A late afternoon on the East Cape near La Ribera, Baja California, Mexico. Giant cardón cactus, silhouetted by backlight, stand tall and rigid. A covey of quail races across a washboard road, double-quick gait and lost to the prickly desert floor. Three emaciated cattle stand off to the side of the road, a mere hundred feet or so from the Sea of Cortez and where we’d left the car for the day. There are four of us, feet torn apart by coarse, hot sand, depleted by the sun, humbled by yet another day of no caught roosterfish. 

This is where I am happiest. Everything is especially vivid. Warming light with a waning sun and the good kind of exhaustion from a day spent dedicated to a shared goal. We are at the de facto takeout, the physical place where boats are winched up on trailers, or access points where, at the terminus of fishing, a car awaits and gear is stowed. The fishing is done and there’s satisfaction from time well spent and camaraderie, but the day is far from over…  

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