The No-Garbage Theory of Chicken Spirits

Nothing disappears. I looked into the yellow and black eye of my chicken as she gasped, and the presence departed from that eye. Where did that breath just go?

I read somewhere of “primitive” cultures without the concept of trash. Where resources are a closed system.

In our lives, garbage goes to that magic place called “away” and new things keep appearing on the shelves. But that’s an illusion. Everything goes somewhere, everything comes from somewhere.

So where does a chicken’s spirit go? Or it’s breath, if you don’t want to grant chickens a spirit. There is something in there that is alive, then it isn’t.

I had a hard time killing this chicken. She had chickenality, which is personality with feathers. But she was a meat bird, I rationalized, of a hybrid breed that will usually die of a heart attack if let live much past its prime butchering age. Besides, somebody was eating the laying hens’ eggs, and that behavior is not to be tolerated in the coop. It was just her time to go.

I cradled her in my arm as she looked around and told her I’d love to meet her again someday, when she’s not the chicken and I'm not the farmer; when we’re more equals. And then I stuffed her gently but firmly into a bucket, pulled her head through a hole in the bottom, and cut her jugular.

I held her head down so she wouldn’t flop out of the bucket as she expired. I apologized, and I sobbed. A chicken takes a long time to completely expire. The eye is lucid, then it blinks. It fades, then returns briefly. The body jerks. One has eons to think and to feel while standing there, knife in one hand, chicken in the other, burgundy blood dripping.

If spirits “come into this world” and go out of it, where is the spirit warehouse?

There was an energy that was trotting around, pecking, scratching, flapping. Now it hangs limp in my hand. Physics gives us the “law of conservation of energy” which says that nothing disappears. That chicken’s breath has gone somewhere. The energy in the flesh has not gone anywhere yet, though it will eventually become part of three things: my body, my activity, and my composting toilet fodder. Poop will become dirt, and then nutrients taken up in a tree. My body, too, will eventually become dirt, taken up by plants. My activity makes body heat and moves resources. So our legacy is dirt, and the things we move. Plus spirit.

One can follow nutrients around. But spirits? Can they appear, like new toys on the shelf, and go, like garbage hauled off in the truck? Then where is the factory, and where is the dump? Or is it the recycling plant? There must be a circle of understanding big enough to encompass the resource flow of spirits.

If rattlesnakes can register the heat left in a mouse’s footprint, and physics can split atoms, should we not be able to measure a spirit and follow its trail as it departs into thin air? Maybe spirit is air itself. It animates a body, and then it stops entering it, and takes that heat back into itself. Is God in the air? Is God the air itself? Is God the Warehouse of spirits? Or is God the warehouse Manager? Or is God just a word for things we can’t measure but need to believe in?

The next steps made the chicken less resemble the entertaining creature I knew, and more resemble food. Scalding, plucking, removing head and feet. Eviscerating. During the final step, I noticed that she was developing chicken testicles inside that body. Sorry, little rooster. Life is full of surprises.

Tasting Timelesness

I have just tasted another era. Somewhere back in time, another culture. Favas and comotes (sweet potatoes) from the huerta. Savor the sun, the rich earth, the mountain spring water filtered through ancient rock.

I am eating the garden gifts of Ramon’s family from a Baja mountain oasis. Everyday staples for them. A cultural and even spiritual experience for me. Eating from my home garden is one of the things I most miss when I am here in Baja. In this simple meal I have been transported!

Ramon is one of our university interns at Sea Kayak Baja Mexico in Loreto on the Baja peninsula. His family has lived for generations in the La Purisima-Comandu area. Currently they make their home in San Isidro, which is part of the same aquifer and is about as small and quiet and self-sustaining as a mountain oasis can be.

San Isidro is a step back in time. Food is cultivated by hand in small fields punctuated by irrigation ditches and palm groves. Animal fodder is cut with a simple curved blade and tossed into their pens. Fields for squash are fertilized with animal manure. Other fields grow green cover crops to replenish the soil. Favas are a staple, nourishing both soil and people.

