Hearing the bells I walk through the town and meet a swell of beautifully dressed families pouring out of Iglesia de Santa Barbara. The church is full but I stand outside listen and appreciate the sincerity of the Catholicism. From there I wander the streets and hear families along the narrow streets celebrate in their homes. Children run around the nativity scene in the central square, young men play guitar for young women under a brightly lit Jacaranda, old men stand in the middle of a side street laughing, finishing their neighborly chat with a hug.

The celebration of Christ’s birth lasts late into the night. Firecrackers blast away as I lay down at 11:00 pm and wake me up again at 3:00 am as do the boom box cars and veranda conversations. Sounds fill the air till the early morning light. It is cool with a Sea of Cortez breeze.

How long will I stay? I can get to Sonora from here. There is a ferry that crosses the sea. When does it travel?

Burning Through VII – The Mud Flat Run

I am prepared for a long ride when I settle into my bus seat, but I am not prepared for 11 hours of action movies with the volume set a millimeter below distortion. The barrage started as we made our way out of Ensenada, and included a series of Edward Norton thrillers, dubbed in Spanish. Such Hollywood inspired creations as the Incredible Hulk, Eagle Eye, Shark Swim and the cartoon fight flick Kung Fu Panda, none of which understanding Spanish were required to know the plot, motive or theme. Blowing up buildings and piling up cars is the same in Spanish and English.

My ear plugs help me divert my attention from the movies to the changing landscape. The rich farmland south of Ensenada, soon turns into rolling desert hills and scraggly cactus. The towns thin out as the land dries up and wrinkles on Mexican faces outside the bus increase. Soon we head away from the Pacific Coast into the interior. Many hours later I wake up in the Del Desierto Central Parque and out the window are the amazing Cardón cactus, the largest cactus in the world, holding onto boulders as big as houses, set against a crimson sky. I expect to see Roy Rogers clipity clop by in his 10 gallon hat riding resolute on top of Trigger. I consider getting off when we stop at a taco stand, illusions of spending the night in the desert, but the building condensation on the windows and descending temperatures inform me this would be a rather uncomfortable choice.

I cozy up in my sleeping bag, ear plugs firmly entrenched, and slumber off as we descend and wind our way for three hours back down to the coast.

The attraction to Guerrero Negro are the lagoons outside of town which are the winter homes for the very same Grey Whales that migrate past Vancouver island every Spring and Fall. The idea was attractive when I first learned of the place but stepping off the bus my nostrils are instantly filled with the dank musty decaying smell of mudflats mixed with an ever present pall of diesel. I take a few steps into the dark lit muddy streets in search of a night motel and know this is a temporary stay. The next time I see real Grey whales will be in Tofino.

In fact the closest I get to the whales is the next morning off main street – a painting on a cement wall. The overwhelming smell of decaying mud, burnt out cars on garbage filled beach, and the fact it is December 24 and I don’t want to be stuck here for Christmas, all point to the need to keep moving. I’m on a bus in 2 hours heading for the Sea of Cortez. My Christmas present is a ticket out of town. I wonder if the sea will really be as blue as I’ve been told?

Burning Through VI - Casting Back while Moving Forward

Burning Through

I’m traveling blind now, heading south into the full length of the Baja. The first hour of this trip, to Ensenada, the first kilometers south of Tijuana peaks my interest. I begin to see and smell Mexico outside of the bus terminal and I like it. Arriving in Ensenada, I begin a series of firsts. First shower in over 3 days of bus travel, first sit down meal, first horizontal sleep…

I need rest and I begin a time of collection, collecting my thoughts, assessing possibilities, resting and gaining strength.

My mind peels back through my journey to here, specifically my Greyhound melting pot rollick through America. There was Portland on the first snowy night of winter, the first of many Greyhound delays. I am one of many Los Angeles bound travelers in a weary line snaking through the station. There is not much to do in the line up but talk to the guy in front of me. Hence, through Hans, I am introduced to Republican America.

