Slow Baja - Eve Ewing On Exploring Baja By Mule

Episode Date: August 11, 2020

Eighty-four-year-old Eve Ewing made her first trip to Baja in the back seat of her father's plane in 1952. Her father, the legendary Oceanographer Gifford Ewing, would fly his plane down annually to perform an aerial census of the California Grey Whales as they calved in Scammon's Lagoon. In those days, they landed right on the salt flats of Guerrero Negro. There was no town, just a grouping of five Quonset huts. Ewing's father would fly on to the village of Bahia de Los Angeles, where he would spend the night at Casa Diaz—owned by his friend Antero "Papa" Diaz. On one of his many trips, Gifford Ewing brought the first short-wave radio to LA Bay -an important gift for Papa Diaz. In 1963, when the Meling-Alford mule train arrived in LA Bay, their second stop from Tecate, half the riders left the arduous expedition -Gifford Ewing, who had flown to LA Bay to meet the group, used that radio to call his daughter for reinforcements and needed supplies. My dad radioed me and said, "a whole bunch of their people are pulling out of the expedition, do you want to join them?" Eve jumped at the opportunity and quickly began rounding up the supplies they requested. She had just a day to round up 50 pounds of horseshoe nails, 25 pounds of dehydrated eggs, pack her saddle, stirrup covers, chaps, and long underwear -and get to Tijuana, as soon as she could. The Baja legend, Francisco Munoz would fly her down to LA Bay meet the riders. The Meling-Alford Expedition eventually made it to Cabo San Lucas. However, Ewing didn't make the entire trip. When the group arrived in La Paz, she learned that her mother had suddenly died, so she flew back to California to be with her family. She's returned to Baja many times over the years, leading over fifty mule trips and visiting one hundred cave painting sites. Deciphering those paintings has become her life's work. In this rambling conversation, Ewing reflects on moving to La Jolla in 1945, becoming a cowgirl, and the arduous 1963 -1964 mule ride. She says it was the warm and welcoming rancheros that kept her returning year after year -and the cave paintings. I have to say, with Eve Ewing's warm welcome and her trove of stories, I need to come back and record with her again very soon! A few clarifications, Charles Scammon, the namesake of Scammon's Lagoon, was a US citizen and was born in Maine. Guerrero Negro was named after the whaling ship The Black Warrior, that was wrecked on the sand bars of Frenchman's lagoon. Thanks to David Kier for the clarifications! For more on the cave paintings of Baja, click here For more on Eve's last mule ride in Baja, click here For more on Eve's father, Gifford Ewing, click here

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into 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 to L.A. Check it out at BajaxL.org. We're here in La Jolla with Eve Ewing. Well, we're in North University City. It says Playmore La Jolla, but the funny joke is we're on the wrong side of the freeway. Well, you've said that so many times to me already, and I hardly know you.

It's a pretty darn nice spot, though. You're damn right. We have a family of coyotes that lived there, and I remember one year there were five deer went up that little gravel. slope but the deer are pretty much gone now but we when i first moved here there wasn't a single building over there or any of these up here it was a wonderful kind of wild spot still but we still have coyotes and they and i love it i'm surrounded by brush on three sides which means i'll probably burn any year now but i've hey hey hey no no hey hey hey hey jerry hi how's it going

We're outside of Eve's residence here, and she's got her beautiful dogs, and I'm having a Modelo, a Negro Modelo, which is so kind, and Eve's having a glass of rosé. And, well, we're just going to jump right into it because we're on a time limit here. Eve's got some things to do. So how did you become the king of, the queen of burrow outfitting in Baja? Well, you know, if you pick a place to go where very few people want to go, and then, there aren't any maps and there aren't any roads. And you find it singularly pleasant to find that you're important simply because you went someplace that no one else has been for a while.

It's really kind of funny. Anyway, Andy Melling was the one that put the meal trip together that I was on. That's 1963. And the thing that was so different in those days is there really weren't any. there was the auto club map there were some aerial maps for pilots and they had no roads or anything on them

and we never knew on that trip and he said from the day one he said you know we don't know we may run into some rancher at some point on this trip and he'll say you know what the next waterhole south is three and a half days and we'd have to turn around and go home. And that trip, we're talking about the 1963 to 1964, Takate to...

