Slow Baja - A Conversation With Author And Cancer Survivor Edie Littlefield Sundby The Mission Walker A 1600 Mile Journey On The El Camino Real

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

Edie Littlefield Sundby has been a great friend to Slow Baja. Since I originally aired my conversation with her in July of last year, she has introduced me to many of her Baja community. A few have been interviewed on Slow Baja already, and I hope to record with the rest as time and travel allows. When a family member was headed to the hospital for major surgery, I turned to Edie for advice. She had the answer, and her relentless positivity was deeply appreciated. The surgery went well. With a little time to to recover life will be back to normal, and I should be back in Slow Baja soon. Enjoy this enlightening conversation with my friend Edie Littlefield Sundby. My guest, Edie Littlefield Sundby, was arrogantly healthy when she received word that she had stage-four gallbladder cancer. The doctors gave her three months to live. "I had to kill cancer before it killed me," Sundby said. Seventy-nine rounds of chemotherapy, five-and-a-half years, and four radical surgeries later, she was in remission. The battle took half of her liver, ten inches of colon, two inches of her stomach, part of her throat, and all of her right lung. Amazingly, her spirit was intact! While driving up highway 101 to Stanford Hospital for surgery, she noticed the Mission bells denoting the El Camino Real. "I had this obsession to hug them, to follow them, I had to walk the old California Mission Trail. I had to walk all 21 Missions, saying a prayer of thanksgiving at each one." On a cold, rainy day in February of 2013 -six months after losing her right lung, she started walking from Mission San Diego to Sonoma. Fifty-five days and 800 miles later, she made it. "When I got to Sonoma, I was soaring; I did not want to stop!" In 2015, when cancer returned, and she knew it would, she reflected on how happy the walk to Sonoma had made her. In an instant, she decided to walk all the Missions in Baja. "It was wonderful to have that to look forward to; I had another walk; I had a mission I had something larger (to focus on) than what was going on inside of me." Through the internet, she found the guide and outfitter Trudi Angel in Loreto. "I had the promise of a burro for ten days and a vaquero for five days; that was good enough for me." She walked across the border to Tijuana and boarded a flight to Loreto, Mexico. Listen to the podcast here Visit The Mission Walker website here Follow on Instagram Follow on Facebook

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning in to the Slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches, and hands down, my favorite tequila. Slow Baja is brought to you by the Baja XL rally. The Baja XL is the largest and longest amateur off-road rally on the Baja Peninsula. It's 10 epic days. L.A. to Cabo back to L.A., mostly on dirt. For an adventure of a lifetime, you've got to check out the BajaXL rally.

More information at BajaXL.org and on Facebook at the Baja XL rally news and support group. It's coming up, January 2021. Be there. Michael Emery here in beautiful downtown La Jolla with Edie Littlefield Sunbee, And we are going to talk about her experience, her health journey, and then the walk, the magnificent walk that she memorialized in the book, The Mission Walker. So let's get right into it. Thank you. I'm sitting here having a Pacific O beer next to the pool at her home. So nice to meet you.

Thank you for all the help. You connected me with Harry Crosby, a living legend that I didn't know was still living. And I just got a chance to talk to with him. And that was truly amazing. so I'm just delighted to be here, so thank you. It's wonderful to meet you, Michael. Thank you. All right, well, let's jump into it.

You had a life before cancer. Tell me a little bit about it. Yes, I was arrogantly healthy. I never even had whipped cream on hot chocolate. I only ate organic food. I loved yoga. I loved life. My children had just graduated from high school.

We're on their way to college. And my husband and I were so excited about the next phase of our life and moving into that phase. And then you get those words, those three words that are like three thunderbolts of lightning, you have cancer. And in those three words, your world falls apart, your life falls apart. Well, I can relate. I mean, we're right at that stage in life. Our kids are off to college, and my wife and I are, you know, trying to, empty nest and I can't imagine having that new sentence that that and you got right into it five years

worth it wasn't a light sentence no it was in it was actually stage four gallbladder cancer and by the time they discovered it it was in eight organs and the doctors here in san diego had given me the prognosis was about three months to live and they were recommending palliative care to just keep me comfortable because treatment was considered to be a bit futile. But treatment you had? Well, actually, you know, it's interesting because I think when those sort of things happen to you, terrorizing moments, that once you catch your breath, you accept it. You accept the reality of it.

