I get off the highway at Desert Shores, drive through empty roads. The air is hot, still, and then I hear grackles calling through my open windows. I am taken back to my first morning on the Mexican mainland after crossing from La Paz on the ferry. I was driving south, too, and the first time I stopped after a toll and emerged from the car, the trees were filled with grackles. I didn't know who they were then, only heard their loud exotic voices in the trees. They marked my transition from the Baja peninsula, told my body I was in a foreign land. And I fell in love with them. When I hear them in this different world, I am washed in memory, in an ache that sits just off my center. I drive to the end of the road and see a lot for sale that sits on the edge of the Salton Sea. If you built there you'd have the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. I can picture living there, but now there are flies coming into my car. They make me wonder. (Do they go away when the real heat comes? I'd have to have a big screened-in porch, I think, and then there is the worry about the saving of the Salton Sea itself.) Someone has built a blue house next door that looks like it belongs on the east coast, Newport, maybe, two stories with flower pots crowded on both decks, homey.
I go back to the highway, escape the flies, keep heading south. I wasn't sure if I would circle the lake or not but it now seems as though I will. I see signs for Mexico. I will be 40 miles from the border, realize I'd be tempted to keep going if I had my passport with me. I notice the hills leave at some point and the desert is too bright for my unsunglassed eyes. It tires me. But when I turn east to reach the Sonny Bono Wildlife Refuge, there are planted fields, the green a relief. And there are red-winged blackbirds flitting here and there in among the growing things. I remember falling in love with their odd sounds and their bright reddish orange flashing shoulders when I lived in Cotati and walked out past the old Hewlitt Packard place where the city left off and the open spaces began. They would congregate in the evenings, calling to each other among the swaying grasses.
I pull in to the refuge and I am the only one here. There are no cars, no people, only the sign and the wind in the trees. It is almost eery, like an old Twilight Zone episode I will always remember, where one man survived and was so glad he had the library, endless books and endless time to enjoy them. And then he breaks his glasses. I have always hated cruel tragedy. But I shrug away the wrenching ending of the TV episode and the odd surprise of being the only human there and take the Rock Hill Trail out to the edge of the Salton Sea. There are cottontails everywhere, and wind and sun and palo verdes still in bloom, and then closer to the water there are huge numbers of birds, even this late in May. I watch a pelican glide, think of Todos Santos and the huge flocks of them along my stretch of ocean there, and there is a gull who scares me. He takes me by surprise more than once, screeching in a loud voice from very near me, diving and scolding me, it seems. There are tiny nursery islands they have made to help the migrating birds raise their young away from predators. Maybe he is telling me to go away, to leave them in peace. Maybe he believes I am a threat to his babies. Maybe he is a she.
The wind tries to steal my hat. The waves are strong, their loud rhythm welcome and unexpected. It is a real sea, and I am standing beside it in the middle of the desert. I marvel, wander, watch, listen, breath it in. My walk back is quiet. I take a peace back with me from the edge of the sea. I have been here for almost two hours and have not seen or heard another human, no car, nothing. My own little red car is waiting for me, alone in the parking area. It still feels odd but not eery. I drive away, head north now up the east side of the lake. I stop at the waterfowl viewing area, and it is deserted, too. But I see a canal and a dirt path that follows it to the sea. I will come back here. I stop again at the "town" of North Shore. Riverside County has built a beautiful "yacht club" and community center at the side of the sea. It is contemporary and landscaped and another surprise in a spot where Gertrude Stein would say there is no "there" there.
I am tired now but I enjoy the rest of the drive along the eastern edge of the lake. I can see the mountains, hazy on the western side. The view with the water between us reminds me of my balcony view in Ajijic, looking across Lake Chapala to my favorite extinct volcano. I keep heading north, and a Southern Pacific train is heading south. I am sandwiched between the lake and the slow moving train, and while the long train stays with us it seems as though there is no one else in the world, only me and the conductor. When I drive through Indio there is a small demonstration there against the Arizona anti-immigration law. I am stopped at a red light. I wave my fist, smiling through the open window. Yes! Yes! You go! People are honking, supporting their efforts. A woman sees me and smiles back. I am glad, connected. I have good chills when the light turns green and we all drive on. I have been gone for almost eight hours, driving for about six of them. I am tired but satisfied. I have the lake and its surroundings imprinted on me. I will not lose this sense of it, of how it sits in the world, or where it falls in relationship to where I live, what lives between me and the Salton Sea. I arrive home just after the sun has gone behind our mountain, and it feels good to be back near it again, to return to our protected niche where the mountains curve and cradle us. I am glad I went. I am glad I'm home.
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