La Bruja Del Mar

I picked up the payphone and dialed the number of the woman that had invited me to the seaside town of La Ventana to photograph her.
"Hello," came a soft voice.
"Hi Linda. This is Mike."
As she began to speak, I turned my gaze to a ponga, which is a Mexican fishing boat, that was sitting in the dirt just a few feet in front of me. Painted in black letters across the bow was the name of the boat:

"La Bruja Del Mar."

The name, "The Witch of the Sea" in english, struck me as foreboding. I did not want to believe that seeing these four words at the precise moment I had begun to speak to this woman was anything but mere coincidence, but my intuition told me that there was a direct connection. I had been on a beach with no women for three weeks and was craving female attention. I wanted something more than photographs to come from this rendevouz. I disregarded the warnings of my gut and asked her to come down and meet me.
Linda arrived with two dogs in the front seat of a red pick-up truck. She looked much different than she did in the pictures that I had seen of her. My first impression, based upon the way she was dressed and her manner of being, was that she was a sort of neo-hippie. Linda spoke in a sort of slow drawl. It was hard for me to adapt to understanding her speech. She lived in a sort of slow time. It took her a long time to process things I said that seemed very simple to me.

"I booked you a room at my friend's hotel," she said. "I got you room number seven."
It began to rain in hotel room number seven.
"It hasn't rained here for months," said Linda. "And then you arrive and it rains."
"We will have to shoot tomorrow," I said. "Hopefully the rain will stop."
The next day I photographed Linda on a desolate beach a few miles from the hotel. She took off her clothes and the electricity between our bodies was tangible. I had only photographed one nude previously and my hands were shaking as I worked with her.
"This is how I came out of my mother's belly," she said. "It's okay."

Linda told me that her boyfriend of four years had recently become angry with her and hit her. She said that although she had not told him yet, she wanted to leave him. I took this to mean that she was opening the door for me. We spoke intimately for hours on the beach there along the Sea of Cortez. Linda sitting naked in the sand. At one point she turned to me and said, "Do you know that we have only known each other for less than a day?" This struck me, as well as her, as phenomenal. I felt as if we had known each other for weeks or even months, as our sense of passing time had been distorted.



As we were saying our goodbyes, a falcon swooped low over my head.
I got into my car and within two blocks ran over a rabbit. A few hours later, I encountered a much larger animal.
At 1 am, driving about 70 m/p/h just above Loreto, I slammed into a bull. The animal rolled up onto the hood of my car and came through my windshield. It then flew out and collided with the back of my car, near the gas tank, releasing its bowels all over the rear end before finally landing on the road. I felt something heavy fall at my feet. Fearing that I was about to see the decapitated head of a bull, I turned on the interior light of my car. To my relief, it was only a jug of water that had flown from the passenger seat from the force of the blow.

Light split into the visible spectrum patterns through the cracks of my windshield. The cracked glass turned the desert landscape into fragmentary images of desertscapes. The hot, Baja Californian wind blew through my car.
After 15 hours of driving up the peninsula, I needed to find a hotel. I had no money left and knew that I would not be allowed back into the United States with a 2 X 2 whole in my windshield. I pulled into the parking lot of a hotel in Ensenada called "The Joker".
I entered the lobby and approaced the concierge. After explaining my situation to the concierge and offering my photo gear as collateral, I got a room on condition of payment the next morning. This would give me time to have money wired into my account.
I brought my bags up into the room of the Joker Hotel and layed on the bed. My head felt as if someone had gone inside and began to twist knobs. I could only think of the words that I had read on the boat.
Plugging in my laptop to the hotel wireless connection, I emailed Linda, telling her of my collision with the bull several hours before.
"I had a premonition that something bad might happen to you," she wrote back. "I prayed to all the gods that you would be okay".
I went to the hotel lobby to get some water for my tormented mind.
"Are you a photographer?" asked the concierge.
"Yes," I replied.
"What would you charge to take a picture of a man and a woman having dinner?" he asked.
"That depends," I said. "Would it need to be covert?"
"Kind of," he said.
"Maybe $20," I said.
"What if it wasn't a man, but just a woman?"
"Is your wife cheating on you?" I asked.
"It is not that," he said.
"What if she was at a strip bar?"
He could see that I was perplexed.
"I need a photo of my wife stripping," he said. "When you came in here with your camera, I knew that it was my chance."
"When?"
"I need the photo tonite."
"I will do it," I said.

