I was able to inhabit a space I literally had never imagined, and with that, was empowered to ask questions that had never occurred to me to ask. Certainly, it’s important to behave respectfully as you look, but choosing not to look away is equally important. Where one can afford the risk, it’s important to walk the muddy halls you are invited into, to eat the strange food shared with you, and to listen to the stories that people are willing to tell.

As we pitched our tent and lay out our belongings, we spotted the familiar apparatus of Amazonian ayahuasca ceremonies—a Jaguar skin hung on the wall, bundles of dried, raspy palm, a melodica and a drum, a tupperware container full of the dark ayahuasca extract—jumbled among stacks of beer bottles and other recycling, painting supplies, and an assortment of rubber boots for guided treks into the nearby subterranean caverns. For a moment, I had the sinking feeling of having peeked behind the red curtain in the Theater of Healing, of having seen the great and powerful Oz in all his disappointing smallness.

The ocotillo, spindly succulents like Buddha’s Hands, or the tentacles of an upside-down squid, are everywhere; now, in Baja Sur, they are still covered in tiny green leaves.  Ocotillo. The name knocks and trills in my mouth; I like to think that they were named by the birds. Likewise, the unlikely white, conical trunk of the Cirio named perhaps after the spaces between dry, hollow winds.