To Cabo San Lucas, Melling Alfred Expedition. Joanne Alfred. Joanne Alfred and Andy Melling from the Melling Ranch. Right, right. And I got to be on that trip from Baja de Los Angeles to La Paz. And your father flew you down. He was a pilot, private pilot, and an oceanographer, is that right? He's an oceanography. He did research from his airplane. He studied the lagoons.

In fact, my father is known as, well, this is really kind of a funny story. You've probably heard of Continental Drift. Yes, I've heard of the Continental Drift. Of course. Well, one of the famous people of Continental Drift is a man named Maurice Ewing from Woods Hole. And my father is Gifford Ewing. And at that time, this is before he got to do his famous stuff. So what he did when he was teaching at Scripps, he would say, you know what? I'm going to give an A to any of you guys that'll go up to Maurice Ewing in Woods Hole and say, oh, oh, are you by any chance related to the famous Gifford Ewing at Scripps? Father was a very funny man.

But my father's known as the father of oceanography from space. and after my mother died in 64, and he moved to Woods Hole. He joined up with NASA, and he was with MIT part of the time, too. And what he did, he was fascinated at studying particularly the currents and things that you could see around Cape Cod and from the air and everything when he was flying back there. And he was fascinated with currents and patterns in the water. And so what he did was hook up with. with NASA and he said, you know what we need to do is to start to put some temperature

buoys out into in the ocean. So we know what's what's going on out there. And those temperature buoys, which he finally got NASA to agree to do, and they of course measured the instruments from, from I guess they're going around and round the world, earth, those instruments are the beginning of our understanding about El Niño. You moved to La Jolla in 1945, I read. Yes. Interesting time. Yes.

My father was in the, he volunteered to be in the Navy in World War II because he knew how to navigate. He spent his childhood in Maine. He lived in Poughkeepsie, New York, but he spent his childhood in Maine in the summertime. So he learned how to navigate and sail. and the Navy was desperate in World War II to get anybody, so they put him on it in a converted yacht and sent him out into the Atlantic to try and sink German submarines. Yeah, please, that's how desperate we were.

Crazy. And he nearly died of pneumonia off of Port Smith, Maine. And it was his third time for pneumonia. His brother had died of pneumonia in World War I, and he nearly died in World War I. They pulled him through and they said, hey, we need you. You can navigate, you know stuff. And so we're going to send you to San Diego. And so before that, we were living on a dairy farm in Duchess County, New York.

But it wasn't our main income. I would say my father was a gentleman farmer. Gentleman farmer. And what was it like when you moved to San Diego? You were 10, 9, 10 years old? I was 8, turned 9. shortly after I got here. What was that like?

The bright sun, the blue ocean. It was, you know, I was in a state of grief because I found out we were not going to be going back. And, you know, whatever piece of country you're born into, like we, Duchess County, New York, the farm we lived on, whatever part of land I think that you're born into and are raised maybe the first seven eight years of your life it's it's a part of your life forever it's just part of your life forever would you rather sit there and put your back to this I'm going to just move over to this see because I am right into the sun yeah no that's no fun and and so I I love the forest I love walking into woods and hearing the wood thrush, which is a bird that has that beautiful lilt, that sort of

beautiful song. And you could never see it because of all the leaves in the forest, but you could hear it was magical. And fireflies. My sister and I used to sneak out our windows on top of the house and crawl and sneak out on top of the roof. Our parents, of course, didn't know, and look at the fireflies in the woods. Just a lot. No fireflies here in California. None. None. You're not going to see that.

It was such a shock. So when I got here, I was in grief for what I knew, but what gradually happened was I fell in love with space and distance and silence. And very soon after we got out here, we met the people that owned the Peniskees Ranch. And Russell and Florence Peavy sort of became my godparents. And whenever I could run away from home and go out and live on the original penesquitos, which was the original Spanish land grant in all of California, I did. At that point, the PVs had bought it from the Saudi and Saxon Corporation, which was a big cattle ranching outfit in San Diego.

They owned the Penisgetis, they owned the Wahida, they owned the Queer Macca Ranch, They owned the San Felipe ranch in the desert. They owned Santa Maria, which you may have heard of it before. It's called Grimona. They owned whatever. But I mean, they and the dailies were the big cattle ranching companies in San Diego. Anyway, we, long story short, we bought a horse from him at a rodeo and went to pick it up. And we met the family in Rose Canyon that owned.

the San Clemente Canyon Ranch. And they later bought into the, they bought the penesquitos from the, after George Sautey and Oliver Sexton died, their daughters that lived in Witch Creek were a little bit overwhelmed. So anyway, the PV's bought the penesquitos from them. And that's where my playground was as a child. It's where I learned to ride on country and hold cattle,

hold herd and stuff like that. Yeah, so you were a real cowgirl, Honestly, you were moving some cattle. I learned how not to be a problem and how to hold herd and not be a problem. Like never try and stand downhill from a bull. Always stand uphill from a bull. They will charge you downhill. They will never charge you uphill.