I accepted the reality, but in accepting the reality did not mean I was going to surrender. and give up. Actually, just the opposite occurs. Once you accept it, then you learn the next step is to deal with it. And so lucky for me, I found Dr. George Fisher at Stanford Cancer Center, a renowned oncologist. I did this through the rabbit hole of the internet, found him, and he happened to be a pancreatic specialist, gallbladder, liver, it's all the same kind of cancers. And I didn't have an appointment. took three weeks to get an appointment with him. And instead, I got on a plane. And that night, I flew to San Francisco and to be right there in his office the next day

because I didn't have time for a three-week appointment. So you just showed up. He said, here I am, deal with me. Exactly. And him being the professional he is, is he saw his other patients. And I had to learn to be patient. I waited four hours to see him. And that actually made me respect him even more

because he respects his patients so much. But when he saw me, he was totally, totally engaged. He came in, gave me a hug and hugged my two daughters and my husband and my three daughters and my husband. And yes, indeed, we knew immediately he was the right doctor. Had you had a way of... approaching life like that prior in your business world and your in your life as a as a mother did you just decide like this is what I'm going to do nobody's going to stop me I'm going to be in that doctor's office

tomorrow morning he's going to have to deal with me on my terms or was this just a whim no and and one thing Michael is I knew he wouldn't deal with me on my terms I really had to deal with the situation on like his terms and other terms, because that's part of the surrendering, that's part of the acceptance, is you realize you have no control, and your terms don't really mean anything to cancer. But yes, to answer your question,

I think what happens to us is I basically think, as others have said, is that our basic personality is set between the age of five and the age of 10, and it's what we have within us as a child, what we have within us as a child, and what we learn as a child stays with us for life. And when I was 10 years old, I was raised on a cotton farm in Oklahoma,

next youngest of 12 children. And being the next youngest of 12 children, you learn that when someone says something, your reaction is, who says? So when they told me you only have three months to live, my 10-year-old child within me spoke up and says, who says? Because that's what I'd already learned in life, is that who says?

And it's a healthy, it's a healthy attitude. It's, it's kind of defiant. It's kind of, it helps you, it helps you get back on your feet, actually. Who says? So you fought this for five years, and we're going to cut through a little of this because, you know, we're itching to get to Baja, but the important part is how you got to the, the thought. of doing what you did.

79 rounds of chemotherapy. I mean, who's counting, but 79 is... Holy, how? 832,000 milligrams. And the only way I was able to do that was with walking. And so lucky for me, as I learned early on, that if I could walk, if I could move, I didn't feel sick. And if I could move, I didn't feel sick.

move, I wasn't as afraid either. And you know, doctors know that walking, that movement is the best medicine. Even Hippocrates said it was the best medicine. And it's actually the most prescribed medicine in the world for a reason. It does all kinds of great things. It reds up your immune system. Well, guess what? When you're being treated with 79 rounds of chemo, you need a pretty strong immune system, my immune system had also been revved up as a child in a farm. All these things that happened to us in life truly happen for a reason. And sometimes we don't know until later what those reasons are. So I read much of the section of your book about the medical journey, we'll put it that way,

the medical journey. It's harrowing. But you got through it. Yeah, you get through it. You know, it's like, yeah, you know, one of the things you have to do is you really, you really have to with cancer and with anything, you have to, you have to figure out very quickly. Well, how do you kill cancer before it kills you? And like a lot of people have a bad idea about chemo, but it's the only thing I could do

because it was a systemic cancer in so many organs. And so that was my only choice. and sometimes it's nice to not have a lot of options. Sometimes it's nice to have one option, one choice. Yeah, and so you actually made the best of the chemotherapy. You made a friend, and sadly you lost your friend. And that helped you form, did it help you form the idea of what you were going to do? Did I get that sort of?