When I saw fields of favas, which everyone has, I thought these people must have a lot of time on their hands to peel all those overpackaged beans. Then Ramon’s mom fed us a bowl of young favas, cooked with the pods. Delicious! How silly I was for so long to peel them and chuck good pods in the compost.

San Isidro lives permaculture. San Isidro lived permaculture before it was a word. San Isidro lives community as well, just to survive. They rely on a dam and an aqueduct for their water. They rely on cooperation for where that water flows when, and to keep it flowing. They rely on each other for labor, for sharing machinery, for trading food such as homemade cheese.

There are no restaurants in town. There is one store.

How does a kayak guide from Washington state get a personal tour of San Isidro? It’s funny where kayaking can take a person.

The Mexican government is dividing up the community lands into private property, including the San Isidro area. Ramon’s parents want to leave him a good opportunity to make a living. He came to Loreto to study Alternative Tourism. Since that is his interest, the family hopes to choose a good location for a basecamp for visitors or students so that he can offer tours of his hometown and the surrounding area, which is rich in many ways. My business partner Ivette and I have been invited to advise them and to brainstorm together.

The whole 4 hours up from Loreto is a geologists heaven. Ivette is a marine geologist, and gives us some mini-lessons along the way. Even up here in the mountains, there are marine sediments complete with fossils. Volcanic fields and peaks surround the valley, crowned by the striking El Pilon.

History merges here, of the natives and the missionaries, whose supporting military force intermarried with the natives and birthed the ranching culture that continues, slowly fading, in the Baja outback today. Natives, missionaries, and ranchers all made use of San Isidro’s resources, and the present culture descends directly from them. There are some simple petroglyphs on the way to San Isidro.

The freshwater lagoons supply water for birds as well. Ramon and I take Ivette’s young girls out to explore in sit-on-top kayaks. The peak of El Pilon watches us there as well.

Beyond the history, the geology, and the activities, it is the community itself that is the real treasure. A huerta is a place of sustenance that includes tended fields like a garden or farm, and fruit trees like an orchard. Often animals are part of the cycle as well. The huerta culture holds great knowledge in its hands: The tanning of hides and making of leather items. The processing of cheese, the making of tortillas. The alchemy of taking cane plants and making cones of dark sugar that resemble El Pilon, the peak that watches everything. The climbing of palm trees to harvest fronds that become roofs. The mashing and weaving of carrizo, a bamboo-like plant, into panels that are used as walls. The animal husbandry that breeds such healthy goats as the ones we are camped next to. They have beautiful coats, perfectly symmetrical horns, sound feet, well-shaped udders, and 2-3 frolicking babies apiece.

In the course of a few days, I felt like we went from advisors to family. Ivette’s girls call Ramon’s parents their Mountain Grandparents. Who can say where it will lead. Whom it may inspire. How the experience may influence the course of the little oasis itself. But I do know that eating the produce of their labors and the land and the sun and the mountain water, I feel reconnected. To all of it. To something deeply grounding and profoundly human.

Bus ride back to Loreto

The movie is in English, the radio in Spanish, and the bus driver, whose gas pedal is connected to his mouth, is chatting away at 50mph through the Baja California night. I’ve given up listening to my Swedish language CD, and look out the window.

Peace and a crescent moon in the sunset. We are the moments of our lives, and this journey is sweet. I am headed back to Loreto from San Diego after coming north to run a brief kayaking class.

First the driver talks with the relief driver, who rides in a jumpseat that folds down in the stairway. At a stop, the relief driver crawls underneath by the luggage to sleep before his shift. The chatty driver begins talking with the woman in the other front seat, and invites her to the jumpseat. This is a great bonus for me for 3 reasons. One, I do not feel like talking, and she is happy to. Two, she is keeping the driver awake and connected to the gas pedal, and three, I have even more space to stretch out.

We stop for dinner at a bus stop café. Eighteen overworked pots share one stovetop and two women lift lids, stir, shuffle pots around, and wait for the wall of hungry faces to voice their desires.

“?Que hay?” someone asks.
A rosary of options is mumbled back. Bistek, machaca, deshebrada…

Somebody calls out an order, and one woman pokes at a pot with more purpose.

“Bistek” I say, figuring I’d end up with some form of cow on a plate.
The other cook looks at me, and stirs another pot. “?Plato o burrito?”