Things that came in handy when I was in Baha and was invited to join the big cattle roundups down there, which were really like paintings from down. John, excuse me, Russell, and paintings of the way. I couldn't believe what I was looking at when I got invited to see those in the wild meal roundups that I got invited to see. And can you tell me about, do you remember your first trip to Baja, about what you know that might have been? It was in the back of my dad's plane when he was, he became, he initiated the first census of the California gray whale. and he did it from his airplane, and he took with him alternately Carl Hubbs, which was the most famous of all of the people at Scripps, Carl Hubbs,

Ray Gilmore, and Ted Walker. These were the ichthyologists, but it was mostly Carl Hubbs. And what they did is they flew over Scamund's Lagoon every year from the time they started this in the early 50s until mid-Fibbon. 60s, I think, when my father, when my mother died. And they would fly on the same day of the year, they would fly over the same leads into the lagoon. The cows, of course, would come into the shallow lagoons where the water was warmer and they could have their calves and they would be safe there. And the reason it was called Scammon's Lagoon is because Scammon, a famous whaler,

The other whalers out in the Pacific there, they couldn't figure out where he disappeared. And he disappeared and he came out with whale blubber. And what, what, what? And they couldn't figure out. It was a very narrow bottleneck into Scammon's Lagoon. You had to go through the surf and the whole thing. And he would wait until it was foggy when nobody could follow him. And so he finally, they did figure out where he was going.

But Scamins, and that's why it's called Scamon's Lagoon, and I'm starting to think if Scammon was a Spaniard or a Portuguese. I don't remember. So your first trip to Baja? My first trip to Baja was... About what year was that, in the plane? 53, probably, 54 maybe. Something like that.

And how much time did you spend on the ground? Well, we would land at a... This was a fun thing. we would land in a salt flat out in Guerrero Negro, which means, as you know, that means the black warrior, and it was named after a British frigate ship that robbed the Spanish galleons whenever it could get a chance. And it was just this salt flat we would land into. And there was, I think, five Quonset huts. And it was a company, the salt company was begin by,

again by a Scottish English company, and then the Mexican government moved in and took part of it. And that was the beginning of Guerrero Negro. I don't know when was the last time you were in Guerrero Negro. I was just there in, I guess, January of 2019. Okay. Imagine five Quonset huts. That's it.

That's it. And so it was on a trip with a dad. Oh, no, let me think, my first trip. Oh, yes. And then he would fly over the lagoons, and then he would go into Los Angeles Bay for the evening. And Antaro Diaz was a good friend of this. In fact, Dad got the first shortwave radio

into Antaro Diaz in L.A. Bay, which was very isolated. And Mexican government would not allow the Mexicans to have a shortwave radio on land. So Antaro Diaz said, oh, well, that's no problem. I'll put it on my boat, the San Augustine. And, well, of course, he didn't. It was in his office, you know, inside on land. But if you called him, it would be San Augustine, San Augustine, San Augustine, San Augustine, K&X10, you know, do all that short wave talk. And that's how Dad would commune. But he got him that radio, and it saved a lot of people's lives and things like that. But, okay, so we're flying in from Scammon's Lagoon one time when I was just with

my dad, and he wasn't with anyone when he wasn't with anyone else. And the wheels wouldn't go down, only there's a word for the proper word. Oh, honey. No, no, those are our nice neighbors. Honey, you're such a terrorist. Listen to her. Hi. Okay. Anyway.

Sugar bear. Yeah, he's good. Yeah, no, they're all being good. And dad said, oh, the wheels won't go down. So he handed me a broom handle, and he said, unscrew the plate there and please push the wheels down. So I had to press the wheels down in my bad dad's plane, which was a converted grumman widgeon, and that would land on the water or land on the land.

