The media was full of news of the full solar eclipse that motivated millions of people to travel to a good location to bask in its glory. I thought back on my own eclipse story of forty years and two lives back. It was not a good time at home and my career was streaking across the skies and continents as I spent scores of days at forty thousand feet attending meetings with people I have not though of since. I called my Japanese boss and said I was taking a week of time to reload my personal life and that I would probably make it back in two weeks. I told my wife it was time for us to talk and that the coming eclipse afforded a perfect time in our lives to figure out where and how we stood with each other. She begrudgingly agreed and we packed my almost new Cherokee four-wheel drive jeep with plenty of food and gear for the long road trip down the spine and coast of Baja.
I’ve always been an astronomy nerd and it seemed like a sign from the gods that the full solar eclipse would swing by Loreto along the Baja sur coast. There were three of us on that two-week adventure that would change all of our lives. It had taken almost a year of pleading with my then wife before she agreed to the trip. She was not a nature focused person, much less an eclipse one, but she finally agreed to making the trip if we took our eleven year old nephew with us. His parents were going through an ugly divorce, and we could see the turmoil on his face. It was a good deal for me, as I loved the boy who was smart, feisty, and precocious. I sensed then he would be the only boy I could ever claim to have supported as a father so it was a good deal for all three of us. We left the first day of his summer vacation with a very loaded Cherokee, a few AAA maps, and a couple of old books by Earle Stanley Garnder who had explored Baja on his own. We headed south on the busy interstate and six hours later we reached the border.
We had just crossed into Mexicali when we stopped for gas at a Pemex station. The station guys rushed out to put in the gas and clean the windows so it seemed a good time to rearrange the stuff in the back of the jeep to make it easier for us to get to the food and toiletries. I took out all of the boxes and packages, including my fishing tackle box. The box was jammed with stuff, had a worn lock clip, and came undone. One of my bigger fishing knives fell to the floor. I picked it up with my let hand just as my wife touched my shoulder pointing to a box of Kleenex at the back that she wanted to move up front. I jerked around to see her and somehow sliced across my right palm. The blood gushed from the deep cut and she freaked out and stood motionless. My nephew ran from the jeep to the other pump island, spoke to the attendant and pointed at me.
The attendant saw that something was wrong and rushed over. He saw my bloody left hand and grabbed his red bandana from his front pocket was about to wrap my hand up when my wife came out of her stupor. She took his rage and threw it on the ground and told my nephew to find the first aid kit that was in the wheel well. It was a small Red Cross med kit and had a few things, but it was clear that I needed stitches. My wife looked like she was having an out of body experience but somehow she managed to encrust my hand with several large band-aids under a wad of gauze and some sticky tape. She looked scared but my nephew seemed aware about the scene. I asked the gas man if there was a clinic, hospital or doctor nearby. He said the hospital was on the other side of town, but he winked at me and said there might be a doctor working out of a makeshift clinic at a nearby house of some working women. The good news was that I my fingers were still intact, but I needed to find some real help. That fishing knife was a prized one with several gutting years giving it character and skin.
I pulled my nephew next to me and told him the directions the gas guy gave me. He said it was a ten or twelve minute drive. I could only use my left hand to drive so I told my wife to get into the back seat. She did so muttering that it was going to be a very screwed eclipse and a sign of our lives and that we should have never left home to take some back road to a faraway Mexican town to see it get dark for a few minutes. She got in the back and my nephew joined me up front, next to me. It was clear that I needed help steering as my bloody right hand was in my lap. The boy put his hands on the wheel and together we steered in and out of the barrio looking for the case. Finally we found the casa. There were a half dozen women standing outside the casa. Some of the women wore tight outfits, looked very young, and were smoking cigarettes. Two of the older ones walked up to the jeep as asked what we wanted. I showed them my hand and they said to get out and follow them into the casa. I told my nephew to move the car to the curb as I got out and walked into the casa.
I walked into a dreamscape as the casa consisted of one big room with a bar at the back with doors leading out on either side, a small dance floor, and a few tables and chairs spread around. It was not a typical doctor’s office and looked like an after-hours strip joint suffering in the sunlight. The doctor commanded attention as he was tall, bronze, and maybe thirty years old. He looked like a high end mestizo with a good nose, thick hair, and long fingers. He was sitting at a table in the middle of what passed for a small dance floor. There was a black medical bag at his side and several vials of pills and bottles on the table. He stopped talking to his client and asked me if I had a problem. I nodded my head, held up my hand, and he motioned me to sit at the table next to the client. She looked at my hand, said goodby to the doctor, and left.
It was almost exactly a thousand kilometers via a single road from Mexicali to Loreto. I was determined we would reach Loreto in four days of driving and then spend at least another day resting before the eclipse. That was the plan and it didn’t work. We managed to drive only about two hundred kilometers on the first day and saw only a handful of vintage cars, a few spewing busses, and too many crazy truckers and haulers. The scenery was devoid of life except for the occasional vultures flying overhead. The desert was endless in all directions except for the coastal mountain range where there was a fishing village with a handful of tourista cabins. We drove into the village looking for a room to rent. The only rooms were shacks with basic cots with no electricity or running water and a outhouse.