Walking, it was just so, is the reason, it's how I got through this. And also going up to Stanford was also a revelation. And that's 500 miles away. And lucky for me, Southwest Airlines had $39 flights. And also, that's part of the movement. You know, when you don't feel like it, you know, having 79 rounds of chemo is chemo every three weeks for five and a half years. And sometimes I'd have to get on that plane and get on a plane by myself, go up to Stanford. Oftentimes, and I'd have to come home by myself.

Well, that was part of the movement. That was part of the dealing with it. And at other times when I had surgeries and I had four radical surgeries, I lost half my liver. liver. I lost 10 inches of colon, two inches of stomach. I lost part of my throat. I also lost my entire right lung. Well, on those times, when I went up to have surgeries, I had to go up the old highway 101 here in California, and that is the old mission trail, more or less, and there are all those old mission belts every mile apart. And I would see those. First, I didn't see them, because we don't see the things that we're familiar with. And then once I saw them, I had this magnificent

obsession to hug them, to follow them, to walk the old California mission trail to all 21 missions saying a prayer of Thanksgiving at each and every one of those missions. And where did religion and spirituality fit in your life? prior to this? I was raised, as I said, on a cotton farm in rural Oklahoma. We didn't have running water. We didn't have a lot of things, but one of the things we did have is we had enormous faith and enormous, really enormous joy in our life. And my parents knew on a farm that you're not in control of the weather. You're not in control of the things that really you'd like to be in control. You're not in control of what you get for your eggs or what you get for your beef or of your pork.

You're not in control of anything. But that's okay, too. What happens with uncertainty is it really strengthens your faith. And so fast forwarding to that moment when the doctor said remission. you're in remission. You're not cured. Remission is a life sentence. You don't know how long you're going to get.

How do you look at that and say, are you kidding me? You know, it was just a, it's like I was able to exhale. Right. It's like it had been holding my breath for five and a half years and I was able to exhale.

Knowing that I had, every day was a bonus day. I didn't know when it would come back, but we knew it would come back. And so you want to slow life down. When you see the end of the life coming at you fast, you want to slow life down. Nothing slows life down like walking. And so on a cold, rainy day in February of 2013, and that's six months after Stanford took out my right lung, and after we slowed the cancer down after five and a half years, on that cold rainy day in February, I started walking from Mission San Diego, and there was so much in me,

so much to pour out that I really didn't stop until I got to Sonoma, 800 miles later. It was 55 days of walking, 15 miles a day on average. And you know, when I got to Sonoma, I did not want to stop. Well, I read a little bit about some of the things you went through in the beginning of that. the foot problems, the taping of your feet. I mean, who would have thought that your biggest danger was bicyclists? You know, it just doesn't, you don't, how can you plan for that? How can you fathom angry packs of bicyclists running you off the road that, you know,

you twisted your ankle? And you walked how many miles, 300 miles with a sprained ankle? Yes, yes. And never thought about stopping. No, because I couldn't stop. Once I started, Michael, I couldn't stop. because, you know, it really pour out thy overflowings is Job, pour out thy overflowinges.

And once I started to pour out the overflowings of fear, all those overflowingings that had built up within me over six years of dealing with this cancer, once I started pouring them out, what happened in that void and that emptiness is I filled, I filled with grace. And what that meant is I filled with peace. And it was such a profound feeling.

I can't even tell you, I was soaring, I was not walking. I can't even explain it. But I'd come so close to death, been in emergency room so many times, really thought, because the cancer had come back four different times. Four different times at Stanford, we thought, this is it, this is the end. And just to be able to exhale and breathe. And what does your kids have to say? You've got three daughters, and at this point they're in their 20s, I'm assuming, and a spouse, correct? Yes, I've been married 45 years now.

I had been married 35 at the time. Granted, you've been through a lot. So whatever a happy wife makes a happy life, I understand that quite clearly. But what did your kids think of this whole thing? Mom wants to walk from San Diego to Sonoma. You had some frequent flyer miles. It's like my doctor Fisher at George, at my oncologist at Stanford Cancer Center. He said, you know, Edie, you could drive.

