magazine clutch

Locating these hidden
stations in the unmapped
villages feels
a little like capturing
energy cells in a computer
game. Toward
the end of the day we rather unwisely
missed one and were left out
after dark, on reserve, and forever
from the nearest anywhere. This far
out our meager backup ration could
mean nothing. The miles ticked by
as loudly as clock strokes while our
high beams cut through a dark soup
of desert night and there were also
the brightly, shining animal eyes.
At the end of the second day out, The
Amigos were pretty well spent, partly
from the intense focus required by
the riding conditions and also from
the sheer volume of miles we covered.
I’m not sure what the guys had
expected, but I was surprised to find
Baja so mountainous and its highway
so twisty. The terrain is amazingly
diverse and geologically quite
beautiful. There is barrenness to the
landscape that is strangely echoed in
the villages. The hills seem to want
trees the same way the churches
need bells. So many beginnings as
shown here have also been left.
You see it in the half-built businesses
and half-painted murals that
dominate most towns. Stores that
are actually open seem to teeter on
the brink of ruin. Beer is the mainstay.
It’s all very Mad Max, especially
when you add the burned-out cars
and pickup truck fueling docks. We
speculated about the abandoned
growth spurts the way one speculates
about tree rings. Completion
of the transpeninsular highway in
the 1970s? Inflated hopes for the
NAFTA Agreement of the ‘90s? And
still there is also the question of, but
who really knows, man?
December 2020 CLUTCH 27