Trees and Tamales

Trees  ∼ Ram Dass

---

 When you go out into the woods and you look at trees, you see all of these different trees.  And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever.  And you look at the tree and you allow it.  You see why it is the way it is.  You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way.  And you don’t get all emotional about it.  You just allow it.  You appreciate the tree.  The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.  And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this’.  That judging mind comes in.  And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.

---

It was the first night of my Baja Kayak trip with Wild Women Expeditions.  A trip that I had been looking at for years before I found the courage to actually book it.  I finally felt brave enough, strong enough, and finally after several hours of wet exits from a kayak at the Minden Whitewater Preserve I felt that I was ready for almost anything the Sea of Cortez had in store for me.

We were 11 women and 2 guides sitting together in the Santa Rita Hot Springs in Baja, Mexico and most of us had just met just hours earlier.  Our guide read this poem to us before we shared our stories of why this trip was important to each of us and the different circumstances that led us here.  And like the trees we were all different.  We came from different cities and backgrounds, we were all different ages, and each of us had our own special reason for being on this particular trip.  Sharing our stories that night allowed us to become a community of women who not only enjoyed our experience together, but were able to listen to and support one another during our trip.

 

Together we climbed boulders, jumped off cliffs and paddled through rough and calm water.  We camped on the beach, some of us without a tent, prepared and enjoyed meals, snorkeled with sea lions and whale sharks but most importantly we all did it with a smile and a lot of laughter.

 

 

 

There was another part of the trip that made me smile that I will never forget.  Tamales.  And like the trees, they too were each different, but all of them delicious.  They were wrapped like little presents.

Some were round little packages wrapped in corn leaves that we found in a little town somewhere between Los Cobos and La Paz.  Filled with a tender dough, that actually tasted like corn, and beautifully spiced beef.  A far cry from any tamale that I have experienced before.  The kind filled with cornmeal mush and unrecognizable fillings.  These were a work of art.

 

Our second tamale lunch was cooked by our guide right on the beach.  They were made by a local woman from La Paz and ready to steam for our first beach lunch.  I was skeptical of these tamales at first.  They didn’t look anything like the first ones. Interesting square packages wrapped in leaves and foil but just as tasty as the first ones.  My favourite were filled with cheese and poblano peppers.

I will always remember the lovely women I met and the yummy tamales that I was lucky to eat on my Baja Kayak trip.