Hans is: Swiss Texan, Spanish speaking, Special Military Forces, Canadian criminal code studying, Republican bible thumping American. He tells me has just come from Vancouver where he wore his black US law enforcement officer gear “to scare all the pinko Canadians.” “Why do you allow your immigrants to stay separate in their little communities?” I make an unimpressive attempt to explain the rationale for multiculturalism, that encouraging and celebrating cultural diversity promotes social cohesion, but he dismisses this as typical Canadian liberalism.

It’s okay, we agree to disagree. There is a nano second of silence before he once again waves his Republican stripes. “I love George Bush, he has been the savior of America. In fact I worship Him.”

I … I … I don’t quite know how to respond. I know he is provoking me, inciting reaction. This is when 12 years of yoga and reflection comes in handy. I stumble, “ You … you must be upset with the election of Obama.“ Dismissive, he moves us to the next topic. I am both repulsed and attracted to him, using the opportunity to test my resolve, to remain present and engaged with somebody whose world view is so opposite to mine. His mixture of strong opinions and open mind intrigues me.

The bus trip will present many of these kinds of opportunities. Ear plugs and traveling pillow will not shelter me from the social hurricane that whips around me. America is on the move for the holidays. She stops at all night gas stations, stalked with 7-11 hoagies, jumbo soft drinks, and complete with grease puking taco bell franchise. Greyhound America is fat with fast food. Over the course of two days my bus mates change but stay the same. I recognize several who stood in line with me on the frozen dark tarmac off Main Street at the Vancouver terminal.

You share a bus trip with people for 12 hours or more and you begin to imagine a brotherhood. Yet, this brotherhood has separate agendas. We all just want to get to our destination. Sooner rather than later.

Now here I am in Ensenada. All of that seems like a dream now. My sights are set on what lay south of here, down the long stretch of desert to the south. I’ve gathered a few destinations from a conversation in a coffee shop and make plans to leave the next day. Time is running out. Christmas is in 2 days and I want to be somewhere warm and sunny before Feliz Navidad. Where will I go?

Burning Through V - The Abandonment of Sonora

Burning Through

It’s 12:35 pm Tijuana time. I’ve been standing in this line for 8 hours now. For the last 3 hours I’ve been crushed up against the counter pleading my destination – Hermosillo, Hermosillo, Hermosillo – the capital of Sonora. Why I wonder am I so intent on this destination? It looked great on the map I bought from Wanderlust -The Travelers store on west 4rth, a few blocks down from my warm, cushy apartment in safe, predictable, latte infused Kitsalino.

The blips of hope about Sonora have diminished in the past hour as I have begun to truly understand the motives of the Stone Face and his green jacketed accomplices.

To my left is the Aquila ticket counter. The wall board lists Baja destinations, increasing in price the further down the list I scan – the further you travel south. The prices are in pesos - $110 is the cheapest ticket – to Ensenada. I recall that name when I was studying my map back in Vancouver, but I know little else than I may be able to afford the ticket.

There’s no bank around to cash a travelers cheque and the bank machine in the terminal is out of funds. All I have left is $10 USD. Is 10 bucks more or less than 110 pesos? If I go over there and ask, I loose my position in the crush against the greyhound counter. I need a ticket out of here and at least 3 pesos to pay to get into the bus terminal bathroom. Let’s just say the pressure for a decision is building in many ways.

For the past 2 hours the Aquila lady has been shouting out Baja destinations trying to attract customers. I dismissed her at first because my intention was to go to Sonora, on the opposite side of the Sea of Cortez from the Baja, but in the last 20 minutes the prospect of being on the road to anywhere has started to grow in my mind as a reasonable idea.

In a flash, so fast I can’t remember the actual decision, I am standing in front of Ms. Aquila and in another flash I have a ticket to Ensenada, and 63 pesos change, enough for an orange crush and a trip to the bathroom.

In an instant my whole trip has turned south. Yet the prospect of being on the road moving south to warmer climes lifts a burden of bus station confusion from my mind and I leave the ticket counter feeling elated. I gather my kit and bust out of the international section, buy a pop and slip my 3 pesos in the bathroom turnstile. I have fond memories of one particular Tijuana bathroom stall. It was a liberating moment knowing I would soon be on the road – feeling a little lighter. Where I am going and where I am going from there is unknown. But … alas, I am going.