“Burrito,” I reply.
“?Cuantos?”
I look around to spy a tortilla so I’d have a clue what size she is selling, but don’t see any. “Dos,” I guess. If they are little, at least with two I won’t starve, and if they are big, maybe one will make a good breakfast.

I take my plate of two humble burritos and sit down at a little plastic table. After a moment another woman asks if she can join me, and I agree.

Good food, I say in Spanish.
Hunger makes anything good, she replies with a smile.
An older woman joins us. We exchange our stories in tiny verbal snapshots.

Sometimes when strangers get together, the truest of things get said. I’m not sure how, but here we sit, sharing a bus stop table, the elderly 2-time cancer survivor, the accident survivor, and me. Expressing our thanks for the tragedy-blessings that made us more aware of what a gift life is.

We climb back on the bus for the long haul, me 20 hours from Tijuana to Loreto, the viajita 22 hours home to Insurgentes, and the younger woman 26 hours to La Paz for work. I sit in the front seat of the bus, just behind the driver, and am the beneficiary of many smiles as people step or hobble their ways on board.

The fourth movie ends and still the chatty driver keeps the pace. I am wearing every stitch of clothing I brought and am still freezing. The driver’s chatting assistant has a blanket that I think he loaned her. After finally accepting that covering myself with my computer bag isn’t going to make me any warmer, I lean down to ask the assistant if she could inquire if there were any more blankets. Shortly the driver pulls off the road, opens the luggage compartment, and brings me a blanket. We resume the road. Extremely thankful, I drift off to sleep.

At a military checkpoint somewhere in the dark, two calico soldiers board and look about this capsule of traveling strangers. Seeing nothing noteworthy, they let us go on. Drivers switch, and the background of conversation ceases. The assistant curls to sleep on her seat. Mellow ranchero ballads follow the new driver down the road.

Sunrise brings a procession of cacti in gentle lighting that makes the austere look romantic. Distant mountains rotate in a waltz of perspective. The long slow drive through the desert drip-feeds my soul.

from my garden to your computer screen

Writing while eating dinner. It’s one way of sharing a meal.

So here goes. Mashed red potatoes from my garden. Nice and peppery. Served on an orange plate with white polka-dots from my friend Diana. Slaw with all kinds of vegetable matter—cabbage, 4 different colors of carrot (red, orange, yellow, and white), green onions, celery and parlsey. All from that good ol’ garden, except for the light balsamic vinaigrette dressing. And to top it off, 2 lamb chops the tenderest you can imagine, raised just down the road at Greyfields Farm, and cooked up with garlic and rosemary from guess where? I love my garden! I pulled it all out this week so I could cover it with tarps and leave for Mexico. Otherwise there won’t be a garden when I come back in June, just Very Tall Weeds.

Meanwhile the Raspberries are in overdrive (almost a gallon this evening!). They are determined to see that I get my garden time each day despite having ripped out everything rippable and trying to focus on packing to leave. Just try to rip out determined raspberries! They are related to blackberries, after all. They have the same last name. I bet if I didn’t dig back their imperialist roots and cover the shredded ground with metal roofing or heavy tarps with cinder blocks on them, within 2 years they would have my whole 50’x100’ garden in their prickly grasp. But their plump heavy berries are a joy, and delicious. I think they are trying to tell me that they will miss me.

To do a few things and do them well. To take good care of the things I do have, whether it’s a tool or a garden or a motor vehicle (they may not look like much, but both the car and the truck have over 200,000 miles on them and still run well most of the time). This is one of the tenets of my deepest beliefs. To take care of and appreciate what one does have. What happens when the projects pile up, all worthy, but just not enough time or energy in one human to give them all the quality time they deserve? Well, I suppose one downsizes or one goes insane. Talking to raspberries, does that qualify as insane yet?

Race

From Nov 29, 2009

Golden lomboy leaves garnish the high tide line this morning. Some are flat faded hearts, some folded butterflies awaiting their next erratic flight. A mischievous west wind blew them offshore yesterday and in the night they floated back home like paper salmon, spent on the shore. Their nutrients wait to nourish something else.

