Swapping hemispheres for a few weeks is a surefire way to pack home some stories.

Second day in, joined hundreds in Bogota (and millions around the world) in a Global Day of Action against Monsanto. Serendipitous encounter with a fellow foot travel activist, Juanita Ariza, who ran from Tierra del Fuego to Guatemala for world water rights. Humbled and inspired. One full week in Cartagena, a coastal town spewing magic from its tragic roots as slavery port. Meeting up with old-time family friend Karina Bell. Spanish classes, salsa-dancing on repeat, swimming backstroke deep inside a mud volcano. 5 cups of coffee per day at least. To finish, a solo, 10-hour, pant-crappingly harrowing bus journey south of Bogota to the mountain village of Salento. Two days weaving through coffee plantations, sampling local trout and posting Fastest Known Times by terrorizing trails on a fluorescent bike full of squeaks, trying to keep with a fleet of Colombian kids in polychromatic Raybans.

All while devouring Craig Childs’ newest book Apocalyptic Planet: Field Guide to the Ever-Ending Earth. Certainly one of his best and not nearly as depressing as it sounds, I promise. Absolute mastery, the highest recommendation.

New camera, new possibilities. Quotes + Photos. 

Deserts Consume. ”I came to where nothing can be hurt. I moved through one of the most barren chambers of the earth’s beating heart, and here I found one of the most erotic places I had ever seen. Dunes flowed behind us. We moved through airy fabric, every footstep setting loose teardrops and cascades down sandalwood dune faces. In this desolation, there was no such thing as disaster. You could not kill the wind of the sun or the barren sand.”

Cataclysm Strikes. ”This is the context in which we live, a rain of dots and dashes in the sky intermixed with periodic brighter flashes, some leaving modest craters or at least brightly covered vapors in the atmosphere. Every 100 million years or so a world-ending splashdown happens, but chances of this occurring in any nearby lifetime are so low you really shouldn’t trouble yourself other than to know that it does actually happen.”

Species Vanish. ”…I could see along the edges of the drainage grasshoppers were trying to get in. They had chewed open tips and were entering fresh ears, their mechanical mouth parts sounding like tiny scrapers chisling at milk-hard kernels. Toxins applied both from crop dusters and what been added to the genes of the corn itself would ultimately kill most of them, or at least drive them back, but some would survive. I was watching evolution in progress, sped up as if this were a petri dish stewing the genetic future of our earth.”

Ice Collapses. ”Everything is about ice. The shape of each mountain carved by this slow relentless scour. Glaciers dating back to the Pleistocene still exist, retreating like hermit crabs into their shells. What the earth remembers: These mountains once looked like the face of Antartica, seamless wasteland. Now, this. It happens so fast, you catch your breath but barely.”

Seas Rise. ”…We may now be seeing oceanic changes from what was happening 40 years ago in the 1960′s, when human population was at 3 billion, less than half what it is today, and when we barely even thought of sea level rise. What we get 40 years from today’s nearly 7 billion people remains to be seen.”

Civilizations Fall. ”This is our track record: cities left like empty shells around the world — Palmyra, Machu Picchu, Teotihuacan, Pre-Colombian temples and intricately carved slabs of stone push up from under the streets of Mexico City, while London coughs up Roman skeletons and 2,000 year-old bronze tableware. We live in the graveyards of former societies. This is the song we’ve been singing for thousands of years, call and repeat, glory and decline. This time, we say we have it all figured out. We will not fail. As if we haven’t heard that before.”

Mountains Move. ”I often think of earth as having a cadence, a drumbeat tempo of ice ages and sea levels, civilizations rising and falling. But … I was learning that you do not set calendars and metronomes to the patterns of the earth. They are melodies, not drumbeats. It was music that we were now moving through with paddles and oars, the music of centuries and millions of years.”

Cold Returns. ”Global warming may be the issue for the moment, but the bigger, multimillion-year trend is towards a cooler planet. Antartica iced over 35-million years ago, and ever since then extended ice ages have become almost commonplace, growing into discreet rhythm of rise and fall over the last 5 million years. In that time, even during interglacials, ice has always remained. There has been a cold heart waiting to start up again.”

Seas Boil. “The earth is a seed planting itself over and over. We are not the gardeners. We are no benevolent being leaving the house every morning with a watering can and a trowel to dig up weeds, wiping out brows midday to marvel at our handiwork. Instead, we are within the seed itself. We are part of its cells and the hardness of its coat, our place not to marvel at the futility and smallness of ourselves but to keep life moving. What we do now, from the inside, determines the vigor of that seed, how long it might live and plant itself again.”

Off tomorrow to Colombia for some revolution in Bogota and Spanish school in Cartagena.

Complete List: Digital Media Coverage (Mexican + US print articles not included):

• March 20 – Octavio Dia: “Atleta Correra en Defensa de Sierra la Laguna”
• March 20 – Peninsular Digital: “Correrá Triolo por la Sierra”
• March 25 - El Informador – “Ambientalistas protestan contra la minería tóxica”
• April 1 – Sentinel: “Gulf to the Pacific, Saving the Sierra.”
• April 2 – Calaveras Enterprise: ”Ultrarunner Preps for Race.”
• April 3 – The Jasmine Dialogues, Scouting Trip: ”Fox Tails + Orange Peels.“
• April 9 – Octavio Dia: ”Race for Sierra Laguna a Peaceful Protest“
• April 17 – The Jasmine Dialogues: “A Day of Protest: In Photos”
• May 20 – The Jasmine Dialogues: “The Sleeping Indian.” (Full Story)
• May 22 – Vimeo: “Running for the Gold” Movie Trailer
• May 28 – Calaveras Enterprise: “The Power of Movement.”
• June 6 – Destellos de Saber: “El Indio Durmiente” (“Sleeping Indian” translated into  Spanish)

It’s 9pm, and I am lying in the Pacific Ocean. Fully clothed. Salt water sinks cold fangs into comprehensive chafing around pits and crotch. Like being stung by 5,000 box jellyfish. Breath is robbed at gunpoint by powerful surf rolling over sun-scalded neck and seizing legs.