So it's things like that, but you're like, okay, Dad. And then Antaro, if the winds were blowing bad, Antara would call, hey, Gif, he said. He'd say, you be careful, the winds are bad down here. I ain't going to get my chicken coop if you don't be careful. And he always said he wanted the first plane that crashed. The field used to be in the middle of town. Now it's out at Gringo Point or someplace else, but it used to be in the middle of town.

So if you wanted to land, but I think what touched me so much about my first trip was how amazingly wild it was, even from the air. And I think what touched me so was I knew even from the air. I was looking at land that had never been. been messed with the ideas and plans of human beings? It was just wild. It was theirs. It belonged to theirs. In fact, one of the most poignant experiences I remember ever having was going, this was one on my 50 mule trips long after the melling trip and my co-explore, my friend Mark Robin, we went into

an area where the guide said, you know, this, this frightens me here because. there's hardly ever any water in here. And it was right after Chubasco. And there are mountain ranges in Baja you cannot go into until they've had a Pacific Chubasco hurricane come in and dump a bunch of water. And he was a little bit uneasy. And I've never had the experience before, and I wasn't until years later that I found my friend Mark had the same experience. We were riding maybe 50, 75 feet apart, exploring on our own from our base camp. And I couldn't believe what came out of my mouth. What came out of my mouth was, I know I'm not supposed to be here, but I'm doing no harm and and I honor you and I didn't know what I was saying or why and it was it was one of

those places that has never been messed with the hands and deeds of man and I cannot tell you what an extraordinary experience that is I can feel it I can feel and see it in your eyes yeah just you can't make that up no and years later I found Mark had had the same experience we were in an area where something else was in control. And I'm a scientist's daughter, so I don't believe in all this kind of fuzzy, fuzzy stuff. But that happened again to me at a rock art site called Montevideo outside of L.A. Bay. I went there with L.A. Munoz, who I was mentioning the other day.

You're going to jump into the Munoz. Yeah, Lisa and I went out to the Montevideo Rock Art site, and this was in the days when it was still pretty, pretty, rough to get out there. But we were out there and we camped overnight. The next day we went there and she climbed up on a rock to take a photograph of what looked

like an abstract form of a female yoni. Do you know what that is? A female genitalia, which is very common in rock art. You're very common in rock art. It looked like a Judy Chicago played is what it looked like. Okay. And interesting painting.

And Liesel we met after and I went further up up the creek and I don't know what then I there was just like a feeling of wind or something and I was looking at an art panel and all I just it just came out of my mouth automatically I said please I mean no harm I hear you I know you're here I will be I will be respect I am respectful of you and thank you I don't know where that came from. And Liesel comes down later, and she comes backs down from the rock ledge where she was taking a picture. And her eyes were big as saucers.

And she said, you know, I was told I shouldn't be here. I should not be here. And I said, what the hell is happening? And I told her what happened to me? And we were like, what? And I don't know, I just know from an experiential way that when the human spirit gets to the edge of what is known and what is unknown, which is the wilderness edge,

it's a profound experience. And I don't care whether it's the Greek myth of the Iliad, what is with our famous Greek, the tales from the, you know, Homer and the Odyssey. Iliad in the Odyssey. Or that was the Greek edge of the world. The Norse tales from the Vikings. Paul Bunyan and his blue ox.

I don't know. But it seems like wilderness, which is that place, I know what's behind, I know everything in here, but I don't know what's on that mountain in this. distance I've never been there. I don't know what's over this hill here. And I can remember the days when the Sierra Santa Clara were considered to be the most mysterious place because none of us had ever been out there. And those are the mountain ranges that stick up in the middle, the Viscayino Desert out between Scamond's Lagoon and, I don't know, where the antelope are.

But that to me was so poignant. The wilderness, and so it helps me understand when I study Indian cave paintings, which has been my passion really for the last 50 years, I just want to listen. I want to listen to what they're trying to say. That's what's important to me. Not my ideas about what they're trying to say.

What are they're trying to say? And so on that, you made the trip with Andy Melling and Joanne, and there was supposed to be some cave painting. Had you ridden in Baja previous to that? No, so that's 1963, 64. No, I've been on pack trips in this high Sierra with my family, and I'd ridden on the Penesquitos Ranch and did a lot of riding there, but no. Nothing.

Baja, California, it's unbelievably rugged. And your father said, you know what, Eve, you should go with this. You should go. Half the people just left, you should go. Well, he radioed me. He said, Eve, there's some people in Los Angeles Bay. Well, here's the funny thing. You want to know it's funny.