Waking Up

There is that wonderful moment when our consciousness flirts between the world of dreams and being awake, when you can’t tell the difference between reality and fantasy, when just for that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened. Then you are ‘awake’, and your mind starts to mull over the images and dream impressions - scanning ahead to the tactile facts of being awake. Waking up – what is this?

This morning: I am falling from 10 story bridge before I emerge and find myself perspiration soaked peering at the yellow light of my alarm clock - 5:30. Dam … I know there will be no more sleep this night despite the damp gloom of an October morning. The rain pelting against my window makes me want to curl up for more, but I toss and turn myself out of the covers.


There are the mechanics of waking up. Mine starts with scrubbing the fuzz off my teeth followed by a splash of cold water to my stubbled face. The water snaps me into a new place of awake, one that moves me into imagining the day ahead - usually job related and sometimes involving a conversation I am going to have with my boss where I make myself sound really intelligent and ‘right.’. But I am not truly awake as I move to the kitchen and flick the switch on my single cup coffee machine. It gurglers and sputters away, the aroma of Sumatra Dark Roast filling the space.

This is certainly one kind of waking up - waking up from physical sleep. Sleep involves dreaming and therefore waking up is awakening from the dream world. Dreams are metaphors from daily life and life can be thought of as metaphor for something greater. Something greater … hmm … so this is where God enters the picture. She’s always hanging around.

Some may think of God as an ‘idea’ conveniently constructed to be a mental refuge from the slings and arrows of the tangible struggles of conscious life. Whether God is an idea or a force is for everyone to reconcile. To my mind, God is no more an idea than Me. In fact, the idea of Me is the thing that stands in the way of truly waking up.

My encounters with any world beyond the physical are all too infrequent and often vicarious. At a recent personal growth workshop the group of well meaning middle aged ladies I was sharing my personal struggles with were imploring me to -“Go to the Light James,” as if it was some place just around the corner, past the Seven Eleven.

I believe in this place they are pointing to, yet belief isn’t enough. Really waking up means direct experience but the mind is so tricky. Even getting hit on the head can fool the best of us.
In the Hollywood movie, Leap of Faith, Steve Martin plays a struggling evangelical who pleads God for “some kind sign” that He exists. After getting hit square on the head with a bolt of lightening, Martin picks himself up off the ground charred and smoking from the lightening strike and pleads one more time – “Just some kind of sign!”

Sometimes waking up means waking up to the facts. But facts get lost over time because memory is very unreliable. Until the advent of written language there was no way to retain personal or cultural memory except through the stories or symbols that would get passed on from generation to generation. However, a story is not evidence, it is a recounting of an event filtered through the mind of the story teller. Facts exist in the present. For example, you can be sure that you are sitting here right now, listening to me or reading this. Everything before this and after this is recounting or speculation.

Carl Sagan in his seminal work Dragons of Eden hypothesized there is a collective mammalian memory that goes back to the first primitive shrews. The implication here is that deep within each of us is the memory of our most distant ancestors, from shrews to the first monkey like humans.

This is like waking up to the recognition that I am connected to something primordial. That’s a big thought. But the connection to the primordial may exist through language. I can hear my old linguistics professor pontificating, “Language is our greatest invention!,” followed by, “Spoken language, in brief, is a series of agreed upon sounds and gestures that add up to communication.” Imagine an elder Homo Erectus sitting quietly in the African forest – his mind fills with Light and he utters a guttural hmmgh. Two million years of human evolution later, we have created a word out of that first sound or grunt - God. Is this what Carl Sagan meant?

Waking up - the Zen call it Satori; Buddhists Nirvana; Hindu Kundalini; Christians Christ Consciousness, ... all of these are names to describe something that can only be understood by direct experience. Language has not evolved to the point that can describe these experiences. And when somebody does try to describe one of these awakening moments the result is most of us create mental impressions of what these experiences are. Those mental impressions then become the obstacle to the experience. Further, when some kind of feeling or experience of true awakening happens we often doubt it because it doesn’t match the image or impression we have formed of how it is supposed to look or feel.

This is the trap and promise of waking up. We may never accept when or if we are truly awake, yet we keep opening our eyes wider. Beyond all of the big ideas, perhaps the only thing we can really rely on is what is happening now. I tell myself that as I regale in my first haze dispelling caffeinated breath of the day. Phew!