You don't have to walk. But, yes, I think with our children is, you know, we want our children to be happy. We forget also that our children want us to be happy and that our happiness, increases their happiness. And so walking makes me happy. Walking makes me whole. And my children, as caregivers, they can't, they couldn't do a lot except see me suffer and it really takes a toll on your family. But to see the joy that I had when I was out there walking allowed them to exhale too. And I think they're delighted, delighted that I have found happiness and I found joy.

Because if there's one thing that is bigger than cancer, that's bigger than fear is joy. Profound. Can I ask you to read a little excerpt that I found today that I think, might give some folks an insight into how much joy helped you overcome the realities, the practicalities. I'm just going to point to this here. If you can just read a little bit about your feet and do you see the passage there? Sorry, we had a quick. On the duct tape?

Yeah. If you can just read as much of that as you can. I don't know if you need readers here. I'm sorry, I sprung that on you. No, no. The first week was a challenge to my body. Feet are tender and blister easily, and by day three, my toenails started turning black and coming loose. I wore guaranteed blister-free, double-layer socks, and stopped every three hours to smother my feet in Vaseline.

At noon, Ron Brari stopped and wrapped duct tape around each toe and both feet. By the seventh day, my feet were wrapped in duct tape. too. Yeah, that just puts it in perspective. Did it get any better from there? Oh, absolutely. And I talk about that. You know, we've had forgotten how to walk. We're designed to walk, but we've forgotten. And so that's one of the reasons I didn't want to stop by the time I got to Sonoma. By the time I got to Sonoma, you know, two months later, end of 800 miles, I was no longer walking. I was soaring. But my feet

had completely healed. My hips were strong. My lung, my one lung, I almost had normal lung capacity with one lung. You see, my body was healing as I was healing.

As my spirit was healing, my body was healing. So what made you decide, you know what? I'm going to double down. What the heck? I just got a sonoma? I'm going to Baja. I mean, it seems crazy. I'm making light of it, but, Edie, I'm sitting here with you.

I see the glint in your eye. I wish the listeners could see how you've got this twinkle. You've got this spark. And so what made you say, you know what? I'm going to walk them all. Well, unfortunately, what put that spark in my eye was fear again. Because what happens is I didn't want to stop walking in Sonoma, but I did. And Dr. Fisher, we knew the cancer would come back.

That was in 2013. In 2015, the cancer came back. It came back in my remaining lung. And I knew immediately what I needed to do after Stanford treated it. Stanford treated it with high-intensity radiation. Lucky for me, it was just one large tumor in my remaining lung. It wasn't a cluster of tumors spread throughout the lung. So they were able to radiate it.

And I knew that my mission walk was not finished. In fact, I'd only done half the mission walk. I knew that the old California mission trail actually starts 800 miles south of the border. It starts in Loretta, Mexico, Loretta, Baja, California, Mexico. And it was wonderful to have that to look forward to because I had another walk. I had a mission. I had something larger than what was going on inside of me. And you knew you were capable. Now, again, the Baja part's a little more challenging for sure, but you knew that you were capable.

Exactly. 800 miles? I've already done that. You know, we never know we can do something until we do it. Right. I had no idea. I had never walked more than four or five miles when I walked 800 miles in 55 days. You're like Graham Macintosh. You've never gotten off of the couch. You just watch TV and drank beer, and then you decide you're going to walk all the way around Baja. You know, I never ever would have gone down there. Had I not walked the 800 miles north of the border.