When dad told me, he said, there's some people here from the Melling Ranch who have ridden in from Taccati, and a whole bunch of their people are pulling out of this expedition. Exactly. Yeah. You must say why. Well, I found out why later, but that's okay. And they need some new people to come. Do you want to go?

And I said, yeah, sure. Well, what I had figured out at that point is that somebody knew what they were doing. Because I think it was the Los Angeles Times. They interviewed Joanne Alfred, who was Andy's one that I mentioned, who was the space aeronautics beauty queen from Boeing. So a beautiful woman. A beautiful, lovely, lovely lady, okay. And a little, little, very, very slight, very quiet, very, it's amazing.

It's kind of like Trudy. Trudy is such a lady and so gracious, and she has grit in her soul and in her being that is just extraordinary. But she handles everything with such grace, such grace. It's just extraordinary. Well, anyway, Joanne was a little bit like that. She'd never seen the back or front end of a mule, but she and Andy kind of fell in love, and she'd go down to the Melling Ranch

whenever she could get off work and blah, blah, blah. And they planned this expedition. Andy said, all my life, I wanted to do a meal trip down Baja. The cowboys tell me you can do it, but none of them have been south of Laguna Chappala at that point. I don't think they had, but... And so they put this expedition together. So the newspaper interviewed her, and they said, well, Ms. Alfred, what are you going to do if you can't find water?

And in the article, it said, well, I'm going to look for yellow jackets and follow the yellow jackets. And I thought, I was enough of a biologist to know, these people are going to die. They didn't interview Andy Melling. They interviewed Joanne. You're going to follow yellow jackets. So this was the group that had arrived in L.A. Bay and I said to myself, somebody on that trip knows what's going on. And I had never been to the Melling Ranch before at that point.

Somebody knows what's going on. And that was that magnificent man, Andy Melling. A quiet, gentle man, chain smoker, tequila drinking, good, kind, hearted, decent man. and he's the one who knew what was going on. And his family had begged him not to make that trip that year because it had not rained down that peninsula in the center for five years. Wow. When we got into Tacho Arce's ranch, the Rancho Asperanza,

where Harry, yeah, yeah, I was outside of San Ignacio. He said, it has not rained here for, oh, my God, It's not rained here for six years. Here at Slow Baja, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja Bound Insurance. Their website's fast and easy to use. Check them out at Bajabound.com. That's Bajabound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994.

Hey, Baja tourism is picking up, and our friends at the Animal PAD and TAP Act want to remind you when you're crossing the border just say no to puppy peddlers. I know they're cute, but the sooner we can end the demand, we can end the supply. For more information, check out theanimalpad.org and tap act on Instagram and Facebook. My recent guest, Trudy Angel, has made a beautiful documentary film,

and she is a couple of weeks and a couple of thousand dollars away from having that thing broadcast ready. She is soliciting donations, and I am trying to help her out. So if you have anything left in the tank, please consider making a small donation. You can send funds at Tour Loretto at AOL.com. That is Tour Loretto at AOL.com. T-O-U-R-O-R-O-R-E-T-O-R-E-O-L-L-O-L-L dot com. And if you have any questions, you can also reach Trudie Angel at that email address and talk to her about how to make that contribution tax deductible, et cetera.

Thank you very much for your help. You jumped on a mule in Bahaia de Los Angeles. They had contacted your father at some point to say. Okay, so Francisco Munoz came and picked me up. And you had a shopping list, as I understand. Oh, yes, yes. I had so many pounds of horseshoe nails, so many pounds of dehydrated eggs, and they told me to get tapaderos put on my saddle. Do you know what those are?

No. Those are the leather coverings in front of a stirrup to keep the bushes from scratching you in the cactus. Eve, get tapadere, bring your saddle, bring your tapadere. Bring your sleeping bag and a duffel bag. Francisco came to pick you up? Francisco Munoz came to pick me up in San Diego. go and fly me down yeah and because dad and my Francisco were really good friends the one of the funest stories Francisco has on my dad is my dad had a a tire go flat and it was the the gauge I mean

the what do you call it the the stub on a tire what is that the valve the valve yeah the tire And so he was getting ready to have the man from San Diego Air, what was his name? He was a Peruvian man, come down and bring him a tire and stuff. And Francisco said, Gief, he said, I can fix this for you. You know, Mexican is wonderful. They can fix anything with a rubber band, a piece of wire, and a pair of pliers. And they said, no, Gief, don't worry, we can fix this right away. So what he did was take a rubber band.