It doesn’t matter anymore. It just doesn’t.

It doesn’t because the pain is drowned out by a rising tide of absolute bliss. The kind of bliss generated from having just run across the entire width of the Baja Peninsula. In a day. 70 miles. 18 hours. Up and over a mountain range. Highway miles, mountain miles, sand miles. Joined by dozens, supported and followed by thousands. First-ever recorded attempt. All to save a mountain range. All to ally with wild space instead of profit. All in defense of wildness. And in a moment, it is over.

Heart thumping violently. From behind, cheers and camera flash. An indigenous drumbeat meets labored cardiac rhythms while a Mexican skyscape pulsates above burning star bonfire. My pupils feast on this hanging celestial sketchbook — of myth, of hero, of enemy, of guide—all present, all watching curiously. And so, I follow the constellated moments delivering me right here, to this sandbar of surrender. Right here, to organizing and executing a protest run in the mountains of Southern Baja California, Mexico against environmentally catastrophic plans to open-pit gold mine. Right. Here.

Background.

Local Mexican folklore suggests that the 276,000-acre Sierra de la Laguna Range is actually one giant Sleeping Indian, perhaps an elder of the indigenous Pericu people who inhabited Baja’s Southern Cape before the Spanish arrived bearing gifts of conquest. His craggy profile exposes a long nose, slumbering eyes and arms folded, navel to the sky. And dreaming. 

In 1994, UNESCO designated this range a “Biosphere Reserve” due mainly to its high rate of endemic species and incredible biodiversity. With an average rainfall of 40 inches per year, the mountains supply a majority of the water for drought-vulnerable populations below. In December 2012, significant life tumult washes me ashore into Todos Santos, easily Baja’s most charming village. The mighty Sierra as its backdrop, I was determined to explore this critical habitat further. On foot, naturally. Living here for the winter months, I learn about a local resistance against plans by US-Canadian companies to open-pit gold mine in the Sierra. Eyes and heart open to street art and signage splattered across town renouncing the mining proposals.

The issue is complicated, but here’s what you need to know:

• Two large mining companies, Vista Gold and Argonaut Gold, seek permits to open-pit gold mine in the Sierra.
• They attempted in 2010, but permits were rejected due to public resistance. Locals thought the fight was over.
• With the recent financial crisis, demand for gold has increased as people are pulling money out of unstable stocks and investing in gold.
• In 2011, Mexico was added to the top 10 gold-producing nations in the world.
• The companies have renamed, reconfigured and are applying again.

5 reasons why open-pit gold mining is one of the most environmentally destructive methods of resource extraction on the planet:

1. Deadly. These mines use heavy metals such as cyanide and arsenic to separate gold ore. One rice-grain of this stuff in your system and you’re dead.
2. Long-Term. Mines are abandoned after 9.5 years, while residual toxins may leech into aquifers for centuries.
3. Wasteful. Uncanny amounts of water and resources are used to open-pit mine. Some report 100 million gallons of water used daily.
4. Not Worth it. One gold ring = 20 tons of waste.
5. Don’t Need it. Roughly 80% of gold mined is used for jewelry.

I learned more and I got angry. Wheels started turning. Asking around, I connect with a leading activist group, Agua Vale Mas Que Oro, and present them with an idea: One day, 70 miles. A first-ever crossing of the peninsula on foot with as many participants as possible, through the heart of the mountains these companies propose to mine. Start on the Gulf, end at the Pacific, finishing with an event in Todos Santos.

The group was sold immediately.

And so began three months of tireless planning – with local artists, activists, filmmakers, government officials and businesspeople. Countless hours spent in meetings, studying maps, on scouting missions and promotional events. Wading through layers of cultural, bureaucratic and linguistic challenges, I found environmental organizing in Mexico to be an entirely different beast than back home, much more than expected. And with two hours of training daily, the days were up full up until the action.

Eve of Protest.

La Ribera is on extended siesta. Dad, aunt and I arrive a day early to this coastal village where the action starts. Quiet here, air warm and undirected. The caretaker of our rented bungalow is an eccentric, middle-aged man who had just arrived, walking from Phoenix, Arizona. Yes, walking. 1,200 miles. Talk about foot travel. A car bumbles past chased by spirals of dust as headlines blare from dangling rooftop speakers:

**Sale on Cabeza Meat, Today Only!**
**Telenovela Finale, 6pm, Canal 2!**
**Come to the Plaza and Support the 1st Annual Del Golfo al Pacifico Protest Run!**

Impressed by the promotion, I am amused at how stereotypically Mexican the word is getting out. The method works and nearly half of the town comes to the evening rally to bless the protest. Volunteers hand out cups of fruit to encourage healthy lifestyles while a relentless Zumba instructor demands I show my moves. I submit awkwardly and the crowd eats it up. The evening’s reception is overwhelming and only reinforces the painstaking work put into this action. As the activities heat up, we slip out the back, determined to get a few winks of sleep before an uncivilized wake-up call.

Day of Action.

