The climate varies from temperate to tropical, including the deserts fierce heat and cold. Winds whip through canyons and arroyos, blowing hard enough to rock motor homes and send the sand spitting in paint-scouring ferocity. At other times, you pray for a breath of air.

Vegetation varies from forested areas at the higher elevations to dry-seer desert, cactus forests and very productive farming regions. It is a harsh land, yet wildly beautiful and untamed in the northern half to fairly well populated and more fully developed in the southern half.

It is also a land of originalities, one of which is the boojum tree. The boojum tree raises skeletal upside down carrot-shaped trunks to the sky, sometimes splitting into fingers that curl and dip in grotesque reaches for more sky and sometimes seem to be searching for a return to the earth. No where else does this tree grow today. Cactus jungles so thick they are impenetrable by man share the landscape with towering Cardon cactus.  Hidden springs burst forth and gently bubble to give life to palm canyons, most of which are hidden from the casual traveler. Hot springs smelling faintly and sometimes not so faintly of sulfur are found in secluded canyons and are sometimes located in tidal pools.                                                                                                                                                

Then  Progress 

We began visiting this land of changes twelve years ago. Starting out simple, going only as far as a beach twenty miles below San Filipe. This broad gentle bay was scoured out by a hurricane and was a perfect oval of clean golden sand. Sand dunes rose like golden sentinels around the bay. Only the mark of the sidewinder marred their smooth shining sides. Beachcombing was a delight; shells in their multitudes littered the sands.

We took the dune buggy the next time we went, loaded it up, and headed south down the beach. The graded road to Puertecitos was too rough to travel even by dune buggy, but the beach was perfect. When the sand beach ran out we took the old road that followed the natural contours of the valleys and over the mountains along the coast. No fences for this land.

We found a cove in which to camp and spent several days there. Fishing was incredible; large bass, Corvina weighing over twenty pounds, sculpin with heads the size of washbasins, and junk fish such as triggerfish that fought to be first on the hook! The water was clear, unsullied with scum or debris.

Each trip took us farther down the peninsula. The Three Sisters, mountain peaks that blocked the way down the gulf, were met and conquered. The road over the Sisters climbed at a 45-60° angle ever upward and clung to each mountainside like a child clings to a mother. Outside drops were precipitous and on the inside there was not enough room for a ruler to pass. In many places we used rock to be rebuild the road as we went. The fear, the drama, and the exhilaration of reaching the top of each Sister. Finally, the Shrine of the Traveler, at the pinnacle of the highest Sister where we gave thanks for achieving a safe passage; the bodies of other vehicles, not so lucky, littering the way.

Farther and farther we pressed into the heart of the land, discovering cactus forests, palm canyons, secret springs, old missions, painted canyons where scarcely anything existed but a few deer and dragonflies that soared on shimmering wings.

Coyotes loped off in front of us during the day and sang their yipping lament to the moon at night. Cliff owls hooted from the cliffs and drifted away into the night on moth quiet wings. Small round eyes glowed from the ledges and waited for the parents to return with food.

During the day small birds would wander into camp, bravely sit on a shoe or foot, and accept tidbits from outstretched fingers. Hummingbirds in iridescent beauty flitted and flirted with each desert bloom. High as the eye could see, frigates rode the thermal currents, spiraling higher and ever higher in joyful abandonment, blackening the sky with their winged multitudes. Seemingly endless rivers of birds plummeted from the heights, churned the water to froth as they fed on surface fish, and rose again to the heavens to plunge again! A wonderful conglomerate; boobies with blue feet, gulls, cormorants, pelicans, frigates, all were there to join in the feast.

Snakes wove their way across the narrow dusty roads, lizards sunned by the side. At night the kangaroo rats played hide and seek through the camp; tiny big-eyed, big-eared Mickey Mouses scurrying frantically to find seeds and scraps, running over the faces of the unwary sleepers on the ground.

Snorkeling -- another adventure into adventure. Color bursting on the senses like champagne bubbles in a glass. Pink, yellow, orange, neon blue, stripped, dotted, ruffled, fluted, moving, living color. Laughter, gurgling in the throat, at their antics and the wonder of it all. Shells; from conch to murex, spiked, curled and spiraled, to the lowly scallop in Concepcion bay puffing itself along the soft sand bottoms, olive shells making small mountains in the sand with the receding of the tide, in seeming never ending abundance.

Progress  Now

Then one day, the devil entered this paradise of the senses and decided something would have to be done. The few hardy fools who so enjoyed this primitive land would have to feel the whip and teeth of -- progress!