Okay, they fill the tire up with air, and then they fill the tire up with air, and then he took a rubber band and put it tight around the valve where it was leaking a bit. And Dad took off and took off. Perfect solution. On your airplane, what the heck? What could go wrong? Wait a while I somehow. How many Francisco Muneo stories are there like that?

So, seriously, Eve, let's get on to those. donkeys. You flew to Bahia de la Sondgios. I get down there and I need to... Half the folks had left or more than half had left. Half the few people are left. It hasn't rained in six years. Yeah. And we're starting to go south. And... Where's the ominous music? Well, Dick... Hmm? There should be ominous music playing right now.

Dick Daggett. That's a great name. Dick Daggett's father jumped ship and became one of the German Baja families like Fisher and Son Ignacio, Dick Daggett in Los Angeles Bay. And his father jumped ship, and he was the son. Jumped ship in the 17 watts, 18 watts, a couple hundred years before you got there. Oh, absolutely. And he wanted so much to come with us, and he couldn't because he was just too old.

But he got some revenge. He got his revenge. He knew I was the new gringo. I was the Greenhorn coming on to this trip. He didn't know that I had some riding and ranching experience, but nevertheless, I was the Greenhorn. Please, if you want to start with Rosado. No, no, no, I'm fine, thank you.

It's Vasco, not. Not Rose. Not Rose. We're not getting technical here on this Low Baja podcast. Well, you're welcome. Here's a whole extra cup for you. Eve is worrying about me because I just drank the rest, the end of my Modelo. Yeah, I'm getting nervous.

We've got 15 more minutes here. How did I get started? Okay. So you're the new Gringa. I'm the new Gringa. Dick Daggett's worried about you. I'm just mounting up on my mule. We're getting ready to leave and Dick Daggett can't come and he's brokenhearted.

And who we had was Romero. What was his first name? The man that led Earl Stanley Gardner South on through the old wagon road when the first time they drove the old wagon road by car. Anyway. So he was going to. take us and he carried his rifle across his shoulder like that and off we went but before that dick daggett came up to me he says well he says you know years go he said I'd run burrows from the Pacific coast into the mine here and

Punta Paniasco to Puerta something or other I didn't remember what it was and he said you know there's only one waterhole in between there and one time I come in It's getting close to dark. And he said, there's something funny going on, but I couldn't quite figure out what it was. And as usual, the burrows go faster than I go, and they get in there, and they start mucking up the water. But I managed to get my canteens filled before they really mucked it up. But I just didn't remember that rock in the middle of that, Tenaja. And the water went down and down as all my burrows kind of drank water.

and drank water and then he looked at me and he said and then guess what that rock in the middle of the tinae it had a horn it wasn't a rock it was a dead cow and so the only water i had for the next two days is now a dead cow has died in this tina ha and so he said and then he looked at me because he wanted to make sure i was suffering and he looked at me and he said and he I poured that water through my hat, and I filled my hat full of sand, and I strung, I boiled it. I did everything I could do, and then he looked at me to make sure I was looking at him when he said, you know what, it still tasted like an old dead cow. And five minutes later, I began to ride on the Melling expedition for the next four months.

Wow. Yeah. We drank out of a lot of waterholes and had day. animals and I can promise you. And in those days, Chi already hadn't hit yet. So you slept in the dirt on a, on a saddle or on the saddle blanket.

Saddle. Under the stars. Yeah, in those days, we didn't have those air pillows or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. None of those niceties. You didn't outfit yourself at the REI before you went. No, no, they just have an REI.

But they had these, what he had was enormous canvas tar. and those were put up on top of his mule. He had pack mules, not pack burrows. And in some cases, the country was not suitable for mules. It was only suitable for burrows as what happened when one of our mules ran, fell off the mountain. It's packed, hit the rock, and it rolled off.

There were some hardships. There were some hardships on that. What? There were some hardships on that trip. Lost a mule to a mountain lion, I understand, one of those hungry mountain lions. I'll never forget that part. But Andy Melling, he's the man who knew the country and he's the man that knew mules. And because it hadn't rained for five years and his family begged him to postpone that trip, but he didn't.

