The Sonoran Desert

flor del campo

I would be remiss if I neglected the main hurrah of my sojourns into the desert, the flowers. It is easy to notice the noticeable, the majestic cacti in this arid terrain, but this spring ride was full of El Nino blooms. The high chaparral and its blooming tansy and incenso created allergy havoc with the cowboys. They resorted to using bandanas as face masks and stuffing their nostrils with tissues. To my mind they looked like sneezing ningas with machetes.

Botanizing is a way of life on the trail. The locals know the names of plants, mostly based on whether they are malo (garbancillo) or bueno for the animals. Luckily for me we managed to slow the pace in the process of pointing and talking about the growth all around us.

For tea we located wild mint in moving water, and I picked tiny berries (drive by style sitting in the saddle), called frutia, which sounded like a word worth eating so I did.

On a few occasions I have been treated to the sought after and hunted wild chiltepin; a staple on every ranch table. These diminutive palate pleasers are best ground in small containers and sprinkled on the beans or cheese, or better yet goat stew. The taste is fiery, but I attempt a few each meal when they are offered. By late season, the supply dwindles, and some cowboy will set out to the stomping grounds to collect, carefully dropping them in to a bottle, as many as the bush will bare. Have a view at this web site I enjoy reading called Sabores sinfrontaras.

Sabores sin frontaras

You will see the effort going into saving and collecting seeds in desert regions. You can learn about events in the borderland, namely Arizona.

where there is music ( mexico)

Here in the desert joyful subtleties, like a patch of singing frogs holed up in the bottom of the canyon, hold me captive. The truth is resident amphibians can’t compete with the brawny vocals of the living legends, the vaqueros of baja, who are guides and daily companions on our mule trips. There is even a song about the cowboys of baja in English. You can find it on the DVD called Corazon Vaquero. The other morning we sang the chorus on the trail below rancho Guadalupe. The guides all know the song. They should know it; they are the movie stars in the film about ranch life and 200 year old traditions in the mountains. Many visitors to the famous cueva pintada sites have been interested in ranch history for some time. The system of guiding in the World Heritage Site, organized with support by the government (INAH), and the existence of remnant adobe mission structures and indigenous history has prompted many americans to spend enough time in the mountains (researching and playing) to subsidize their existence. The movie, made in 2008, highlights the unique characteristic of the people who populate the landscape in the sierras which I have grown to love.

On a recent spring ride, called Eva’s Annual, these very guides sang ranchera musica into the night. Eva’s favorite is You are my Sunshine and she submits her requests nightly (the original Spanish version, of course). Teddi, a baja lover in her own right, brought her guitar and brought me to tears with a soulful folk song about the region.

In a different mountain range to the south, the Sierra de Guadalupe, we were treated to a 6 day ride into an expansive valley of mesquites. We camped in a stone corral above an arroyo and met a family with a boy who wants to be a tocadora. His exposure to the world is through a radio with dedications and announcements offered each day from faraway Guaymas. He is ten and he has memorized a corrido about the latest hurricane called Jimena that not only stormed though the mountains creating wider arroyos, but dumped giant guejibos and palms on the Pacific side of the peninsula. The winds and rains stretched northeast hitting the Mexican mainland where some famous group wrote the song. He entertained us with the song played on his homemade guitar.

Here is some info about the history of Mexican corridos found in the Cowboy Encyclopedia, by Richard W. Slatta, 1994.

"Because vacqueros were illiterate, they left few personal records. Some vaquero folklore passed into Mexican Corridos. These folk songs have eight-syllable lines, with the second and fourth lines rhymed. Regional variations are legion, for example, the Huasteca variant often includes cowboy yells (gritos de vaquero)."


Listen on youtube to a new song... Los cenzontles

La malaguena

The Huasteca music is not common where we travel, yet the yelling part is lively and it is my favorite. Here are the lyrics to a familar Huasteca song, from a different region in Mexico. I have heard it plenty, and reportedly it is in the Huapango style, dating back to 1820’s. I’m still looking for the words to the new corrido about Jimena that our ten year old host sang for us in the Sierras.

Que bonitos ojos tienes
Debajo de esas dos cejas
Debajo de esas dos cejas
Que bonitos ojos tienes

Ellos me quieren mirar
Pero si tú no los dejas
Pero si tú no los dejas
Ni siquiera parpadear

Malagueña salerosa
Besar tus labios quisiera
Besar tus
Labios quisieraMalagueña salerosa
Y decirte niña hermosa
Que eres linda y hechicera
Que eres linda y hechicera
Como el candor de una rosa

con tus ojos me anunciabas
que me amabas tiernamente
que me amabas tiernamente
con tus ojos me anunciabas
ingrata me traicionabas
cuando de ti estaba ausente
cuando de ti estaba ausente
de mi pasion te burlabas

Malagueña salerosa
Besar tus labios quisiera
Besar tus Labios quisiera
Y decirte niña hermosa
Que eres linda y hechicera
Que eres linda y hechicera
Como el candor de una rosa
Como el candor de una rosa

Si por pobre me desprecias
Yo te concedo razón
Yo te concedo razón
Si por pobre me desprecias
Yo no te ofrezco riquezas
Te ofrezco mi corazón
Te ofrezco mi corazón

where there is water ( Mexico)

It is not easy to explain my utter fascination with all things in the desert. Part of the charm is the access to clean fresh water in a drought prone land with less than 9 inches of rainfall annually. The Baja Peninsula itself is one of the longest in the world; a rocky place isolated by sea water and and often abandoned because of the limiting factor of arable land.

The joy of it all is that I get to swim in the noonday sun !! I get to hear the chorus of the spring peepers at nightfall, and I gleefully fill my canteen from a little straw sticking out of a crack in a wall on the sunnyside of the canyon below some wildly impressive pre-hispanic art.

Water is the essence of life and roaming the canyons, on hand-crafted paths, will always lead you to or away from a water source. You encounter pilas, posadas, tinajas, epresas, oases and functional acequias or canals built for the pleasure (or pain) of the Jesuits during a 70 year period of occupation. In many places today miles of mangera lead the way to the next huerta. They are black tubes transporting water to the corrals: an example of one of the many systems that still supports life in a place many call hostile and rugged.

Read what was written in 1866, by explorer J. Ross Browne, after the last of the missionaries gave up on the land and the people.

"All the vegetation visible to the eye seems to conspire against the intrusion of man. Every shrub is armed with thorns; the cactus, in all its varieties, solitary and erect, or in twisted masses, or snake-like undulations, tortures the traveler with piercing needles and remorseless fangs. Burrs with barbed thorns cover the ground; the very grass, wherever it grows, resents the touch with wasp-like stings that fester in the flesh; and poisonous weeds tempt the hungry animals with their verdure, producing craziness and death. Add to this the innumerable varieties of virulent reptiles and insects that infest those desolate regions in summer; the rattlesnakes, vipers, scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, and sand-flies; the rabid polecats that creep around the campfire at night, producing hydrophobia by their bite; the scorching heat of the sun, and the utter absence of water, and you have a combination of horrors that might well justify the belief of the old Spaniards that the country was accursed by God."