Burning Through IV - Stone Face, Toothy and Chicano

Burning Through


Some time around 9:00 am I am awoken by commotion. I have fallen asleep sitting on my pack, head in hands. I stand up and look to the bus counter.

There is a young confident bus ticket man issuing transfer tickets, he has a ticket writing female assistant. I watch his eyes. Do they reveal anything? I can’t recall such stone face confidence before. The twitch below his eye indicates there is emotional life inside, but other than that, he could be playing poker, and likely is with us. He is half Ricky Martin cute and half Al Pacino tough. Mid 30’s, early 40’s at best.

There is a crush of people at the counter and remarkably he is immune to the pressure. Desperate travelers like myself, everybody dependant on him to grant us a ticket. A desperate crush and he stands stone faced. Later on I will recognize the agenda. He serves the bus company and only wants to fill seats with pre purchased tickets to the furthest destinations - Guadalajara and Mexico City.

I am now at the counter, edging forward after two young women and their family, my early morning translators, get their tickets to Guadalajara. They are the second group to get their tickets.
I stand now, totally at the mercy of Stone Face; ocationally I receive a gesture that which indicates my Greyhound adventure will continue. These subtle nods are enough to keep me standing at the counter for hours. Too many hours.

I look around and see some of my LA bus terminal companions, several Mexicans I have had wordless communication with. Behind me, the beautiful grandfather, his tan olive skin and perfect teeth. I appreciated his conciliatory smiles when we were in LA, agreeing about bus terminal madness. Now we are in Tijuana, in line together again.

There are 2 young men. One Chicano, with shaved head, ball cap visor turned to the side, earrings on both sides with a black shadowed face. He and his road friend are trying to get to Mazatlan. They are going on a Christmas beach holiday.

Every time Stone Face swings through the door, Chicano desperately repeats ‘Mazatlan, Mazatlan.’ The door represents liberation, behind it is the escape zone. It’s where those who are granted tickets slip away from the crowds and crying babies. Beyond the door, each of us has a personal heaven, our ticket destination.

Chicano’s friend, a large guy, shaven head and a big toothy smile is leaning up against another bus ticket counter. He is keen on the young attendent. Perfect black hair, and dark suit, with tight black stockings, heavily massacred eyes cover the face of a 20 year old at most. Toothy is spending his idle time entertaining her. This makes his eyes happy. There is some kind of deal he and Chicano have worked out. Chicano is waiting in the line with me pleading his case, while Toothy spends his time exerting his Latino testosterone.

Chicano pulls a trick, his pleading tips a favor from Stone Face. He is now on his way to Mazatlan and Toothy has to drop the attendant and stand in line for himself. His toothy smile drops. This is not the scenario he worked out in his mind. Now he is a poor pleading campesino, like the rest of us. We wait. My resolve is weakening.

Burning Through III - TJ Dreaming

Burning Through

Surely with my Greyhound ticket I must be one of the privileged. This thought is dashed soon after, when wading through the sleep deprived crowds, I realize I am but one of the minions. A potential bum in the seat for one of the 15 Mexican bus companies operating out of Tijuana Central, all whom are over booked with passengers, short of busses, short on drivers, short on civility.

I am the first from our greyhound into the station. The shock comes when all of the signs are in Spanish. Dugh – I’m in Mexico bright boy, what did you expect? I have achieved my goal, to make it to Mexico from Vancouver by bus. Now what?

With that thought comes the faint memory and realization that the bus I was on did not stop at the Mexican border. For a moment I am slightly confused. Is Tijuana actually in Mexico?? Yes, yes, I am in Mexico. But I really don't remember passing through customs. This cannot be good. So the anxiety arising from not understanding what I am supposed to do with the Greyhound ticket I have builds with the thought that I am now in Mexico - Without a Tourist Permit.