Bulldozers came and tore up the land to build a road. Gone was the quiet, winding, shore-hugging road. In its place a road was built that cut inland, avoiding much of the shore and beaches. The old road was cut off and blocked up so areas previously accessible could no longer be visited. The Shrine of the Traveler was bypassed. No longer was it a privilege to give thanks for safe passage. The roads were not constructed with pavement or good road building materials and quickly deteriorated into bone jarring washboards. Gullies over which the road passes were not equipped with drains to allow rain to run through and washed out with the first rainstorm.

Barbed wire came to claim the land. Cattle were brought in and ate the sparse vegetation, trampling down the cactus forests. The fragile crust of the land was broken down into talcum powder that with each step hangs on the sometimes-quiet air like a dirty misshapen ghost. The grasses and vegetation of the lush palm canyons could not bear the onslaught of grazing cattle and quickly became as barren as the surrounding deserts. In canyons where once the deer roamed and dragonflies flitted, cattle turned the lush landscape into a mire of smelly green sludge. Virgin canyon walls are spray painted with graffiti, defaced of their multihued beauty.

Man saw the sea was fertile and full of fish, shrimp and shellfish. He came with his multitude of boats. Nets, like huge winged vampires, scooped up everything in their paths. Keep the shrimp -- throw everything else away -- sea-things going over the side by the mountain-loads. Birds became glutted from the terrible offering until they could not fly.

"Progress", he said.

In the span of a few short years, man has wiped out much of the sport fishing in the gulf. No more do we catch and release pompano until our backs and arms are too tired to catch even one more. No more do Corvina rise to the lure in all their silvery flashing glory. Small bass are the order of the day. The dolphin pods that played and splashed so childishly are seldom seen nor is the sea turtle that has been almost hunted to extinction.

Thriving fishing villages where children played are dead or dying. The fisherman in his panga cannot catch enough to support his family, much less catch enough to sell and make a living.

Where once water sparkled like glinting diamonds, oil residue scums the surface with sticky opalescence. The beaches are littered with the detritus of human occupation. Along Bahia Concepcion, whose clear blue water lay like a jewel at the foot of the beholder, the water became milky in appearance. Air that was like nectar at the back of the throat reeks with the stench of rotting shellfish; the seabed is all but barren.

The dance of the reef-fish is nearly done. Where clouds of the colorful once drifted, now only a scattered few slip from hiding place to hiding place.

The coyote does not sing his yipping melody to the moon. Cattle growers, drought, and the breakdown of the food chain have disseminated his ranks. The cliff owls and their children are gone from the cliffs. The birds that so delighted and entranced no longer darken the sky with their graceful wings or ride the thermals to the heavens. They are dead or gone. All depended on the bounty of the sea to assist in their survival.

Now

The golden sands of the beach where first we stayed are dirty and fouled with cans, bottles, cigarette butts, campfire debris and other litter. Houses line the shoreline for miles where once there were only open dunes and the sparkling sea. Nature, as though in anger at this carnage, struck back and took most of the beach away in another tropical storm.

Man does not seem to learn from the example of other men. Just as the farmers of Kansas overworked the land to a dustbowl, the Sea of Cortez and the land that bounds it is being overworked and stripped of its bounty. Without restrictions and a conscious effort by those who live and visit Baja, the pillage of the sea and overgrazing of the land will continue.

Documentary after documentary is shown about the ravages made by the clearing of the rain forests of South America. To the best of my knowledge, not a single news clip has been shown which tells of the harm that is being done to the sea and land at our doorstep. We cannot continue to be blind to the plight of the Sea of Cortez which is a breeding ground for a host of food and game fish.

A cactus forest in Baja may seem inconsequential when compared to a rain forest in Brazil or the forests of the Northwest. Concern for a cactus forest is certainly not the "in" thing today. However, to the birds that both live in or migrate to them and for other wildlife that inhabits these prickly domains, destruction of the cactus forests is a death sentence.

There may be some long and short-range solutions that could enable the gulf area to survive. They must be instituted and enforced starting today. I do not have the answers, but perhaps a place to start would be banning of gill and purse nets.

Limitation of the number of commercial vessels allowed into the gulf at any one time could be another. Limitation of fishing seasons could also be of assistance. These measures would assist the conservation of fish-type sea creatures but the taking of shellfish also requires equally stringent measures. Fishing rights must not be sold to the highest bidder and then allow that bidder to completely strip the sea

The sea bottom of Bahia de Los Angeles was once covered with bay scallops and the marks of the rakes used to gather them still score the sea floor. There are no more scallops to be found in LA Bay today. Bahia Concepcion is or has gone the same way. Enforcement of laws that govern sizing, quantity, and the number of gatherers must also be instituted.