The One That Got Away — -4.0 — Planet Mose Beachside Camp, Shipwrecks, Cabo del Este, Los Cabos, BCS, Mexico
“Here comes the rain again/Falling on my head like a memory/Falling on my head like a new emotion….”
The rain makes the ends of my fingers crack and is especially hard on my thumbs. It is as though the skin of my hands has held onto the memory of the bad old days working carpentry in the February ice-rain of Western Oregon. Many times I used super-glue to try to close up the extremely painful fissures that would split the tips of my thumbs. Now this desert rain, which is both unexpected and unusual has hit the beach turning the south swell grey and foreboding. There is lightening in the night over the Sierra de la Laguna as though Dedo de Lazarus (a finger of granite pointing straight up, the highest point of the mountains) is calling on the gods to make life miserable for tourists.
And now the ends of my thumbs have cracked open.
I call myself a writer and I say that I am working, but in truth I am just as much a tourist as anyone else. It is a long vacation from making any money though there is a dribble of income from my travel blog (please applaud me at Medium.com) and the truth is I work in the middle of the night/early morning and then spend the next 20 hours walking the desert and the beach thinking about writing/working. So why do the tips of my thumbs need to make this bloody protest?
Oh well. The rain is falling now, inch by inch, and the desert is not prepared for the bounty. Soon it will become a forest. Cactus blooming for the third time this year. Snakes, mice, scorpions, centipedes, tarantulas all flushed from winter hibernation, drinking heavily and looking for something to bite. It is as though tequila were falling from the sky. Lucky they don’t have guns or us tourists would be toast.
Another flash of lightening and then the rumble of thunder blending with the roar of the surf-side shore break. I wouldn’t sleep even if I could sleep, the roof dripping over my bed, something silently crawling toward me I am sure. I would turn the light on to see, if I had any electricity left (solar power only really works when there is sunshine). I would welcome the sweet smell of the sunrise if it could happen a couple of hours sooner……
The rain cannot continue here for long and then the dry hot sun will turn this place back into paradise. All this fresh sky water mixes with the sand and decomposed granite and becomes a slippery fluid on the surface of the dirt road toward town and it is a mess trying to drive anywhere.
My thumbs are sore and bleeding but I will wait a day or two for sunshine and dry before I head to the department store in San Jose del Cabo. Somewhere in the aisles there, near the light bulbs and clothespins, among the coat hooks and shower-heads, tubes of caulk, house paint… they will have what I am looking for.
Then I’ll sit in my truck and cut the package open with a very sharp knife and try to Super-glue my life back together. Starting with my thumbs.
It’s a temporary solution, but I’ll do anything to get back to the beach and the sunshine and those 22 hour days of wandering around and thinking about what I will write next.
It’s good work if you can get it.