2:05 a.m. Alarm clock doesn’t startle me because I am wide-awake. And nervous as hell. Fingernails piling up on the bedside table like poached ivory. A riotous canine symphony commences outside as soggy teens tumble drunk down the road. Invasive vines of doubt crawl into an overactive amygdala, suffocating thought. So many preparations for this day, then what if I can’t deliver? What then? I hack, hack, hack with a mental machete to keep defeatist thoughts at bay. This is not about you, Nick. It’s about the Sierra. It’s about this place, this endangered quality of wildness. Tend to Her, not to your small self-doubt.

Nothing stirs as we drive to the start. Unsure what to expect, I hold my breath as we pull up to the beach. Resembling a drug bust, headlights circle a large congregation of people while the local police chief stands firm, stroking a hearty mustache. 100 pesos for a smile. Greeting the protesters, I learn that several other runners and cyclists will be joining this section. To my surprise, two of the runners will be attempting the entire route with me. The first guy is Pedro. Short, fit and fierce. Just completed the Cabo Ironman three weeks prior. The other, Eduardo, can’t be more opposite. Thin, tall and jovial. Hasn’t experienced anything over a marathon but was moved by the unique convergence of endurance sport and activism.

“Vamos a ver. I’m just going to see how the body responds,” Eduardo remarks casually. Light chuckle. 70 miles. No biggie. Our watches round up to 3:00am and we begin. No gunshot, no sirens, no sponsors. Just animal paws clapping, hooting and hollering. Here goes nothing. Here goes everything.

To the Pacific.

Moon is sharp in her crescent curvature as our dog pack cuts through the cool evening with the rapidity of a 10K. Nerves retreat with shuttling oxygen. A local running hero settles next to me, a foot taller and a stride faster. In front, the film crew hangs from an open hatchback while Dad and several support vehicles trail behind. I realize in these first miles how far the Pacific Ocean feels. The ambitious route reminds me of a scene in Napoleon Dynamite where Uncle Rico boasts he could “throw a football over them mountains.” Are we really running across an entire peninsula? Over a mountain range?

Whose stupid idea was this?

Activity radiates from the village of Santiago’s plaza with our arrival. Police sirens wake babies and prompt heralding rooster ejaculations while a large group provides an onslaught of support. After refueling and some words from the mayor, we quickly depart and begin the next stretch of dirt road pointed directly into the Sierra’s bosom. Not a meter of pavement now until the Pacific Ocean, over 50 miles away. Assuming we make it.

Sun begins to make subtle offerings of light as we push West. The town mayor rides a bike next to me and we discuss the importance of local civic engagement on environmental issues.

“No hay una economia cuando tenemos una planeta muerte.” I say through labored breath. There’s no economy on a dead planet. Sounds funny in Spanish, but he got it. I find myself engaging in dialogue with an important Mexican government official as he cycles alongside at dawn, publicly denouncing support for gold mining in Baja. This just gets me fired up.

A circus tent of granite relief and crumpled earth provides us with a humbling approach. The unfurled ribbon of dirt ahead becomes straighter than straight, like uncooked spaghetti. I take a moment to review the group of protesters. Some have fallen behind, others looking strong. Pedro’s face bandana sets him apart as kin to the Zapatistas. Runners and cyclists. Males and females. Young and old. All of us strangers only a few hours prior, and now one mobile thought-force. One cell, one body, one agent, one resister—running, breathing, thinking, doubting, hurting, loving. All surges, bathroom breaks, sighs and sweat in the eyes compose a pedestrian philharmonic harmonizing as one. Abbey’s Bonnie and Doc were right: 

“We’re all in this together.”

The road becomes tortuous as canyon walls stretch high, while a struggling creek parallels us, babbling in support. The first ranches appear and from them soft eyes of their inhabitants. Cowboy hats, weathered skin and smiles. I cringe as penetrative lights and sounds of our police escort reverberate off mountainside. The ranch family I stayed with on a previous expedition awaits my arrival and, when I see them, endorphins get ahead of my Spanish skill and I trip over words of gratitude. The oldest sister Betty decides to run with me until the end of the road, her smiles an intravenous shot of solidarity.

Covering a 50K before 8am, we finally reach the end of the road. Our support caravan gathers to celebrate as all protesters make it safely. No injuries, ahead of schedule. What lies before us is pure treachery—a 12-mile, 6,000-foot vertical climb of exposed singletrack in warming temperatures. The entire mountain section offers yet another marathon distance, this time over mountains, granite slabs, scrambling donkey trail and heat. Pablo and Eduardo are still in, but I notice fatigue. Eyes looking sunken, more serious. Salt caking on their face. Dirt in every crack and crevice. This is it. No more caravan, no more medical staff. This is where things start to get interesting.

Dad hands over my fully-loaded pack and I take a moment of mental recalibration. Smell the soul of this place, Nick. No, deeper. Take it deep into your chest. She’s alive. This place crawls and spears and pierces into sky and soil. She sprouts and blossoms and drinks and feels and fucks and flourishes and falls. She dances. And she listens. So be here for Her. Breathe your intention with every damn step up this mountain, because She knows you are here.

She wants you here.

Blessings are delivered as the forest consumes us three. Crowd now faded from view, we all look at each other and feel an obvious threshold crossing. Somebody fiddled with a dial and we now move to a different frequency. No turning back now. The ascent commences into the jaws of the great Sierra, into the spotlight of today’s protest, into a wild space that deserves to dance unmolested, free from multinational checkboxes or mutilated mountainsides. To the Dance.

Following the thread of dirt singletrack just feels right. And dangerous. Two weeks ago, someone went missing in this section. Was found three days later, barely alive. Crossing a section of anarchic boulders ahead of the others, I feel something pinching my upper calve. Looking down, a swarm of giant pink wasps surrounds my ankles, one of which is sinking a stinger into flesh. Expletives fire recklessly through the canyon. Am I allergic? Epi-pen?

