Corrugated tin sheets, rusted, dripped with paint, nipped into irregular rectangles, and fastened to each other in an unintentionally beautiful patchwork, stand as the long wall of a house. The residence across the alley from the tin house is hemmed in by a chain-link fence, along the bottom of which runs about six inches of overgrown umber grass that pushes against the open diamonds outlined by wire, and the dry lawn clashes and snares with bits of white and yellow paper stuck in the fence by a dallying wind. Between the plots, tawny and tan dogs, drawn and scabby, lope in the dusty sunlight, turning, bowing, bending, licking at the dirt. The dogs cast a long shadow back to the street where I sit in traffic. As they turn, the side of the dogs facing us stays shaded and black because the sun is beyond them, down the alley. With the tin, the fence, and the dark dogs, the image is one of those that can be arresting at the beauty of it but when captured on film looks like a bunch of junk and dirty mutts.

I squint my eyes. "Damn sun. I wish I could've found my sunglasses."

"You lost your glasses?"

"Yeah. In the move. It's funny, I thought I knew exactly where they were, but when I looked in that box they had disappeared," I explain, holding a hand to my eyes in a salute against the raging light. The light streams in, down the alleyway, over the dogs, through the open passenger window, past my friend Mel, and onto the right side of my face. The dashboard of my truck is lit in a flowery yellow, and the bright side of the steering wheel is highlighted white. "The damn things don't exist in this dimension anymore. I've looked everywhere."

Mel gives a polite laugh. Traffic eases us into the shadow cast by the home with the cyclone fence, and the blinding saturation that filled the cab abates and draws to the seat and pickup bed behind our shoulders. Rivulets of sweat gather at the short hair of my neck, slip down, and seep into the collar of my T-shirt. I lift my arm and sniff my pit. "Woof! Damn, Mel, I apologize. I'm kicking up quite a cloud of B.O."

"Oh, don't even worry about how you stink," she says, holding her hands up, palms toward me. "But don't come over to this side of the truck unless you really want to smell some funk."

At the corner a man in a polo shirt and painter's pants holds up a newspaper. Passing motorists drop peso coins into the thick skin of his upturned hand. He offers his newsprint papers that flutter at the edges to the customers. After each takes his paper, the man reaches into a canvas pouch around his waist to grab another.

Diagonally across the intersection from the paperman, a round-faced boy strums a light maple acoustic guitar. From behind the streaked and dusty glass of our windshield I can see his mouth open and his bare, pale teeth. He favors and opens the left side of his mouth more and squints that eye also. We can't hear the words, but his face expresses the wrought feelings of the song and the desperation of every musician.

Across the street, closer to our truck, a woman who looks to be carved from a solid trunk of oak, wearing a purple, white, and green dress, holds up caramel disks of peanuts and popcorn.

"Everyone's selling something," I say. "And everything's for sale."

"That's Mexico," Mel slips out absently as she stares out the window.

"Good ol' Mexicali," I say. "Sorry the truck doesn't have air-conditioning. We could roll up the windows. I doubt you enjoy the smell of burning trash as much as I do."

"It doesn't bug me," Mel says and wrinkles her nose.

"Just the same. Jesus, some AC would be nice. What is it, 112 here?"

"That's what the weather website said."

The midnight blue Ford carrying us lurches forward when I release the clutch and pull away from the yellow traffic light hanging at an awkward angle over the intersection, and now it's behind us. Cars stop.

"All those people back there selling something. They never had a chance to do something different, did they?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, if they were raised in San Diego they'd probably be well-off enough to take vacations in Mexico," I explain. "But as it is, their day is solid. They've got to get up and start selling to make enough money to pay for food. Go to sleep. Do it again."

Mel agrees. "One of these people could probably do our jobs better than we can, but they've got no opportunity to do it. Where you are defines what you can be. What you can be is what you are."

We follow a light blue tricycle that's been converted into a parcel carrier -- a large flat front end that can hold a dozen medium boxes and be taxied around by pedal. But on this trip the cargo bay stands empty. And as we pass I look to the shirtless man operating the cycle, and he is smiling a wide, beaming, toothless grin -- the joy of an empty load.