It was that same mischievous west wind I was cursing multi-lingually yesterday as it carried the dust of Loreto out to sea over the whitecaps I was fighting. The waves I didn’t care about. Nor the salt spray, nor the sunscreen in my eyes, nor the distance from shore, nor the snot streaking across my cheek. The raw spot on my hip rubbing on the kayak seat I cared a little about but not enough to give up the next paddle stroke. I didn’t care about the 7 miles behind me. I cared about the one in front, and particularly about closing the distance between my kayak and Pancho’s kayak before that mile ran out.

It was my first kayak race. It was organized by Pancho as part of Mexico’s National Conservation Week, to highlight the potential of sustainable tourism. Pancho is a tall, muscular, broad-shouldered Baja native with an appropriate dose of Mexican machismo and pride in his blood. We have a little bit of professional history between us, which tends to express itself as competitiveness. All of this I knew as I watched him working those shoulders in front of me. He would die before he would let me pass him. I also knew that if I ever tapped into the competitiveness in my genes, I might become dangerous too. It was ok if I couldn’t pass him this time; I could make him suffer from here just by trying.

The race started on calm seas, with a field of 5 single paddlers and 2 doubles. Pancho and 1 double took the lead. I drafted Pancho for fun, then pulled alongside and started a conversation. The double was a boat-length ahead and the rest of the crew several lengths back. The conversation and the pace were easy. I concentrated on impeccable technique. After a couple miles, a breeze picked up, making it easier to drift apart so the kayaks could respond to the waves without colliding. Then surfing became possible, and steering more challenging since the wind was on the stern quarter. Pancho took the downwind side and I took the upwind line.

To snack, I would catch a wave, grab a boiled egg out of my PFD pocket, and take a bite. I shoved the rest back in the pocket and resumed paddling before the surf ride ran out. This makes for a messy PFD, but that’s a small price. Energy snacks are hard to come by in Baja, so a pre-peeled egg seemed like a good, waterproof, no-garbage option. I tried the same technique for a sip of chocolate milk, but putting the lid back on garnered a brief fumble.

All of a sudden Pancho was turning around. I tried to call to him several times, but either he didn’t hear or didn’t answer. We were still a good mile from El Bajo, the turn around point. I didn’t see the turn-around boat, but figured the park panga that was running beside the group would pull ahead and position itself before we arrived. The backup plan was to turn at the last house. I didn’t realize it was this soon. So I hit the brakes and turned around too, but lost several boat lengths and didn’t get that last good swig of chocolate milk I was counting on before the turn into the wind. No matter. Good technique, and good spirits. Keep the pressure on. A quick glance at my GPS showed that we’d averaged 4.9kts before the turn-around.

Sometimes I thought I was gaining, and would really work the rotation and foot pressure, then look up and not be any closer. Pancho kept looking back and digging in. He never took a swig of water during the whole race. We do sell camelbacks for PFDs here in Loreto, but there’s that professional competition thing, and such a purchase would be supporting the enemy. I love my camelback and consulted it often during the race.

He crossed the finish line before I did, and I was happy for him. In the end I think it was appropriate that he win. When I pulled up to the beach, he was floating beside his kayak, moaning. He managed to raise an arm for a high-five as I glided up. Overall average: 4.4kts.

We waited a good 20 minutes for the next competitors to come in. Meanwhile, Everardo the park director showed some photos he’d taken at the finish. The moment I crossed the line, the small crowd cheered, and I raised my paddle overhead in acknowledgement. A smile came up from deep inside; the joy of being on the water and completing a good challenge. Everardo’s photo captures this sentiment. In his photo, Pancho has the face of agony.

It was a worthwhile experience, and I am satisfied. I’m also hooked. There’s a longer race at the end of January. I think I’ll carry a second camelback of chocolate milk and hope that Pancho hasn’t trained harder than I have.

Overconfidence

The scorpionfish is an overconfident creature. It has camouflage so convincing that I have been snorkeling nose to nose with one and thought it was part of the rock, until it moved an eyeball. It will venture into water so shallow that you can step out of a kayak onto one. The venom in its dorsal spines is legendary. I once saw someone whose arm was still swollen up to the elbow two days after a puncture on the thumb. I heard about another strong and mature adult male stepping on one and screaming virulent curses upon the fish’s entire lineage, then whimpering for days.