It empowers you. When you do something that you don't know you can do, it empowers you to take the next step in life. And for me, the next step was, well, I wanted to make sure what if the cancer wasn't, going to come back again what if that one tumor was just a prelude to an eruption again other places in my body I didn't have time to learn Spanish I didn't have time to to think about it I just had time to do it and so I through the internet I found Trudy Angel in Loretta who did some backpacking trips there in Loretto in the desert and I connected with her

and I had the promise of a mule for 10 days, and I had the promise of a vicaro, a cowboy, for five days. That was good enough for me. So I had some old, my husband and I had done some camping years ago. I had some old, two old REI bags in the garage, an old tent. I set up the tin in the garage. It seemed to have all the pieces. I put a couple other things together,

and I got a shuttle across the border to the T. to the Tijuana airport, got on a flight to Loretta, in Tijuana, flew to Loretto, and with just the promise of the mule for 10 days and the cowboy for five days. And in my pocket, Michael, I had Harry Crosby's hand-drawn maps from 1969. Razored out of his books, right? Yes. Amazing. Amazing. And again, we're going to back up because you were so kind to me and introduced me to Harry,

and he made some time for me today, which will be another podcast on the Slow Baja podcast. So we'll get to that. So you arrived in Loretto on a wing and a prayer, so to speak. And did Trudy meet you there? No, I actually took a taxi from the airport to a hotel. Because one thing that you realize is that you're a two, I was there for an extent. ended period of time. I wasn't a tourist. And yeah, so you just, you kind of do things on your own. And Trudy was incredibly helpful. She was fabulous. But she set me up. That was her mule for 10 days.

She gave me one of her pack mules for 10 days. I actually ended up keeping him for three weeks. Sounds like you got along. Well, you know how burrows and mules are in Baja. Yeah. So anyway, it was It was quite the experience. One of the things Harry had told me, I met with Harry before I went. Harry at the time was, I believe, just in his late 80s. Now he's how old? 95.

95. And Harry told me, he said, Edy, do not go in the Sierra's and the desert of Mexico without a man that was born there. Because he said the viceros will protect you. They will guide you. and they will protect you. Well, that's good advice.

It was. And he was correct. Oh. You know, it's interesting. I've never been to a beach in Baja, ever been to a beach. They're kind of nice. Some are kind of nice. You should check that out.

But I've been to 972 miles, not as the crow flies, but as the mule walks through the suesters, you know, the switchbacks, 970 miles through the Sierras and the Sonoran Desert, the Great Desert of Mac. of Baja, California, Mexico. Well, you can level with me. Did you ever regret what you were doing? Did you ever say, oh, my stars, what am I doing here? Never. Never did I say that.

Because I knew what I was doing there, Michael. I was there to disconnect, to disconnect from the mundane, to disconnect from all those things that, just interfere with our ability to live an unfiltered life. I was there to experience life. I was there to face fear. I was there to learn from it. I was there for adventure. I was there for joy. Now, Harry, in our discussion today, when I postulated the adventure factor, he really is so humble. He just downplayed it and said, you know, well, I was going to walk or take a mule,

and I didn't want to walk, so I took a mule. So 600 miles on a mule is just how I got to where I was. So he was very low-key about it. You had a heck of an adventure. A heck of an adventure. Regale us a few of those highlights. Rattlesnakes. I'm sure you slept under the stars a few nights.

Every night. I slept either in the tent or on an old sweaty mule blanket every night, except when I was at a rancho, those roadless ranchos that are everywhere. Sometimes I'd sleep out in a corral. Sometimes I'd sleep underneath the, you know, underneath the awning or underneath the woven palm. I would sometimes even sleep on a discarded old, you know, car seat or something. And then there were the times, Michael, that were just so precious. Like the time I was in Rancho Hondo and Maria Luisa, I arrived and she didn't even have, she, of course, no one there has electricity. So it was dark at 6 o'clock and she was already in bed. She got up

and she had a little flashlight, a little propane stove. She made hot water, made me some coffee. And then that night, she slept on wood planks, propped up with concrete, away from the scorpions and the stantopies, all those creepy crawly things. And that night, she scooted over, she scooted over to make room for me and my sleeping bag. She wanted to make sure I was safe. And one of the things I learned from angels like Maria Luisa, and I met so many of them on that 1,600-mile mission. trail from Loretto, Mexico, all the way to Sonoma, California. I learned that when we're the most vulnerable, when our life has fallen apart the most, is when the angels are the most plentiful.