Scraping the inflamed area for a pincher, I cool the swelling with rationed water. I visualize inflammation reaching eyebrows, lymph nodes, lungs closing tight. Breathe, man. You’re fine. The pain does not subside and yet my hardheadedness only feeds on such agony, grunting louder and running harder. Subsequent calve firings shuttle poison to new muscle fibers and I cringe with every stride.

Halfway up the climb, a park ranger meets us to share this final section of switchbacks, as relentless as the rising temperatures. Trail flattens out and I become shamelessly attached to the high mountain meadows signifying the end of our ascent. We eventually reach and traverse the ancient lakebeds to a ranger station tucked into a grove of Pine.

The hours and miles are beginning to stack up. Tree stump for a seat, I hang my head low, wasted from the effort. Eduardo and Pedro are nowhere to be seen as I peer back into the fields of expired bush. Standing guards of Pine and Oak indicate significant elevation change, where hours earlier we were navigating through Sonoran desert scrub. A crumbly amaranth biscuit disappears into my mouth, snagged in beard as I unabashedly huff crumbs from the plastic wrapping. Internal incinerator is burning hot, so every calorie counts.

After 30 minutes, no one arrives so I continue alone. Crossing over a mountain saddle, I laugh in utter disgust as I can now see the miles that remain. Eyes ride the back of Raven gliding down mountain flank—a vertiginous 11-mile, 6,000-foot descent meeting sandy road below and scribbling all the way to the mighty Pacific.

12 hours into the crossing and cramping becomes a permanent resident. I desperately seek a defense strategy, anything to deflect these seizures. Tonglen comes to mind, a simple Buddhist exercise of taking on the suffering of others with each in-breath. I attempt to focus on pain caused by open-pit mining, and faces of turmoil appear. Hospital beds. Crying mothers. Sick children. Dead, decaying children. An infant receives IV treatment with a hanging bag of cyanide. Cape Pygmy Owl cleans wings in a toxic stream. My skin crawls as the medicinal bark of Torote flakes prematurely, unable to heal the world with her now-noxious peel.

The meditation floods me with heavy imagery and I discard my petty hand of cards in exchange for those much more serious, a felt gravity of my Earth community swallowing the externalities of such patho-adolescent business behavior. The cramping, the circulating wasp poison, the heat, the endless miles. It all evaporates in knowing the damage to be delivered if companies mine here. Deeply stirred, pace lightens and I hammer down the mountainside with stalwart determination.

Two hours of quad-crushing downhill and a group of young Mexican students welcomes my arrival at the bottom of the mountain. Re-energized by their support, we find shade and chat about Mexican environmentalism. Stimulated by the exchange, Eduardo suddenly bursts onto the scene and I can’t be happier, as I have not seen another runner for several hours. Pedro is hours back, but moving. We hug and hobble together to the park’s entrance, fatigue fusing for a few moments.

Dad, aunt, film crew, police escort, park rangers, medical staff, volunteers and spectators all provide an overwhelming homecoming as we reach the station. Two vagrants shot at, beaten, tossed in the dirt, left for dead. Eduardo and I take refuge in a thatched hut to hide from the heat. 15 hours deep, Eduardo’s vessel is a sagging bag of hurt and mine isn’t any better. Yet, I am charged by the presence of familiar faces again and know that the worst is behind us. All that remains now is a 12-mile road of sand and rut to the highway. So after some rest, I stand, take off everything except shorts and shoes, and begin putting one foot stiffly in front of other.

The last miles take all remaining fortitude. Energy and temperament is drowning with the setting Sun. No physical mountains to cross now, just psychological Himalayans. Body screams from the top of its lungs to stop, to curl up in the bush, fetal position and just give up. Left foot damaged, definitely a stress fracture. Blisters are bored, can’t rub any deeper.

Darkness falls as the lights from my support caravan illuminate an otherwise lonely expanse of road ahead. Dad and aunt provide seamless aid, but I can only respond in gruntspeak. Eduardo is nowhere to be seen. Well beyond 100 kilometers now. As I find myself marching in defeatist surrender, a van of protesters approaches and a tall, slender figure pops out to gallop towards me. I squint and recognize that it is my friend, Meghan.

“Wow,” she says chuckling. “You look like shit, man.” Honest woman, unfiltered. We laugh, embrace and start running together. I leech off her effervescence and the pace quickens.

Finally, we reach highway lights. A handful of protesters join in for the last mile to the beach, their energy resuscitating my capsizing vessel. I can smell the barn now, and by barn I mean an omnipresent stench of rotting fish from Punto Lobos, a popular place for fisherman to unload their bounty.

Hallucinations start to illustrate a landing strip guiding this flailing fighter jet back to Earth. My imagination proves true and we are welcomed by a huge group of supporters lined with flashlights creating a finish chute. Shoes enter deep sand while a circle of drummers erupts in celebration. In an instant, the mighty Pacific crashes before me, clapping Her hands in respect. A baritone humming of shifting sands and salt spray invites me to lie in the foamy tide, to feel the force of this giant breathing body. I say yes.

And finally, it’s over. 70 miles. I am done.

Eduardo and Pedro arrive in an ambulance minutes later, all smiles and hobbles. Pedro’s knee blew up on the mountain descent, while Eduardo’s body completely shut down 6 miles to the finish. We share a long embrace for today’s effort, then make our way to the town plaza.

