Scuba Diving club, Southern California

Sea Sabres

Miraculous Air

Journey of a Thousand Miles Through Baja California,

The Other Mexico

A Wonderful Book

By Catherine M Mayo

This is a book written by C. M. Mayo that Sam Miller read before his last trip down to Baja. He absolutely raved about the book so much that I felt like I should follow up on it and see what more I could I find out about the book and the author. It turns out she has web site. On the web site she has some additional reader comments. Seems they liked the book the too.

"A sensitive and knowing overview of a place and a people so near  and yet so far from the U.S. or Mexico"-- Harry W. Crosby, author of The Cave Paintings of Baja California

“Perhaps the best new book about Mexico (and--indirectly---its northern neighbor) in many years... This book has our highest recommendation" --- Interamerican Studies Institute

“Miraculous Air is a luminous exploration of Baja California" -- Los Angeles Times

"Miraculous Air may be the best contemporary travel book on Baja California around... This is one book  that truly deserves the "highly recommended" label for us Mexicophiles." -- The Mexico File

"With elegant prose and an artist's eye for detail, May just may have written one of the best books ever about Baja California... Highly recommended" -- Library Journal

Well with reviews like these I had to find out more. I found her email address and asked her a few questions about the book and what it meant to her.

· What is the book about?

o The "other Mexico" -- that is, the nearly one-thousand mile-long Baja California peninsula, it's landscape from the remote sierras to the Sea of Cortez, it's bizarre and tragic history, and above all, its people, the bajacalifornios. It's the story of my many journeys there, from Los Cabos to Tijuana, and although it's all true, I hope it reads like a novel.

o

· Perhaps you could explain why you thought the book needed to be written.

o I grew up in California, and I had been living in Mexico City for ten years and I knew almost nothing about Baja California. I had heard of a Mexican journalist's book, from the 1950s, called El Otro Mexico (The Other Mexico), and I was intrigued. I began to read what I could, and I realized there wasn't much. Many of the books -- even the classic by John Steinbeck, Log from the Sea of Cortez--- have been written by people who do not speak much Spanish, or the books were quite outdated. On the other hand, I did come across a large collection of specialized books on cave paintings and Jesuit missions, and these I found both fascinating and inspiring.

o

· What do you want people reading the book to take away?

o Above all, I hope readers find themselves lost in this world, turning the pages quickly. I hope when they  put it down that they feel they have truly visited this miraculous place, and gotten to know its stories and its people. I hope it changes the way they see Mexico -- as a place of almost infinite complexity, and often, great tragedy and great beauty.

o

· What does the book mean to you?

o It’s got my heart in it, what can I say. The title, Miraculous Air, comes from Steinbeck. He wrote about the Sea of Cortez, "The very air here in miraculous, and outlines of reality change with the moment." I found this to be exactly true, not only of the Sea of Cortez, but Baja California itself.

o

· Where there any challenges writing it?

o The biggest was finding the people I wanted to talk to there, and really listening. It wasn't always something that depended on me, however. I realized early on that I needed to be alert for whatever was in happening in the moment For example, from the beginning, I had wanted to interview some of the people who live in the remote ranches in the sierra. It was just luck that I ended up getting one of my favorite interviews, from a goat rancher about his goat dog, Chivero, which he he had rescued on the highway. It all happened when I was passing by, looking to buy some goat cheese, on my way to see some cave paintings. I almost forgot to mention! -- Miraculous Air (also) includes an interview with surfing legend Mike Doyle in Cabo San Lucas. He was very cool.

o

· Who do you think should read it and why?

o I hope just about anyone who reads English might read it, and that could include anyone from a California suba-diver to a British banker. But I especially hope that people who have traveled to or plan to visit Baja California will read it. I hope the descriptions, history and inteviews will make their travels there a much richer and more interesting experience for them.

This excerpt is from the chapter

"Laguna San Ignacio: Lay Thine Hand Upon Him"

By ten o'clock the sun had burned through the fog. In all my whale watching gear, I felt like a clown: over my clothes, I had on a lemon-yellow rain poncho, the cherry-red lifejacket, a bandanna, a baseball cap, and sunglasses; over my sneakers, enormous rubber wading boots; and swinging around my neck, a camera, binoculars, and a canteen.

"Laguna San Ignacio!" Chris yelled and he hugged himself tight. "It's SO GOOD to be back!"

And we were off, the spray flying in our faces. At last, we were heading out towards the mouth of the lagoon, to the Designated Whale Watching Area. There were eight of us in this panga, as they called these skiffs, plus the Mexican driver. Everyone was smiling wide, clutching their cameras and videocameras beneath their rain ponchos as we sped over water dancing with sun. Behind, we could see the tallest cone of the volcanic Tres Virgenes, clear on the other side of the peninsula. Ahead of us, a flock of cormorants flew in a wedge, onyx-black against the jewel-blue of the sky. At the horizon, a whale was breaching, hurling out waves of silver as it crashed down again and again. Lisa splayed her hand out into the wind, as if for practice.

We passed several pairs of cows with their calves. The calves were smooth and dark, unlike their mothers, who were blotched with barnacles and whale lice. The cows swam close to their calves. When they surfaced, they spurted tandem heart-shaped blows of mist, one big and one -- just a piff -- very small.

"We've got to get further out," Chris shouted. "We want to find more single adults because the calves are newborns and the cows are going to be too protective." This was only the last week in January, the first of the tour season.

We'd gone two or three miles from camp when the driver slowed the engine to a burble. All of a sudden, not ten feet from the prow, a massive snout rose up out of the water straight as an obelisk, perhaps twenty feet high. Covered with barnacles and clumps of lice which looked a gelatinous pink in the sunlight, thick rivulets of water rushed down; the skin glistened. The line of the whale's mouth curved slightly, as if in a rueful smile, and the baseball-sized eye, only inches above the water, swiveled in its socket. Then the whale turned, slowly, and opened its jaws, revealing a comb of flax-yellow baleen. It stayed like this for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, noiselessly, it slipped back down into the lagoon.

So this was "spyhopping." I'd been too stunned to take a photograph....

"From Miraculous Air, Copyright C.M. Mayo 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

If you are interested in Baja you should get this book, if you are headed for Baja you must get this book.

Go to her web site to find out more about the book and about Catherine Mayo.

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Posted September 14, 2003