So I, the creepy crawlies, the angels, I mean, you're going from the, you know, the realities of your world. few people, I think, could realize how generous the people are in Baja, especially these remote people that you're interacting with. Again, that was Harry's great revelation that people were so little were so generous, but you saw it firsthand. I was raised that way. I was raised in rural Oklahoma, the youngest of 12 children on a cotton farm.

I started picking cotton when I was four years old. And I saw my mother. My mother made our butter. My mother, you know, my mother milked the cow. She skimmed the cream off to make the butter. She made the bread. My father butchered the animals. You know, I learned all of that. And yes, and so I was used to rule life. And I'm very comfortable with real life and rural values. And I felt so safe and secure. I know those people had hearts of gold, just like, the people I was raised with. Yes, and I get that and acknowledge it. But I'm sitting at this table looking across at you, and we are in beautiful downtown La Jolla. You do not strike me as a woman who's going to sleep in the dirt

if I were to have just passed you in the street. But there you were. You were doing it. You'd be really surprised, I think. You know, when I was walking from San Diego to Sonoma, there were many days. Most of the time, I looked homeless. I was sweaty.

I, yeah, and so I learned, a lot of things about that. People thought I was homeless. I'd go outside a convenience store wanting some cold water and they'd ask me to stay out there. They'd bring it to me. They didn't want me to come in. I'd go to a fast food place for a quick bite at lunch when I was walking and they'd asked me to sit outside and actually to sit away because I was smelly. And so I'd gotten kind of used to being tagged as homeless. But when I was down in Mexico, it was a different feeling because I realized how vulnerable I was and how absolutely anything could have happened to me. I mean, I'm not in the middle of nowhere.

I have a very compromised digestive system, and I had so many pills. Dr. Fisher's oncology nurse at Stanford was a wilderness-trained nurse, and she called CVS to order all these prescriptions for me. I carried more pills on that mule than I had pesos. And that's another thing. I had to carry pesos. There are no credit cards. There are no banks.

I had with me $3,000 U.S. dollars in pesos in the middle of nowhere. In a place where if men make 300 pesos a day, which is $15 a day, that's a good wage. Yeah, so let's just cut right to it. You were a bit of a target or could have been, or somebody who would have loved to have talked you out of it would have said, Edy, are you nuts? You're going there with $3,000 where these people have nothing, and you're going to go on a burrow with all of your medicines, and you know, are you nuts? Are you nuts? Yes. Wild and crazy. Absolutely, but it's those things in life. It's the absurd things in life, Michael, that wake us up, that make us feel alive.

And let me tell you, it got my mind off cancer. Cancer had come back again. It was threatening my only remaining lung. You know, so what do you have? A choice. You have a choice. You can go to bed, crawl into the covers. You can pull that blanket over your head,

tight around your body, wrap it tight, and never come out and die. Or you can get on a mule in Mexico or a walk in Mexico. And, you know, I figured I'd rather die in Mexico than in bed at home. And so on that, the quote that has stuck with me, it's beautiful, and I'll be using it from here forward. We all die. Not all of us live.

Yes, and I've changed that a little bit. We all die, but it's never too late to live. Yeah, that's true. It's never too late to live. Never. And so you've lived with a capital L. I've died, too. Well.

It took death to wake me up. So bring me through it. You started in Loretto. You got up to that beautiful, is it San Javier? Sorry, I've got the Siegels here. You've started in Loretto. They had two missions there. So the mission in downtown, which was wiped out in a flood,

and then they built the second mission. How did it go? Okay. Well, my intent was, okay, because this was, what I was doing, I was following the path of Portola Hunipar Serra, Father Hunipara, Saint Sarah, who's the patron saint of California. And by the way, I'm not Catholic, but I am. I mean, I'm just, I love the missions. I just love everything about them. I love everything about people who have come before us and, and blaze the trails, if you will.