It’s Saturday night and Todos Santos is on fire. Tomorrow marks the start of a popular off-road car race, so tonight is their pre-race festival. Children crying, Dogs barking. Cars honking. Music blaring. Exhaust. Beers. Clusters of Mexicans piling out of restaurants. Our large protest occupies the streets and everyone stops to watch. I relish in this peculiar passing of two worlds. Foot travel meets car race. Animal meets machine. Breath meets exhaust. Heart casings meets engine cavities. Blood meets oil. I feel strong in having covered 70 miles on foot today as they prepare for a similar journey fueled on petroleum. I wish they would drop their resource-rich recreation and join in our fight, for a cause that will undoubtedly affect their families, their children and their children’s children.

An unbelievable crowd awaits our arrival — locals, gringos, media, music and performers. Volunteers hand out information about the issue while Eduardo, Pedro and I limp up onstage for speeches. I deliver a loopy 5-minute rant in Spanish to nearly 100 people expressing appreciation for everyone’s support. Eduardo brings me to tears with a speech about the brotherhood cultivated today in the mountains. Delegates and local activists speak to confirm that such mining practices are not welcome here in Baja and will receive nothing but opposition moving forward.

And no, there are no gold medals handed out.

Afterwards, during a short radio interview, a Mexican boy tugs at my shirt asking if he can have my hat. This lucky cap has been with me for years. “May the Beast be your Enlightenment” is sketched on the brim. I take off the soggy, smelly, salty excuse for a hat and hand it over. He bubbles with joy, swivels it on backwards and hands me his own in exchange. The interaction rocks me to the core as a recognition from the future — from this place, this country, this planet. You now hold a shared torch of responsibility towards defending the health of Earth and community. Now run with it.

The event swirls around us and into the night with comedians and traditional dance. I am carried home empty and shivering uncontrollably, collapsing lifeless into bed. I pull over my traumatized body a quilt stitched in squares of deep satisfaction and completion, of genuine solidarity.

And just as I shut my eyes, I feel somewhere the subtle shifting of a giant, slumbering Indian.

///

On April 6th, 2013, we successfully awakened thousands to the importance of wildness, to helping native lands flourish unexploited. Perhaps this is what the old folktale is trying to convey, to help us remember the sacred indigeneity of land, and to also recognize the indigenous resting within us all. I’m not suggesting a cooptation of native traditions, but rather to simply engage with the one inside us all that experiences Earth and Her creatures as soul-infused messengers speaking in a language older than words. The one who makes ravaging love to a bleeding sunset or penetrates with feeding Hummingbird into the succulent fruit of Pitaya Cactus. The one who dances ecstatic to riotous fire flicker as its reflection exposes a quality untamed within, inside some psychic chambered forest.

Whether we know it or believe it, we are all descendants of such nature-based ancestry. We are all native to this planet, to this fecund poem chanting melodic incantations of sentient song, of incomprehensible complexity and Mystery. And as we currently inhabit an era of widespread environmental collapse, let us feel fully this sanctity with the “soft animal of our bodies.” Let us experience destructive industries and shortsighted consumer habits as a raping of ourselves, an open-pit robbery of our own individual treasure. Then, when native habitats become threatened, we say no. When native seed is destroyed, we say no. When native brothers and sisters are marginalized, we say no. No. There’s no time left. So, let us fight both radically and urgently for this shared emergence.

Let us awaken the Sleeping Indian. It stirs within us all.

Flatscreen stares long
Cold and grinning.
RoboRetinas,
Pixelated price-tags
Taunt groggy animal eyes.

Boobtube bleeds panic.
News anchor war paint
Dripping from chin.
Prying. Trying. Crying.

Air-con meat freezer.
Dull machine bizz-buzz.
Decry, deny and defy
Intensifying, warming world
Outside.

Parking lot. Feed lot.
Lonely lines painted
Conformity Cream.
Factory-farm eggs
Stand no chance
On this searing sidewalk.

Paper pup-cup caffeine.
Honoring Tree with a quickie.
Harmless rape.
Styrofoam saucer-eyes.
Single-use everything.
Disposable all.

Shower blasting,
Sipping playfully
From stolen water.
Scrub with urgency.
Save the whales.

Front-desk façade.
In hot pursuit
Of the American Dream.
Banana in tailpipe.
Follow corporate crumbs,
Clever acronyms.

W.I.N.
T.E.A.M.
R.O.A.R.
L.O.S.T.
S.O.S.

Hooters. Bellagio. Circus, Circus.
Psychic porous poisonous pour-overs.
Towers of excess. Toothless grin.
Rapacious rotting from
Inside out.

To the Airport!
Great Carbon Party.
Gasping trumpet
Asphyxiated Elephant.

Monkey contact, scoff!
Tuck behind DigiVeil.
Micro-bulb-lumens ablaze,
Snuggle nearest, Avatar dearest.
Perfumes of posturing.
Apply liberally.

Stay where it’s safe.
Do. Not. Engage.
Color inside the lines.
Otherwise,
You’ll get hurt.

And don’t you forget…

The House always wins.

Grand Canyon Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim. Required visit to Mecca for ultrarunners. 42 miles. 11,500 vertical feet. Across the Grand Canyon to the North Rim…then back. Kaibab Trail. In company with best in the biz, Joe Joe and TK (ran it sub 7-hours, what?) + Joe’s Uncle Dave (aka Uncle Boss). Took over 15 hours. Slow, meditative crossing. Full day enveloped in this gaping fantasy chasm. Most visuals snapped by the one and only Alpine Works. No one today inhabiting the intersection of Artist and Athlete quite like Joe can. Period.

Bonus track from Flagstaff….