So in order for the mules to get something to eat, now you could never camp at a waterhole. because everything around a waterhole for a day's journey has been eaten up by the cattle, what starving cattle are left. So you had to camp between the waterhole that you just filled up on and the waterhole that you were going to and camp in the middle. And then what Andy would do for his animals to be able to get enough to eat is, and you couldn't even hobble them. And after it took about three weeks before his meals tried to go back, keep trying to go back

to the Melling Ranch. They had some tough times. They had some really tough times. Kathy Barton, who was on the trip who later married Andy, divorced her husband, who was a Navy helicopter pilot, married Andy. She said, you know, for that month between Takati and Los Angeles Bay, the North Wind never stopped. And she said, you could either pull your jacket up and keep your neck warm, and it would then get it down. Your lower back would freeze. And then you could pull your jacket down, keep your back warm, and it would get you. in the back of the net and then trying to cook at night when the wind would never stop it would never stop and she said we were all so exhausted and i think that's why a lot of those people just said this is not for us and they had two photographers from brooks institute yeah

santa barbara's from brooks institute and one taking film and one taking slides and they left they'd had it and so when i came in i was i was just the fresh meat and Hey, fresh meat, tell me something a little bit. You just mentioned Brooks. You studied at the Art Institute. Yeah, San Francisco Artis. So my Baja friends don't give a rat's ass about the Art Institute, but you were there with some luminaries. Oh.

And it's right outside of my living room window. Okay, I will never forget. Okay. So give me two minutes on that, just two, and then we're back to Burroughs and Bahaw. No, no, that's fine. We can play. We can play. I was so lucky because.

I had minor white. Yeah. Hello. For my teacher. Holy Toledo. Minor White sent us home after the first day or two of class. About what year is this? Excuse me for asking.

I understand you're about 84? I'm 84. That would have been, I think, in the late 60s, I think. I'm not, I'll have to think about that. Okay. Because then I also took a course from Ansel Adams in Yosemite. But Minor White was the man. He was the teacher.

He said, all right, I want your kids to go home. And I want you here at 6 in the morning. And your assignment is to take a photograph of light. And what he tried to tell us was that light is the soul of photography. And he was a Zen Buddhist, too. So he got into all this stuff. And I'll never forget. I was up on telegraph.

at sunrise and the light coming on the streetcar things and this and that and what and what he was right trying to take a photograph of light was the whole story it was amazing and then we also had imogene cunningham yeah she was a character she was a character i didn't learn much from her mine or white's the one i learned but she would have been about in her 80s or 90s by then she was no spring chicken. Yeah. Now I'm wondering if you would be better off in that. No, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. We're staying right here. Wins going this way. We're not going to catch each other. Don't worry about me, Eve. And Imogene Cunningham, she was wonderful. And then we had one of the Westons, but then I had a chance to go and take a photography course from Ansel Adams in Yosemite.

And that is his summer, one of his summer course. And learned his own system. And the way he taught us was you had to have some camera with a polar ride back. Well, I had a speed graphic. And so I could pull the back off. And he taught us the basic thing, which is you expose for shadow and develop, develop for highlights. That's what we learned. That's the basic zone system, right? I just wish kids knew that when they were shooting with their phones these days.

Exposed for the shadow, developed for the highlight. Right. It's the way I learned. Yeah, yeah. So you learned zone system too. Sure. Where did you learn? It's harder when you shot, you know, I shot journalism and sports and with a motor drive, so you're not really able to put that into practice so much.

But you do look at, you do look at, you know, if you're going to overexpose the role a little bit, or underdevelop it, or overdevelop it, or what have you. So now I shoot a 4x5 for fun in the summertime. Oh, just for fun. Handheld. Oh, you're wonderful. I use an old Graflex super D that has the big pop-up viewfinder. Oh, how wonderful.

So it's a terrific camera. But we're not talking cameras. We're talking about you in Baja, so let's get right back to it. So you jumped off the Melling Ranch. The Mellin. Oh, the Bahia de Los Angeles. Trip. We're not going to go into the details of that.

But it seems like the mules got under your skin. Yes. Or was it Baja that got under your skin? Or was it the cave paintings that you really didn't get a chance to see them all? I'll tell you what got under my skin. skin was the land. I'll never forget, south of Laleigh Bay, maybe two days ride south. We passed an old abandoned ranch called Rancho La Fortuna, and that's where a mountain lion killed our biggest mule. And Andy was upset because he had sent Ramon out, what was his last

name, Ramon out to bring the mules back, and he said he came back. His eyes were biggest saucers. He said that one of the mules had been killed. And actually, I think it was before Ramon got back. Joanne Alfred, bless her heart. She went to the bathroom and came back. So Andy, Andy, what's about this high and has a long tail and little round ears? Andy jumped, I swear, if you could jump straight up and down off the ground, he jumped as far as a man could do out of the air.