I understand how hard it has been for them, because I've lived a lot of it. I've seen what they have seen, a lot of what they've seen. And so I followed the path. I followed the diary of Portola's diary, the Portola Expedition from Loretto. And that went actually south. They went actually south, or Henneprosera went actually south to San Javier, because that's where Father Palou was, his dear friend. And Father Palou, by the way, who was down in San Javier, is the, is the,

Franciscan who founded Mission Dolores in San Francisco. And so the connectivity between what's happening there and what's happening up here, it's just, it's all the same. And so I was basically following the old route, following the diaries of Huniprasira, Father Juan Crespi, and the Portola Expedition. And that's the route that I followed. And?

I went straight up the spine of the sierras. This was the Jesuit trail. Jesuits were some of the greatest road builders in the world. Next to the Romans, they may be the greatest road builders that have ever lived. Mountains didn't stop them. They built straight through the mountains. And that's why the El Camino Real goes straight through the spine of the sierras. And that's exactly where I went.

and with the help of it took 20 vacueros and it took a ton of pack mules and burrows and but that's the route I was following and I learned that I could I learned what was essential I'd learned that in walking 800 miles from San Diego to Sonoma and I only had 40 pounds with me and most of what I had with me was dried food and then I had some containers that I got in their RIA buy some big bags for carrying water. So at all times, I could carry 40 liters of water with me. The most dangerous thing about being in the desert of Mexico, anywhere, any desert is water. And that's one of the things I learned about the Vicaros. They knew where all the water was. They knew where all the dangers were. And that's why I had 20 of them, because they're very smart men.

They know they can die as smart as they are, so they will not venture out beyond what they're comfortable with. So at the end of every 35 or 40 kilometers, and I don't know how they did it, but there was another Vicaro there with a fresh pack mule, with fresh tortillas waiting for me. Of course, I was paying them. I was paying them money, and money is hard to come by. Pesos are hard to come by. it was more than money. They weren't doing this for money. They were doing this because they too

loved their old mission trail. They too love their life. And so when you say 20 Vicaros, you know, my first thought was she's got a big pack of thundering herd going with her, but they handed you off. One at a time. One to another, to another, to another, to another. The most I ever had the same Vicaro, usually it was on average about five days, maybe even four days. When I got within 300 miles, when I got to Catavina, that's when as it got closer to the border, a California border, things got really weird and strange. Because you have a lot of fences. I started running into narcos. I started being threatened, and the vicaroles, we were threatened by narcos and other situations.

And it was not like it was the first 500 miles. and people don't understand how absolutely beautiful and wild it is from Loretto up to Catavina in the desert. It's interesting. In 1908, the American Geographical Society said that Baja, California, Mexico was the most unknown, unexplored region of the world, except the polar regions. And to this day, it still is. And that's just what I was going to say. It still is. You get off the highway, and it's, it's, you, you traveled back in time.

Oh, totally. Totally. Totally. And that was the beauty of it. The world I live in today. all the negative. And no, it plays to fear. It plays to our fear.

And here I am. My whole life is about facing fear, dealing with fear, understanding that fear is in the mind, not in the moment. It's in the mind. And dealing with it. And you did it. Obviously you did it.

We're here. You've written the book. How did you push the fear out of your mind and get on to gratitude and other more productive places. How did how did you make that actually

physically happen? Well Winston Churchill was asked you weren't you weren't afraid I mean look you know your besieged England's besiege he said I was too busy to be afraid and and let me tell you when I

was out there walking that 1600 mile mission trail I was too alive I was to my swivel-headed. I was everywhere. I was so in the moment. I mean, the dangers were so real. The dangers were real. They weren't fabricated.

They were real. They were mountain lions. They were rattlesnakes. Giant sand apiece. Scorpions. Narcos. Broken ankle. Broken ankle.