70 Miles. 9,000ft vertical. 18+ hours. Gulf to the Pacific. One day. First-ever recorded attempt. Joined by over 50 runners + hundreds in support. Runners, walkers, cyclists, police escorts, ambulances, huge crowds, film crew, running crew. Attacked by wasps, dogs, falling rocks. Perma-cramping. Some preliminary media coverage before (one and two and three) and after the race. Short documentary film in production now, due at the end of May. Full story coming soon. Some snapshots of one of the single-most powerful, moving days of my entire life.

April 5th, 2013. Eve of Run: Pre-Protest Run Rally in La Ribera.

Zumba. Yup.

April 6th, 2013: Day of Protest

2:45am. Pedro, me and Eduardo. Only three attempting entire route. Smiles now, pain later.

4am. Mile 8.

5:15am. Mile 15. Santiago Plaza. Incredible community support.

6am. Mile 20. Entering ranchos and mountains.

10am. Mile 35. Eduardo powering the east side ascent.

3pm. Mile 50. Looking West.

5pm. Mile 58. La Burrera. Haggard.

Meanwhile, protest/cultural event organized in downtown Todos Santos.

8pm. Mile 65. Joined by huge La Paz running group.

8:30pm. Mile 70. Punto Lobos. Finished. Supreme elation.

Last kilometer into town. 9pm. Todos Santos is going OFF. Look at line of cars.

Post-run ceremony. Statements. Hugs. Press and people everywhere.

This is what change looks like.

Done.

“It’s entirely conceivable that life’s splendor surrounds us all, and always in its complete fullness, but veiled beneath the surface, invisible, far away. But there it lies, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If we call it by the right word, by the right name, then it comes. This is the essence of magic, which doesn’t create but calls.” – Franz Kafka

I hide my peripheral glances across the wooden table as orange peels fly from his knife like bubbly shavings of pastor pork from the spit. My clumsy laboring yields a negligible pile of citrus confetti unmatched to Martin’s work.

I am tucked into a lesser-known canyon on the east side of the Sierra de Laguna Mountains in Southern Baja, Mexico. Through the process of organizing a campaign against open-pit gold mining plans here, I was invited to a meeting on the beaches of La Ribera with CONANP (National Park Service) and several community organizers. Following the meeting, two officials agree to drop me at the foot of the Sierra. The plan: Stay the night near the trailhead, run up and over the 25-mile, 7,000ft vertical mountain section the next morning and get picked up on the west side in the afternoon. This eastern ascent is the only piece of my 70-mile trans-peninsula project I have not yet covered.

A dusty, lonesome road from Santiago delivers us deep into the heart of the Sierra. We arrive at the quiet Mexican ranch in the afternoon. Simple rural setting. One large longhouse with a palm veranda. A young, healthy woman tends to soiled clothes with levity, to combat soggy hours of work ahead. Her daughter weaves freely around us guarded adults with fluorescent orange sweatpants and a smile reaching both ears. A crack in the door exposes an elderly woman lying nearly lifeless on the bed. 90 years old. Ancient and tired. Then Martin arrives. Dark skin. Eyes piercing, a mustache thick, black as coal. Hardship written in cursive wrinkles. He sits silently next to me with a bucket full of oranges and begins to shave peels for making dulce. I offer to help him with his task, so we sit together and we peel. We peel for hours. Breaking the silence, I ask if he knows much about the gold mining operations here in the Sierra. No, he says. I share what I know and he responds without flinching.

“Well of course I’m against this activity. You need not tell me facts and figures to know that this is wrong and bad for us all.” And that was that.

Martin was right. It’s simple. We don’t need scientists and studies and soil samples and prodding and poking to tell us what our hearts already know. My new friend had it all figured out. Forget the figures. You take, take, take from this beautiful place and you poison water and earth and we will all pay. Simple.

With oranges bald, I slip out to explore the cool evening on foot. Continuing up the animate canyon, eardrums feast on cosmic alchemy as a building crescendo of symphonic sentience subsumes Sun’s retreating heat. Granite warriors above drape lavender scarves around their shoulders to soften the intimidating relief. Deeper, deeper, deeper, richer, richer, richer the evening colors transition. My mind, my heart and my thoughts follow suit.

An active commute unfolds on this tortuous mountain road. Herds of Cow, a lone black Horse, a gang of Goat. Bat weaves through stagnant air braiding a fabric electric, frenetic and free. As fading light persuades me to return, Fox trots out from under spectating Ocotillo to paint Mystery into this hanging moment. Zorro. Breath pauses as our eyes unite for a sand-grain second. Quickly, Fox melts into the enveloping dark of this soul-saturated stage, triggering the explosion of an impatient full moon bearing witness to this exchange, to this Sacred Dance. I return.

Scalding orange peel tea is poured following our light meal, while a fire cackles nearby—black pot bubbling, frijoles on simmer. This ranch runs entirely off the grid — solar-powered, composting toilets, water drawn from the river. An old laptop is dusted off and Martin proudly inserts the Chronicles of Riddick. You haven’t lived fully until you’ve heard Vin Diesel’s voice dubbed in Spanish. The combination of awful cinema and a long day’s work leaves everyone tired and unamused. Martin and I retire to our cots outside while the women disappear into the thatched hut. An anarchic flickering candle inside pairs with sweet whispers seeping through wooden walls. It is as if the very indigenous heart of Mexico, of Earth, of perhaps the entire Cosmos rests here in this very hut, in this very moment, in this throbbing glow through ancient ribcage of Palo de Arco.

I drift into the domain of Dreammaker with this image. Smiling.