Soon to be continued

A Saint in the Desert

He was a fourteen year old boy that lived on the edge of a road in the middle of the Baja peninsula. When I fell to the ground of his house it was his mother that showed no hesitation in calling him to my aid. Even the trucker, strong and confident, trusted the boy to take me to the Doctor. He spoke almost no English and my Spanish, in my decrepid state, was failing me.
To him I must have seemed a strange man; white, unshaven, and unkempt. My car, after three weeks camping and two days sick, was a mess My face was pale and I was rocking back and forth, holding my belly and groaning.
I remember one stop clearly, the boy leaving the car to call for an ambulance. I rolled from the passenger seat onto the ground, looking up at the sky and writhing in pain, holding my twisting belly. I remember turning and seeing the legs of a man coming towards me. " Get up," he implored. "You have to go."

I remember the sight of the doctor, clad in white, and the glowing faces of the two Mexican nurses. I remember the pain of the steel needle injected into my arm. I spent eight hours in that hospital bed, drifting in and out of sleep, before finally coming to my senses and leaving in the afternoon.

A wrong turn had taken me two hours off course on my return journey from the tip of Baja California. To return to the spot of the mistaken turn would have added another four hours to an already lengthy 22 hour drive. There was a way, via a dirt road strewn with river-rock that would spare me a return trip. I was driving a car that was very low to the ground. I decided to risk it and try and cross through the mountains. Nine miles into the drive my engine stopped dead. I had not seen another car pass, and looking around, there was nothing in sight but vast empty spaces and mountains. I had a quarter gallon of water. I left a note on the windshield, hid my expensive camera equipment in a bush, prayed, and began to walk back to La Purisma.
I hadn't ventured a quarter mile when I saw a rancher and a young boy approaching in a truck. The rancher agreed to take me back to the town, where hopefully I could find a mechanic. I offered him $20 and he accepted. We traveled through the high desert hills and into the small town. It was too late to get help, so I checked in to a small hotel and settled on finding a mechanic in the morning. I hadn't been in the hotel room long when I heard a knock at the door. I opened it. A Mexican man, motorcycle helmet in hand, stood, white light shining from his pupils.
" I am here to help you," he said. "Is this yours?"
He handed me the crumpled piece of paper which I had placed under the wiper blades.

Car broke down.
5PM. Walking to La Purisma.
Please help.

"Yes," I replied. "That is mine. Are you a mechanic?"
"I am good with electronics," he said. "What happened to your car?"
"I don't know. It just stopped. It wouldn't start up again."
"The problem is electric. I can fix it."
"Can you come back in the morning?"
"8:00?"
"Ok."
A knock came on my door at 8AM. I got onto the back of the man's motorcycle, and we began the journey through the hills and to my broken down car.
"Your President Bush," he began. "He is a bad man."
"I know."
"Our President, too. It is greed."
"Old as time."
"Yes."
"So what are you doing out here in the desert?"
"I am working for God."
We made it to the car. It was just as I had left it. He began to work, and I went to the bushes to get my photographic gear.
I heard the engine start up.
"What was it?" I asked.
"I don't know," he shrugged. He pointed to the sky and laughed.
I got into the car and headed back.
I arrived at the hotel. The owner motioned to a spot on the ground. “Your car is leaking."
I looked under the car. A fresh puddle of oil was accumulating in the dirt. I called for my friend.
"Don't worry. I can fix it."
He went to buy glue and borrow some tools.
"We will have to drain out all the oil out first," he said. We sat there on the ground, waiting for the oil to empty.
"You know," he began. "You are not just your skin." A small whirlwind appeared next to me, twisting the dust in circles and spinning off. I felt a change internally.
"Be gone, Satan," he said.
He looked at me a moment.
"There you are Michael," he said.
"I left the United States two years ago. I found out my wife had a child with another man. We had three children together. I bought this motorcycle and came to Mexico."
"Where do you stay? How do you make a living?," I asked him.
"I go from town to town fixing things," he said. "I make enough money to get by. I sleep in the desert."
The oil had completely drained and he patched the now dry hole in the oil pan. I thanked him.
"So where are you off to now?" I asked.
"Wherever God asks me to go," he replied. "I wait for signs."