Desert Mexico
Senita Cactus
Pinacate Desert Dogs and Smugglers
 

Dispatch from Pinacate Biosphere Reserve, Sonora, Mexico
Text, photographs and web design by Erik Gauger

 
 

In the end, all is gone to humanity except that fundamental chaotic principle of knowledge and ideas, and the working minds of the units - shifting, creating, pulsing. Individuals unite under their own circumstance; they are never pushed.

Chaos, then, creates communities, and binds them - no attempt at central order has ever created communities - only people, individual people working in their own pursuit of whatever. Chaos is nature, and a Mozart masterminding a composition without thought.

When we returned to the car, the tires bit in the sand and we were stuck, so I pushed from the back, and we were off towards Desierto de Altar, the magestic Sonoran kingdom of endless peach dunes. We played U2's, The Joshua Tree on a rocky path over lava flows and across a vast basin.

When we arrived at the base of the dunes, we began our hike, strewn with insects and lizards. At one point, I found the Pinacate beetles, but they weren't standing on their heads, so we continued, drinking water along the way. When the temperature reached well above 100, we turned back and headed for Puerto Penasco, where we sat for hours in the sun, resting, drinking Coke and Margaritas, watching dolphins and fishing trawlers.

Then, it was south, along shanty-town roads with windowless houses. People were sitting in the doorsteps, watching us...At an empty beach, we made our entry into the Cortez with mask and fins, swimming out into the rock and coral coastline. We dove down into the murky waters - we had done this together for years, and were comfortable following each other's lead, looking under crevasses and swimming through and under rocks. We found schools of surgeon generals, and triggerfish, and wrasses, and Cortez groupers. We found three stingrays hiding in the sand, and a bullseye pufferfish, which I chased for several minutes.

"It won't puff" I said.

"No Molestar La Fauna, brother," Hans said. We found on the edge of a crevice in the bottom of the sea, a small nudibranch - a sea slug - which was white with purple appendages and graceful yellow and red dots along its spine.

 
 

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Text, photographs, illustrations and web design ©2008 Erik Gauger
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