—

Rooster and Kettle form a duo of pre-dawn Mexican folk melodies to pry open groggy eyes. Osiel appears in a cot adjacent me. Similar in age, tattered black jeans, over-sided boots, ripped red shirt. Missing front tooth. Short on words, but very friendly. Today marks day 1 of a 4-day shift for him up in the Sierra to register recreating backpackers. He agrees to show me the route of the upper elevations. After multiple cups of instant coffee, Osiel and I disappear silently into the mountains. A copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang pokes out from within my small pack to keep me pointed in the right direction.

The ascent is faster and more beautiful than I anticipated. Lush. Waterfalls. Huge slabs of flowing granite. A series of climbs invites us to exposed ridgeline and sweeping views of mountain erosion. Anomalous blankets of cloud moderate morning heat while a swift ascent lifts us 5,000 vertical feet into the upper zones of lounging Oak, Pine and Madrone.

Sun reaches high towards Jupiter and we too extend upwards, entering the great Laguna meadows. Midday light sparks ablaze these majestic pockets of golden fields, contrasting with a perimeter of Pine. Mind paddles through a cluster of granite island tombstones, adding texture to this prehistoric lake environment. Citrus flavored Butterflies wrestle in the thousands, reminding us to lighten body and thought. Just two bushy-tailed Foxes pawing down the path, each step inviting us a bit closer to a known, primordial wildness.

Osiel and I finally reach the ranger station. An older ranger with a 2-pound mustache and 10-gallon hat greets us with a round of cold, smoky coffee. We sit on stumps in bleaching sun, laughing and sharing our respective mornings. 3 hours, 40 minute climb to the Valle?! Puta madre, es rapido. Pinche Gringo got lost up here the other day. Not much activity otherwise, the ranger reports. Eventually, I say farewell to my new friends and begin the familiar 12-mile, 6,000-foot vertical descent to the west entrance. I float down this 2-hour section with supreme ease, reflecting on all that has happened—successful protest meeting, an incredible stay with the Mexican ranch family, full linguistic immersion, the day’s gorgeous 25-mile mountain crossing. I arrange to have a park ranger pick me up at the west entrance. Seamless connection. Bliss.

—

This Saturday, I will attempt to incorporate this section into a larger 70-mile protest run from one coast of the peninsula to the other. It’s never been done before. (Updates on Twitter and Facebook) Yet, following this soulful encounter, I now feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility. A deep, deep kinship with these people and the more-than-human community here, all dependent on the health of this range, this water, this land.

And so it is.

Bat. Fox. Goat. Lizard. Ociel. Martin. Pitaya. Ocotillo. Vista Gold Inc. Vin Diesel. Agua Vale Mas Que Oro. Madrone. Orange peel. Argonaut Gold. Granite slab. Raven. Cape Pygmy Owl. Betty. The Gulf. The Pacific. All part of me. I am the Sierra. We are the Sierra. We are the paintbrush tail of Fox blending into mountain dusk. We are the cyanide-poisoned aquifers caused by open-pit gold mining operations. We are citrus tree roots indiscriminately drawing from arsenic-laced water, bearing toxic fruit peeled and sold at market. We are distanced executives twirling their gold wedding rings, waiting impatiently inline at Starbucks undisturbed as their machines sodomize and desacralize faraway lands, people, cultures and species. We are Bat bobbing left to right, up and down, searching for the answer, for the Way. And we are the glowing Heart of Earth beating, chuckling, whispering softly in our ears the way forward.

We are the Destroyers. We are the Creators. We are the Resistance. We are all of it.

We are exactly what we have been waiting for.

Did you see it? Have you seen the green flash? You know, that split-second moment when retreating Sun cannonballs into Sea delivering a cosmic wink, celestial eyelashes flapping emerald firework. How did you miss that? It was right there. Perhaps you looked too early. Gotta be careful, you’ll pan-fry your damn eyeballs and then you bet your bottom dollar no one’s ever seen ‘em a green flash through an eye patch.

No one sees a flash through an eye patch.

—

So this is it. This is your moment. This is your chance. Your number has been called. Fortune cookie reads: “You may be dead tomorrow.” It will come. It will pass. The flash-snap of your existence ends just as abruptly as it begins. Life happens all in a moment. All in one simple…electric…flash. Faulty arithmetic carries the one, adds a zero to get time and space birthing the omnipresent crosshair of the here and the now. And that’s all. So try not to blink, don’t even yawn. Fight through the stinging eyes, the discomfort, the anticipation, the Mystery of Unknown, Unexplained. It’s supposed to work this way.

You have a choice. You can dazzle viewers with this fleeting moment, this lifetime exploding upon the horizon with the harnessed energy of 5,434,614,321 striking rattlesnakes, wild shrapnel spraying from the Source, ripping through skin and soul. You can overwhelm the Pacific with tears of surrender as the papyrus scroll of your unfolding poem bounces playfully down a dusty path unknown. You can commit. You must. Because, when Sea finally snaps shut its unavoidable and unpredictable jaws around your ephemeral radiant blast, all will cease.

You will laugh. You will cry. You will howl and you will die.

So I ask you to fall in love. Right now. Fall in love with someone. Fall in love with something. Fall in love with some place. Some work of art. A song. A movement. A mountain. A pattern. A food. A project. A sorus pod clinging to the backside of dripping Fern. Whatever it is, envelope it with your fullest embrace, because you might not ever have another chance.

“You don’t ever let go of that thread,” as your boldness, creativity and passion may spark heady revolution across ocean and mountaintop. And revolution is precisely what we need. Revolt against a life lived without flash. Revolt against a system that objectifies and calculates the property value of wild. Revolt against institutions and lifestyles that reduce our spirit explosions to yawns and anger and isolation and greed and anxiousness and bones and ashes and soot. Revolt against workplaces that microwave our existence — uncomfortably hot on the outside, ice-cold in the middle.