After a morning run today, I waded barefoot into the Sea of Cortez for a rinse, and in water less than knee deep lay a scorpionfish, confident as ever. Thankfully, I saw it. This situation posed an interesting opportunity, with just enough risk to be tempting. The flesh of a scorpionfish is tasty, if you can capture it, kill it, and fillet it without getting pricked by a dorsal spine. That, and I was hungry.

I submerged a 5-gallon bucket in front of the fish, scooped the bucket under its wide head and pushed it in with a stick. All it did was raise its spines. It was way too easy. Too late it realized its captivity and thrashed about in the bucket. The price of overconfidence.

Its head was as hard as a rock. With a pancake flipper I held its spines to the side while trying to stab something vital through the gills with a 6” kitchen knife. Quick stab and pull back while it thrashes. A few times. I felt my adrenaline starting to build, so I walked away. Not a good time to be hasty with those spines flying about. I bathed in the sea and returned to see if the fish was any closer to dead. A couple gulls inquired about the progress. How do they know what’s in the bucket?

The fish thrashed less when I prodded it, and allowed itself to be turned on its side. With the spatula holding it, and my knife hand wrapped in a T-shirt, I began to fillet it in the bucket. I did side B with the fish on the sand. The colors in its skin and tail were beautiful. Greens, browns, oranges all blended in a minute camo.

The second fillet always comes out worse. I left it on a plate while moving 2 steps away to rinse the first one in the sea. This was overconfidence on my part, and I paid in an instant. In swooped a waiting gull and made off with the other fillet! In two midair gulps it was gone. “F*&#$@ER!” I hollered after it. “You stole half my fish! How it got that whole fillet down in one piece, I don’t know.

I had been looking forward to tossing the carcass to the birds. Instead I briefly considered burying it in revenge, but that wore off quickly. A pelican tried to get the wide head and prickly attachments into its bill but couldn’t manage, so the gulls pecked at it and at each other for a while.

Meanwhile, the remaining fillet made two tasty breakfast tacos, and an interesting contemplation on the price of overconfidence.

Fresh Crab and Warm Tortillas

I usually plan and prepare the meals for my kayak trips and there’s good reason for this. This week was an exception. I had a custom lesson for a group of 7 plus their 2 leaders—lessons on two levels at once. I welcomed the freedom from the kitchen that they offered so I could focus more on coaching.

Their frugality, resourcefulness, and creativity were admirable and set in my life a new standard for minimalism. They cooked for 10 on a 6” frypan, using a whittled stick as a stirring utensil. A 10-pack of tortillas and an oval tin of sardines was lunch for all. But we all ate equally and nobody complained.

In their defense, they were from Estonia and never had to provision from a Mexican grocery store before. At least they bought lots of tortillas.

Fishing proved fruitless. On day 3, they admitted they hadn’t brought enough food, and went in search of other options. A team came back with 5 small crabs, my friends the Sally Lightfoot, about which I had mixed feelings because I was hungry too. We boiled them and ate them hot out of the water, legs, body meat, and some even crunched on the thin shells.

A sight we made—10 figures huddled over a small pile of brightly colored shells crunching, chewing, twisting, and bashing the joints between rocks. Among the camp detritus of mismatched bowls, half-empty water jugs, and whittled tools, we could have been a primitive tribe sitting on our haunches on the rocks, intent on the minute bits of white meat lodged in a crevice of shell.

The next night was a repeat, but we ate later, after dark. With no fires allowed in the park, our primitive tribe huddled together with our backs to the night and our hands lit by the beams from each other’s foreheads.

The tortillas had begun to mold, so we decided to heat and eat them. We had nothing else to put on them, and everyone was eating their crab directly from the shell, so the random bottle of BBQ sauce that no-one knew what to do with became the spread for our moldy tortillas. It was one of those memorable nights for which the concept of perspective was designed.

We weren’t desperation dining on moldy staples and the only critters we could catch; we luxuriated under the starry Baja sky with friends sharing fresh crab and warm tortillas and memories of a good day’s paddling, complete with dolphins, leaping manta rays, and a humpback whale.