My wife had said very little during our drive but after storming out of the room said we would sleep in the jeep and then keep driving until we found a real room. The weather was good as the night temperature was in the 80s and the stars were incredible. None of really slept much as the jeep was cramped and we kept our eyes wide open to make sure none of the locals decided to visit us. We left with the rising sun and drove along the coast for almost ten hours before we ended our day’s run at a small fishing camp. It was not the resort my wife was hoping for but instead about two dozen makeshift stick huts, a run-down trailer park and what looked to be a motel or bar built on eroded piles atop a weathered pier. It was a welcome site to me, and my nephew was ready to hit the beach and take a swim before sunset.
The boy was happy to run along the beach while my wife and I took refuge at a small cantina overlooking the bay. The sun was setting in back of the mountains that guarded the bay and it was clear that we needed to clear the air. I asked her to tell me how she felt about our progress and what we could do to improve our trip. She rarely drank alcohol and had sipped through two shots of tequila when she told me that the eclipse reflected our marriage with a complete blackout on the horizon unless I changed my ways and made her my priority over career and my yearnings to see more of the world. Her comments were sharp and not news to me. I told her that every eclipse gave rise to a reborn sun and that if she still felt that way after our time in Baja that I would let her know whose sun would rise. I had barely spoken the metaphor when my nephew bounced into the room asking for a coke. They didn’t have any cokes so he had a 7-up, a warm one as the cantina didn’t waste precious space in the one cooler for anything other than their Tecate and Dos Equis. We spent the night cramped into a hut with two cots and rose with the sun to continue our journey to the eclipse that beckoned us, or at least me.
Making Loreto
It took us two more days of driving to reach Loreto and I was thankful that our nephew filled the silence that my wife wore with pride. She insisted that we make short stops along the way so he could run barefoot along the string of deserted beaches that would probably be littered with resorts in the near future.
The jeep had acquired a thick, rough skin of dirt and mud with pock marks on the hood and sides caused by the gravel and stones kicked up by the four-wheel drive that kept us from sliding off the road. It was a lonely road with an occasional pickup truck or battered car sharing the endless desert space with us. We stopped at every Pemex station long the way to check the tires and radiator and sometimes were rewarded with a cold Fanta or 7-Up but no cokes.
Finally, we spotted Loreto blinking at us after four days of traveling the road to purgatory and redemption. We checked in at the Presidente de Sur hotel that was known for its small fleet of pangas and beach huts that were sprinkled along the sandy lip of the bay. Heaven.
We unloaded the jeep and moved into a small beach hut that squatted just above the high tide beach lip. My nephew had been a quiet support during most of our road trip but now was his time, running along the beach, chasing sea birds, and picking up shells. The wife quickly unpacked a few things, put our few groceries and water jugs into the ancient mini-fridge and looked at me saying nothing but clearly unhappy with me. She walked outside, sat down on one of the two wood rockers, opened her book, and finally asked me “what next?”. I explained that the eclipse would start at 10:45 and last almost two hours in its entirety. She said she would catch it from our beach hut, that the boy could stay with her or stay with me if I wanted to see it elsewhere. I walked out and asked the boy his preference and he said he would stick with me.
I asked the boy if he was OK with seeing the eclipse from a small boat that I would hire for the event. Cool with him and I said to be ready to leave at dawn to give us enough time to find a boat and captain to take us out to sea, but not too far to lose land.
On eclipse day the boy woke me up while it was still dark and said he was ready. I nodded, put on my shorts, tank top, sandals, and a big hat and we started out. The wife on her cot opened her eyes, waves us away, and muttered something about coming home alive and in time for lunch.
There were a lot of panga guys standing next to their pier. It didn’t take me long to figure out that these capitans were all charging the same flat rate for four hours at sea. It would cost me fifty bucks plus a few dollars for extras. I hired a young pocho talking captain who sealed the deal by showing us an ice chest that was filled with local beers and soft drinks. He also had a big bag of chicharrons and a couple of jugs of water. I found out it was his first eclipse and he was prepared well to spend a few hours at sea with a couple of Chicano touristas. The boy and I had on lots of sunblock, and we were dressed for the eclipse with shorts, sandals, big hats, and our special eclipse ready sunglasses. It was my fiftieth year of life, and the boy was closing in on his fifteenth so together I thought together we could retire to the sun.
Damian, the captain, took us out about ten klicks and killed the engine. There was no wind and no action on the surface as it was hot, and the sun was beating down on us. The eclipse was scheduled to move from west to east, so we situated ourselves looking straight west. I drank two beers and the boy two sodas before the moon made its appearance. We were all speechless as the sun was consumed by the moon. Even the sea birds that had been molesting us looking for bait and trash stopped flying and sat down on the flat ocean that had stopped breathing. I had given our boy capitan a pair of the special glasses and I told him to put them on as he was looking at the sun straight on. The three of us We were speechless for throughout the entire eclipse. I tried to empty my head as I went through my standard meditation techniques of controlled breathing but I could not get past the doors that would not open. Just as the eclipse was receding, I confessed to myself that that my old life was over and that it was the right time to start again, with myself and with others. The ride home would be far different than the ride south as there was a lot to discard before starting anew.