I scan the scene. The “international area” is jammed to over flowing. Little blue couches are filled with travelers sleeping or glazed eyed starring off into space. I make my way through luggage and legs towards the bus company counters. I see a Greyhound logo and head over there. Approaching the desk I recall some traveling Spanish I learned 16 years before and attempt to ask the blank face on the other side where I need to go to get my connecting bus. She motions to the counter beside us, where there are now 15 people from the bus I was on, all of whom are now ahead of me. Damn - and nobody is behind the counter. Esperar. Wait. I am now one of the waiting crowd.

There is a counter and behind the counter a computer and a door. We all stand there waiting - watching the door. Some of the people I was on the bus with speak English. I feel we are brethren. We stood in line in LA waiting for 4 hours and now we are standing in line again. It’s us against Greyhound. Surely my English speaking Mexican brothers and sisters will advocate for me – Dream on. We are all in this Mexican bus terminal nightmare together. “What do we do,” I ask. We stand here and wait for somebody to come one of the young girls says to me. We stand, we sit on our luggage, we watch the door.

Burning Through II – Thus Begins the TJ Waiting Game

Burning Through

Where do you go when you've been dumped by Greyhound in the Tijuana bus terminal at 4:00 am. Nowhere. That’s the stuffy truth to it. Fact is that there is no Greyhound in Mexico, only an affiliate bus company who are supposed to take Greyhound tickets and through some rudimentary refund process, place your butt in the seat of one of their buses. But it doesn’t quite work that way. In fact, after waiting for 8 hours, I still don’t know how it works.

Spanish. If you don’t speak Spanish it’s like being handicapped 100 strokes in a game against Tiger Woods. I don’t speak Spanish. I didn’t realize my handicap till a little too late in the game. My Canadian sense of fairness tells me my ticket should have some bearing on the outcome. And truth be known I am banking on a little foreigner sympathy. Naivety doesn’t put my bum in a seat.

So much of the wait is about filling in my pointillist picture of assumptions based on gestures and facial expression. Paul Ekman’s study of faces in Emotions Revealed helps me when people are displaying the classic universal gestures – anger, fear, sadness, being thwarted; but 4:00 am in a Tijuana bus station is not a place or time to decipher the nuances of Latino facial gestures. Lesson - What I think I know probably isn’t happening. What is happening is a mystery.

Crowds: It’s 3 days before Christmas. Mexicans are on the move. They are heading home to see families for the holiday. The bus station is jammed. My bus empties out into the international area of the bus station. Through the glass I see a long tall hallway with hundreds of travelers standing, sitting, and sleeping on luggage. It leaves me feeling stranded and helpless from the beginging. If this is where people are at when I arrive, is that going to be me in 5 or 6 hours, sleeping on the concrete floor winging for a bus?

Burning Through - By Bus to Baja and Back

Something deep inside needed to move. It had been needing to move, to go south for a long time. The prospect of a two week break from the office job sparked a thought to get on a bus headed south. Yes, really. To the Baja by bus. Everybody said, don't do it. But the burning inside was too strong to listen.

Greyhound. Sharing the journey with the great American melting pot. Melting to the unending interruptions and announcements, delayed departures and missed connections.

When something inside burns for long enough sometimes you have to act on it. Burning Through is the accounting of this journey.

Musings on Loneliness, Lawn Mowers and Homing Pigeons

It’s Halloween night and I’m scared. Loneliness lurks like an old familiar ghost, in fact I smell it like it’s just around the corner. I have an Orwellian thought. I’ll put my head in a rats cage like Orwell’s Winston and take a walk down Hastings Street. This scares the shiny Gortex off my back. I’m close, just off Granville Street. I take an about face, away from the Japanese girl dressed up in her Mariachi outfit, away from the masks and costumes. Tonight everybody is trying to be somebody else. Tonight you can become your fantasy, the person you could never be. Its a celebration of the unreal. That’s Koko under the handlebar mustache, her empty guitar case strapped to her back. Tonight she is Javier De la Alhambra, riding off on the Tehuantepec Railway. Imagine her round trip during the night, playing for cowboys and peasants in clunky railcars. She makes a few pesos to feed herself, she finds a cigarette butt under a seat, the smoke in her lungs brings calm. She’s not lonely tonight though, she’s with her Japanese mariachi friends. Behind me now are the night-clubs and testosterone fueled bravado of Halloween in the downtown core. Ahead it gets truly scary. Ahead east of Cambie, Hastings dives towards the lost and forgotten where fantasy is a different movie. To some it may be a found pack of cigarettes or a Mickey of vodka, or enough coin to buy a few pitchers of beer in the Grande Union pub or better yet, a night-room at the Austin hotel.