Gloria

It’s a hot night in Bahia Asuncion, too hot to hide under the sleeping bag from the mosquitoes, so I get eaten alive right in Gloria’s front yard. Despite the mosquitoes, meeting Gloria was one of those miracles that happen when you let yourself arrive someplace without knowing exactly what you’re doing there.

Bahia Tortugas. The map got us there on a Baja road trip in late October 2008. Winding roads led us through the maze of town, only once in the wrong direction, head on to an amused local. A shopkeeper directed us to Ruben’s place where we could camp. Ruben gave us the names of his best friends in nearby towns where we might also camp. Gloria was one. “Muy buena persona.”

We arrived a week later in Bahia Asuncion. The map got us there, too. That and the help of some men who pushed us and the Sabritas truck out of the soft sand. Stopping at an aborrotes store for cold drinks, I asked for Gloria, esposa of the late Simon Salinas. The restaurant next door happened to be hers.

You know when you walk into a restaurant and all three patrons greet you warmly, that you’re in the right place. Then the patrons turn out to be Gloria, her son, and her brother, sitting to eat their own meal. You’re so much in the right place, that you set aside your freshly bought cold drinks, order up whatever cold thing she might have in the fridge, and revel in the refreshment and the rightness of it all until they’re done eating.

“Any friend of Ruben’s is a friend of mine,” says Gloria. Her son Memo leads us to their house on the bay, shows us the water hose, and leaves us to ourselves. Oh, beautiful laundry day! Oh, delightful bucket bath! Ah, to rinse away the salt and dust of travel and leave only fresh memories.

Sun swings low, we feel organized and clean again, and walk back to the restaurant for fish dinner and some visiting.

In the mosquito dawn, Little Black Dog limps with me down the beach to admire the gift of the new day waking. Seems he’s adopted us.

Something about Baja is visceral. It’s simple, bare. Close to the soul. Is it the land? The rawness and precious brevity of life here in the desert where survival can be as uncertain as the rains? Is it in speaking from my heart in a language I hardly command, but can limp around in a bit?

Gloria and I get to talking in the morning. She comes out in her nightgown to wish us Buenos dias. She talks about other friends who’ve stayed. Some setting up whole tarp villages. Ruben and his family visiting before her husband died 5 short months ago. Plans to move the restaurant to her house and expand the hospitality aspect. The kids grown and out of school, her husband finally had time and resources to get the permits for those dreams. And then he died.

She doesn’t say how, not that it matters. The sorrow, the tears, she says. Memo came up from La Paz to stay with her for the year and help out. “I’m beginning to feel I can be strong,” she says. “Dios es grande.” Tears come to her eyes, and to mine, too. I can’t imagine the weight of such a loss.

Her kids are coming in 3 days for Dia de los Muertos. It’s the first time this celebration has meant anything personal to them. Not for her, because she lost her parents some time ago. But for her kids, it is now significant. A way to honor and celebrate the connection with those who’ve gone. A reuniting of the family, those present in body and those in spirit.

Lately she’s stayed busy with the humble, 3-table restaurant, which she’s run for 20 years. “I always was more busy than he was.” A smile. The busyness now is good, she says, because it keeps her occupied.

I say to her that feeding people is valiente. I can’t think of a better word at the moment. What I’m trying to say is that I believe in food and the sharing of it. That she is more than staying occupied. Through her grief, she is vibrant. She is giving life to others. The old man who came in last night and ordered “una cena”, a dinner. Simple as that. He probably comes in often.

Food. Its nourishment is a gift of the earth. A ray of the sun. A piece of the soul and a work of the hands that give it. A gift of connection, a gift of life. Even as a negocio it is a gift.

I want to give her my last apple from the home tree. This poor apple is beat up. It’s driven many miles over all kinds of roads. It’s been in a kayak to Cedros Island and back. It’s the most pathetic apple I had since I gave all the prettier ones away already. But its significance is more than a piece of bruised fruit from far away. It’s everything I just said. It’s a piece of my heart, of my home. It’s my gift of living to a woman I admire.