And he grabbed his rifle or his gun, and he looked, he said, everybody come back to the camp. It was years later that we found out that this was a very famous mountain lion. And what it had done was to kill our biggest mule and drag it about 50 feet. So it was a serious mountain lion. It was a serious mountain lion. And it was a seriously hungry mountain lion. And what was wonderful is I never realized it at the time. but the mountain lion stories were all about the transition gradually between when nature had control of the environment that you're in

and you eventually begin to get control over nature but that story every time we went to a further ranch south they had heard about the mountain lion they heard about the story and we had to tell them the story And what I realized is that in that very process, I was living in the extraordinary experience of creating another mythology. That mountain line became bigger and bigger as you went south. You know, it became bigger. Actually, it was a big mountain lion. They found out later it was a huge mountain line. Took the Via Vicencio cattle, their burrows, everything.

And it was a famous mountain lion. years later, Andy found the hoof and the shoe of the mule that it had killed, and he brought it to me because it was in, I'm not Andy, Arturo via Vicencio's country. But that fascinated me. I didn't realize it took me years later to realize this is what mythology is all about. And then, as the years go by, the story, okay, so here's the story where everybody's eyes are as big as saucers. this mountain lion is big he's big and he took this biggest mule ever and then you hear stories then my guide from korezon vicaro when he talks about trying to go in and kill a mountain lion and it jumps over his head and it scares him to pieces he says oh and i'm so scared so then you have the stories where the mountain lion and the human being are kind of 50-50 they got an

equal chance, okay? And then it progresses from that to building a fire and destroying the mountain lion or with dynamite and downing the cave that it's in. So little by little man becomes the big predator and it changes. To me, what the series of mountain lion stories are to me are the progression of a time when the wilderness, the song of the wild was wilder than the song of man. And little by little, the song of man becomes the powerful story. And now they just put poison out or whatever they can get away from, the government can't catch them, putting poison out, you know, or whatever they do. And it's a different world now.

But that was such an amazing experience. And what it's important to me about is it gives me some teeny whiff, little tiny ability to put my feet close to the side of, not in the moccasins, but near the moccasins of the Indians that painted those paintings. And what were they trying to say? That I wanted to know. That we don't know. And that's going to be the subject for our next podcast. We have clues. When I get back to talk to you again and we get on to the rest of your.

your multiple trips to Baja and the cave paintings. But I'm really very lucky and blessed to have had this opportunity. And it's one of those things where it took, hey, hi-ho. It took years, decade or more, to begin to filter down. What is it that I really, really happened? I'll never forget the day when I slept on the ground. And I felt if I sleep on this ground one more night, I'm going to become the dirt of the earth.

And I had to sleep on it one more time. And that was really important. If you've ever read Davison, what was her first name, Davison's book about crossing from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean on Camel? Yes, from Alice to Ocean. Yeah, from Alice to Ocean. Yeah. She knew. I remember having that similar experience, that feeling that I was going to turn into the earth. And what you start with when you go down there, and I'm sight as daughter, so you start there with left brain solving everything.

And what begins to happen is you don't know it. But there's an evolutionarily important reason we have a right brain. and the right brain is what takes you into the wilderness and it lets you know when there's a mountain lion coming behind you and your eyes can't see it but you know it's coming. You can sense it. You know it's coming. You can sense it. And so it was a tremendous transition to know.

And then the same, the Davison talked about the same thing. And then when she got back to civilization, what she found is little by little by little, the only thing that really works in the city is the left brain. But out there, the right brain, and the right brain is what deals with the art, it deals with the mystery, it deals with the unknown. And so I feel like I was lucky enough to have enough experience of what it means to be in wilderness, which is that area where what you know ends and what you don't know begins on the other side of that line. that mountain or that hill, that that experience enabled me to have some tiny sense, tiny sense of what the people that did those paintings were up against and what they were doing.

Well, on that profound note, Eve Ewing, we're going to leave it right there. Thank you so much for making some time for this little Baja podcast, and thank you very much. 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.