Not Just a Job, an Adventure

There was the wonderful week on a wind-swept dune called Magdalena Island, to gather material for a story on the whales that visit the island’s namesake bay in southern Baja California, and on the tourists who come to visit the whales. . . .

This enviable assignment was carried out with only one hitch, caused by a Times photographer with no clue on camping, who couldn’t resist joining some Mexican children in a game of volleyball at the outset of the trip. He dived for a ball and bruised his ribs, and thus the burden of lugging his huge blue suitcase around became mine.

What he was doing with this type of baggage, instead of a small duffel or backpack, was anyone’s guess. But one thing was clear: His nifty attachment with rollers was of no use at all on an island made of sand. . . .

*

With one millennium nearing an end and another set to officially begin, this is obviously a time for resolve and reflection. And while I resolve, from a professional standpoint, to press for more space and more of these types of assignments, I can’t help but reflect on the 13 years I’ve been on the beat.

Overall, it has been a pretty good ride.

I got my start in 1987, when I was asked to cover the growing popularity of recreational shark fishing off the Southland coast. They slaughtered quite a few on the boat I went on, and in one instance, a fisherman removed the beating heart of one large shark, stuck it on his hook, and caught an even larger shark.

I put this high in my story and got my first reader complaint: from a representative of the Catholic church, asking how I could condone such actions, to which I replied that I was merely a messenger.

Since then, the boss has approved plenty of plum assignments, which occasionally produced stories behind the stories, most of which never made it to print. . . .

*

. . . The 1990 whale-watching trip to Magdalena Bay, with Nichols Expeditions of Moab, Utah, ranks high on a list of memorable adventures, and that it included the photo department’s most unusual character only made it more memorable.

Fortunately, all Gary Friedman really needed to learn was how to set up a tent and paddle a kayak, tasks he picked up on quickly enough. He also learned, to everyone’s amusement, that if you leave your shoes outside your tent at night, coyotes will grab them, tenderize them with their pointy teeth and deposit them elsewhere. We found Gary’s shoe--along with a few other lost soles--during a nighttime group stroll to the other side of the island.

As for the whales, they were delightfully cooperative, swimming beside us day by day as we traveled silently in our slender vessels, while Mexican guides ferried our gear from campsite to campsite.

As spectacular as all this was, the island itself inspired its share of awe. A 40-mile sliver of sand untouched by progress, it seemed to come alive late each afternoon, when coyotes emerged from their burrows and perched on our perimeter.

A constant westerly wind not only painted surreal patterns across the island’s powdery dunes, it erased all tracks made during the night, making the coyotes, which never came out during the day, almost seem ghostlike.

There are other, more renowned and accessible Baja California lagoons in which to visit whales, of course, but as far as I know, none so remote and magical as Magdalena Bay. . . .

*

. . . As dreamlike as things were on that spit of sand in the sprawling Baja bay, they were not nearly as unreal as they were one moonlit night deep in the Nicaraguan jungle, when a small group of tourists found themselves speeding haphazardly through a meandering waterway as though they were running drugs and fleeing from the law.

This hair-raising jaunt occurred during a 1995 trip aboard the Rain Goddess, a mother-ship houseboat that travels the Rio Colorado in Costa Rica and the San Juan River, which separates Costa Rica from its war-torn neighbor to the north. The trips feature a dazzling jungle wilderness and waters teeming with tarpon and snook.

I remember marveling at all the colorful birds, the natives commuting in long, dugout canoes, the tarpon rolling in the muddy flats.

But I also vividly recall how unsettling it was to learn one night that we were anchored directly between border outposts, with each side training guns on the other.

Far more unnerving, though, was the haphazard run in low-draft skiffs through the darkness, back to the mother ship. We had worked our way to the second of two tiny lakes in Nicaragua, to fish where few others had. The scenery was breathtaking and the sounds--a piercing concert by thousands of jungle insects--left everyone speechless.

When night fell, the scenery disappeared, but the band played on. It was beyond eerie, and even the guides seemed aware that we had overstayed our welcome. At every chance they got, they ran their outboards at full speed, through the shifting tributaries, striking small logs and skimming sandbars.

Finally, the skiff I was on ran aground on one of the sandbars, stopping abruptly and nearly sending me and another passenger into the river. The captain, somewhat embarrassed, merely smiled and motioned for us both to get out and push because he, after all, was the captain.

We reluctantly agreed and were standing in waist-deep water, pushing, when we followed the beam of his flashlight to the river’s bank, and into the eyes of a large crocodile, glowing a fiery red, a mere 20 feet away.

Our problem was solved then and there as we leaped into the skiff with such force that it broke free of the sandbar and we were on our way.

We celebrated the next day by barbecuing an iguana. . . .

*

. . . It was on a road leading from Sitka, Alaska, into the forest when I came across one of the most disturbing sights I’ve seen. A large grizzly bear was grazing alongside the road and a woman in a van had stopped about 30 feet away. With her were a boy who looked to be about 13 and an infant. When we pulled up, in a van driven by Seimeen Bone, who with her husband Seth runs Kingfisher Lodge, we also admired the bear briefly before noticing that the boy in the van was holding the infant out a window and taunting the bear with it.

I did not have a photographer on this trip, and could have used one, because my cameras failed when I tried to capture this for evidence of child endangerment. Bone screamed at the woman and later told police what she had done. What happened to her remains unknown but the bear was later killed as it had ventured closer to town and was deemed a public threat. . . .

*

. . . There was the breathtaking view from the observatory atop the San Pedro Martir range in northern Baja, from where you can glimpse far into the Pacific and turn the other way and see across the Sea of Cortez all the way to mainland Mexico. This is a part of Baja few ever visit, and it was during a trip to historic Meling Ranch that I made the drive to the observatory.

The story behind the story: Being shown the family cemetery by an emotionally troubled grandson of fabled ranch matriarch, Aida Meling. “I’m going to be buried in there one day,” the grandson said. A few weeks later, he shot himself in the head and, presumably, a headstone in the cemetery now bears his name. . . .

*

The list goes on . . . There was the wild three-day ride down the forks of the Kern River; two trips to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, one to cover its going public and the other to see what tourists do there, which is live amid thousands of sea birds and pull in enormous fish from a sprawling lagoon; another trip to Costa Rica to chronicle the latest rage, which is playing Tarzan by touring the forest canopy on ropes and pulleys; two trips to Maverick’s to watch a man named Flea conquer the mountainous waves; and so many fishing trips I’ve lost count. . . .

*

. . . One such story involved not fish but mollusks, giant squid that had mounted an unusual invasion of a small area near La Paz, not long after a scuba diver was savagely attacked and nearly killed by the voracious cephalopods.

Friedman had somehow secured another enviable assignment, despite having no sea legs and an aversion for the squirming squid. He managed, though, and with this story in hand, we had boarded a crowded bus for Cabo San Lucas.

The wiry photographer, a picky eater who doesn’t go anywhere without saltine crackers, brought along a cardboard box full of them, carelessly stashing the box in the luggage rack just above and behind the driver. We weren’t a mile out of town when the driver made his first stop and the carton of crackers came crashing down on his head.

My Spanish was a little rusty, but I think his scolding went something like this: “If you had to bring along those stupid crackers, why couldn’t you have packed them in that huge blue suitcase?”