And then say yes. Yes to that “stupid” idea or lofty dream for which only others supposedly have the fortitude to follow. Say yes to people and community that demands the real You, nothing more, nothing less. Drop ways that no longer serve us — calcifying routine, sedative media, seductive digital distraction. All out to advertise, polarize, sensationalize, demonize. Be not the fumbling spectator unconvinced that such existence is possible. Be flash now. Learn what engages your depth then fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire until all that is left is the hollow sound of metallic morse code clicking and an acrid waft of discharged rounds piled high.

Like only you can.

Because once the sun has begun its Mariana plunge, once all retinas have been unequivocally burned to a smoldering heap of ash, once all participating pineal glands have steeped long in victory, there will commence a sky burial ceremony above in your honor. Cumulonimbus pinks and purples blush while Pelican face muscles twitch, wings extended fully in a meditative survey of dark waters below. And all that remains, all that endures are lapping waves and whispering Westerlies. A return to something familiar, to the kin of Supreme Emptiness.

So I ask: Are you the green flash, or are you merely spectating?

Photo Credits: Todos Aventura, Genevieve, Orlando Beltran

Aussie Byron ripping his new Ibanez

Sea Turtle Nest Excavator. Member of Agua Vale Mas Que Oro, organizing 70-mile Transpeninsula pedestrian protest with local activists against cataclysmic Canadian gold mining operations. March 21st. Hasta La Victoria, Siempre. Befriended two young Aussie travelers. Hours exploring trails and land. Cardon Catcus. Ocotillo. Torote. Palo de Arco. Picaya Dulce. Todos Santos Music Festival. Took Ben Gibbard, lead singer for Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service, on 14 miles of Baja singletrack. Solid foot traveller. Sat with REM lead singer and artist Michael Stipes for a chat. Offering weekly trail running classes in town. Wednesdays, 3:30pm. Forget money, only trades/gifts accepted. Get creative. Helping conceptual design for “huerta” ecology center development near town. Giving yoga one last chance. Ukulele progress, one and two new songs. Apprenticing with neighbor to learn biodynamic gardening practices. Graduate applications in. And I wait.

Anxious. Excited. Confident. Ready. Free.

Photos accompanied by music and favorite quotes from Jay Griffith’s Wild: An Elemental Journey. Delicious book. Don’t die before reading this one.

Photo: Nic Heidbreder

“Nomadism is like an original fire in our wild minds; we stole it from the gods, and we made it our own, leaping to new places, quickening to motion, curious and light as flame. The keen urge has never left us to take a flinting tent and fling it under the stars, then swing on, on at dawn, on an elemental journey. That is how to burn most brightly. That is how to catch like wildfire.”

Aussie Stevi, Wild Owl Feather Woman

“Walk. The drum begins. Follow it. Follow the drums of thunder. Follow the sun. Follow the stars at night as they lean on their long slant down the far side of the sky. Follow the lightning and the open road. Follow your compulsion. Follow your calling. Follow anything except orders and habit. Follow the fire-fare-forward of life itself. Go where you will, burn your bridges if you must, leave the paving stones smoldering and singe the gate as you leave, leave an incendiary device by the wall, and scorch your way across the land. I dare you.“

Death Cab on the Ascent

Leatherbacks

Top 10 Tracks Spinning South of the Border:

1. Old Crow Medicine Show
2. Sole and the Skyrider Band
3. Jinja Safari
4. Project Move
5. Local Natives
6. Angus and Julia Stone 
7. TV on the Radio 
8. Jurassic 5
9. Toots and the Maytals
10. Katchafire

Washers, A Triolo Classic.

“The wildest things are the self-willed, self-governing, anarchic. Since will is wild, to damage someone else’s will is both unkind and unwild. By contrast, to be truly anarchic is to follow a wild and radical kindness. Anarchy refuses to impose one’s will on another. In this is kindness.”

Its evening, and the ocean floats red.
Corneas crawling through linen forts
Of blankets crimson.

Hermit peers West, emotional heat.
To honor the demise of Sacred Sky Fire;
Exoskeleton vibrations
Toast soft buttery soul beneath.

Gray and Humpback Grace,
Impossible journeys;
Still breaching, lunging, playing;
Old Faithfuls of the Sea,
Exhalations powerful, resonant.

Breath Deep. Breath Now.

Hatched Olive Ridley,
Mere minutes into life;
Time has come Brave One!
Enter Wave, Enter Mystery.
Welcome Life, now face Death.
Charge ho! Heave! Heave!

Follow current. Trust its tug.

Reds swallowed whole
By eclipsing twilight diamonds.
Nature, Grand Alchemist.
Turning East, to honor mountain jigsaw;
Barefoot sandy signatures,
Animal stamp collections
Of wandering Horse hoof, furtive Jackrabbit,
And callused feet.

Enter the deep end.
Melting into wondrous waves of Unknown.
Here now, accessible and available fully
To see what lives
Just beyond the breakers.

Pitaya Dulce – Organ Pipe Cactus

Olive Ridley Hatchling. Working with Local Sea Turtle Effort.

3rd Place (1st Gringo) Por Que 5K

Ripe.

Huge jam. Eclectic crowd. Incredible.

Cousin Blake, the Transcendentalist.

Plaid in Spanish = Manta Escocesa

Siri, sat next to me on plane, consistent supplier of hugs and Skittles. Ridiculous cute.

Home.

Anti-Mining Campaign

Pop drenched in magnificence.

On fire.