I pass victory square. Its a victory for me to cross Cambie street. Keep heading east I tell myself. If you keep moving you are safe. Keep moving. If you stop they will latch on to you. I cross the street. A Long Hair yells – Weed!? I keep walking. No I don’t want weed. It’s raining and everything is dripping. Buses splash by, rain splatters off the overhang of the Grande Union hostel. The City has put up lamp posts to brighten the area up. What the light reveals is dark. I can’t see their eyes but I know there are tears in those stubbled and scared faces, smoking as they wait, leaning forlorn against the side of the building waiting for the doors to open. A man with his head in his hands blurts to the guy beside him, Another bloody hour and a half! It’s a wet wait for a lonely room in a stinky hotel.

It’s Halloween. The deeper I dive into Hastings street, the more my legs feel like jelly. A crowd ahead at the Golden Crown Pub. I peer inside as I slowly walk past. The place is packed, there are no Halloween costumes here, it’s enough just to have the clothes on your back. People are outside smoking, there are two young guys who know each other. Howze it going … howze yur Mom? Oh I’dun know, same old. Same old same old eh? People care. Caring is a currency where currency is lacking. I keep walking. It is Halloween and I’m afraid of what people will do when their minds are overwhelmed by substances. I keep moving and I pass a native guy stumbling side to side. He wobbles close to me on the wide sidewalk. I smell the boozy desperation and lurch out of the way. The streets are full of people. Little crises erupt here and there. I hear people caring for each other. There is a nylon tent on the sidewalk, an women are gathered around it. A scraggly haired woman explains the vigil she is on for her missing friend. The tent has 7 candles sitting on a chair. One for each month Sally has been gone. I sleep out here waiting.


Lonely lawn mower
There are men with shopping carts on the sidewalk under a temporary safety roof built for a construction site. They are selling what ever they can, what ever they have from their daytime gatherings in alleyways. They are selling but there are no customers. One is emerging out of a glue sniffing haze. Body shaking his hand reaches out to the wall for balance as he wobbles and stumbles, pulling himself up to lean on his shopping cart home and retail store. Then I pass it. A lawn mower. It sits angled towards a paint peeled storefront with its black metal grates. The light is dim and I smell puke and piss. I haven’t seen a blade of grass all night. There’s only one way a lawn mower can get here. I can see him now. Pushing the stolen machine through the streets. He stops between two street vendors. They sit alone with their cardboard on the sidewalk displaying trinkets, random clothing and fake jewelry. He parks his big ticket item. He is full of hope, a sale might mean a beer swilling good time. I wonder what the going price is for a stolen lawn mower in October where there is no grass? It’s hard to think straight down here. Loneliness and it’s substance abuse sidekick twist rational thinking out of the mind like tears out of a damp handkerchief. There’s no grass and there is no reason for anybody to buy it. Now it sits in the dark light angled into the wall. The salesman probably faces his own wall. Maybe he’ll be back tomorrow in the day light. There it sits. Dark lit lonely lawn mower.


Homing Pigeons
The Homing Pigeon has been bred so it can find it’s way home over long distances. At Pigeon Park it’s a different flock of birds. The benches and brick provide a temporary perch for the lost, here they find safety with the flock. Loneliness is the biggest disease down here. I’m acutely aware of it I don’t want to catch it. Keep moving I say. But Charlie John with his big brown sad eyes stops me. Gotta few minutes to talk to me? He is distracted and disoriented. I smell the beer on his breath. An argument over empty bootles erupts on the bench behind Charlie. I live down here and I love it, he says. Why would he love it I wonder? I’m looking for something. I won’t know what till I find it. All the pigeons tonight have flown here for their own reasons. Few, I suspect, stay here for their own reasons. All of them are driven by the constant demand of substances. But the real affliction is loneliness. Loneliness is the vortex that pulls this collection of pain and loss together.

Loneliness stinks I say to myself. I’m going home.