18 wheelers. Bicycles. Motorcycles in Northern California. Those dangers are so real. See, the fear of cancer was replaced by the fear of death by, from San Diego to snowmen, by, you know, death by motor cycles by bicycles. Yeah, and down in Mexico, the fear of death by cancer was really replaced by the fear of of running out of water in the desert, not having a mule, of running out of food, of, you know,

meeting up with a narco at the wrong place at the wrong time, seeing something you shouldn't be seeing, all those dangers. Or, heck, having a mule slip. Having a mule slip, some of those roads and those sierras are, the trails are 18 inches wide, and you're on the precipice looking down 2,000 feet, and mules slip all the time there, and men die. And that's why everywhere in the Sierra's of Mexico, Baja, California, Mexico, you see what they call them Vicaro sanctuaries. You see the Lady of Guadalupe statues. You see the candles out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a rock boulder in the sierras, because that's a reminder that death is everywhere.

And you beat death, and you, as you said, we all die. Not all of us live. So how have you processed that walk into your life after? You've done the book. That must have been exciting for you to actually make that happen. But how have you incorporated that experience into your life since? I'm always, I walk every single day. I walk in the canyons.

I walk because as long as I'm walking, I'm alive. And I must say that, you know, life continues, life continues to fall apart. As I age, my body falls apart, not just for cancer. Cancer is not the only reason our lives and our bodies fall apart. But I'm always planning the next walk. I'm so excited about my next walk. And all I can do every day is think about it and plan for it. and I know exactly what I'm going to do, and I know how I'm going to do it,

and the only thing is getting out there and doing it. Well, I have to say thank you so sincerely and deeply from the bottom of my heart for making some time for me and making some time for Slow Baja to talk about this magnificent experience in your book. Take us out. Take us out on a positive message about one of the days, one of the moments you had in Baja that has just really stuck with you, and informs your view on a place that isn't well known and isn't well understood how warm the people are, how generous the people are,

who have so much less than what we live with every day. Tell us a little bit about one of your lasting memories of being in Bahá and the people that you were with. Well, I've learned that when we, I've learned through life that when we have everything, that we're really not truly grateful, for much of anything. But when we have nothing, we're grateful for every little thing. And it doesn't take, when you don't have much, you don't need a lot, but you are truly grateful for everything.

And the folks that I met in the Mountain Sears, the Desert Sears of Baja, California, Mexico are truly grateful for everything. And they share that. They share that with others because when that we're suffering, when we have suffered, we understand what it means to suffer. And I think our heart goes out. I know their heart went out to me. And the thing that I remember really is that story of Maria Luisa that I shared earlier. That happened over and over and over again. It happened every day.

not just an isolated incident. It was every single day for two months. I was so vulnerable. And every single day, I learned, you know, the carols don't want to talk to you. And I don't speak Spanish, which I think was a big plus. Another thing, I'm very resourceful.

I always, boy, I got, we'd get to camp and I'd have my tent set up. They never set up my tent. They never packed up my pack. They didn't do anything. I boil my own water for coffee. You know, they did the campfire. But, yeah, but, and I respected them.

I respected them and was grateful that I could never, ever, I could never even have survived an hour in the desert without them. They were there to protect me and guide me and keep me safe. And they did. And the book is The Mission. Walker and I'm talking to Idy, Edy, Littlefield, Sunby, and the book is available online, your local bookstore, Amazon, and tell me, what's the best way for people to stay in touch with you or learn about you?

I have a website, the missionwalker.com. I'm on Facebook. I have a Facebook page, and I've posted a lot of the photos. You know, you can imagine the photos that you take of the desert. I took 4,000 photos with this Olympus tough pocket camera. It just was amazing how that little pocket camera worked in the desert. But I took 4,000 photos, and every single one of them is actually pretty good because the desert is so stunningly beautiful.

And these people are so beautiful. And so I've had the great pleasure of sharing so many of those pictures. And the pictures of the Vicaros, the pictures of the... the people in the ranchos, the pictures of the old mission trail, the mission trail that is still there in its original beauty and glory underneath a couple of hundred years of cactus. It's still there. Amazing. We're going to leave it right there.

Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Michael. Hey, you guys know what to do. Please help us by subscribing. sharing, rating, all that stuff. And if you missed anything, you can find the links in the show notes at slowbaha.com. I'll be back before you know it. And if you want to receive notices on new episodes, please follow Slow Baja on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook for you old folks.