On our way to Guadalupe Canyon we have to stop outside Mexicali for authentic beer, tequila, and Coca-Cola with real sugar in it. The truck in front of me pulls into a strip mall on the side of the road marked by a hand-painted sign with a cartoon soccer player kicking a goal and a tin-embossed plate that reads "Cerveza Tecate." I follow the truck into the parking lot, stop behind it, and get out.

"Are we on Highway 2?" I ask.

"Yep," my friend Tony says as he exits the driver's side of his white Toyota. "This is Calle Dos and should take us to the bumpy road that leads to Cañón de Guadalupe."

Behind me the third truck in our convoy skrits its tires against the gravel, idles the engine down, and shuts off.

"You've been here before?" I ask Tony.

"Yeah, but it was almost ten years ago."

"Can you find the road in the dark?" I ask. "It'll be sundown soon."

A brass bell at the door jingles as we each push in. "Welcome, my friends," a baritone voice belts out in English better than my own. "Cold beer in the back," it booms.

After grabbing an 18-pack of Tecate each, the eight of us queue up in one aisle leading to the register. The aisle shelves are bare except at the end toward the beer case sit two loaves of Bimbo bread and at the aisle closest to the cashier are two bottles of red table wine.

As first in line I'm situated behind a family of women. The eldest, the mother, looks to be in her early 30s, maybe 5 years older than me. Behind her stands a 16-year-old girl in white pants and a pink tank top with a gold toe ring and her black hair tied up in a ponytail. Behind the 16-year-old is a 12-year-old girl. Behind her is an 8-year-old, and the 8-year-old is carrying her baby sister, who looks to be a little younger than 2.

Quick, sharp Spanish chirps from the mother, and she taps the sole of the purple sandal on her right foot against the tile, and a thin ring of gold encircling her ankle jingles on each toe-fall. When the woman is satisfied with the answers given by the cashier, she turns to leave, and the girls follow her out one by one like ducklings.

Behind the counter the man waves me up and smiles uncomfortably. "Sorry for that, my friend."

"I don't mind," I let slide out of a smile. "I didn't understand any of it anyway."

"Well then," he projects his voice out from a much happier face. Grabbing the pack of beer from me and passing it under a scanner that's been duct taped above his counter, he smiles a broad, toothy beam. I notice he is well over six feet tall and probably nearing 300 pounds. The red apron he wears looks to be two sizes too small, and his extra-large shirt sticks out wide on each side of it. He smiles, takes the green bills from my palm, and leaves peso coins in their place.

In the bed of my truck I situate two plastic jugs of water, move a box of food, and reset my blankets to make a hole big enough for my beer. Sinking below the horizon the sun paints the sky in pink, gold, and orange. Black smoke rises from three spots to the southwest, over the desert.

Before anyone else is out of the store, Brianna stuffs a mermaid piñata through the passenger's-side window of my truck. "What the...?" Mel exclaims as the mythological simulacrum comes through the opening and over her lap, tail-first and finally the head, covered in flat red strips of paper to approximate hair.

"This is a mermaid. And this is a box of airplane booze bottles," Brianna informs us as she passes a small box in. "We can't stuff her in our truck because it's a surprise for Renée and she's riding with us."

"You got her a piñata, and we're stuffing it with little bottles of liquor?" Mel asks.

I catch Mel's eye with my gaze and blurt, "Why the hell didn't I get one of those for my birthday?"

"I don't know, but it's pretty cool."

"Here, there's a hole in the back of the mermaid's head and one in her butt. Get as many bottles in as you can," Brianna says, pats the box, and turns around to run to her pickup.

Our headlights beam in awkward angles through the parking lot as we maneuver our trucks around and point them toward the exit. Toward the highway our trucks lurch and spit pebbles behind us as we pull into traffic.

On Calle Dos the wind pushes into the truck in solid slugs and swaps the dust on the dashboard for fresh dust from outside. Mel squints through the thick air and shoves miniature plastic bottles of hooch up a paper mermaid's ass by the azure light from the dashboard.

I turn to Mel and holler over the wind, "At least it's cooled down a bit since the sun's gone down." Beyond Mel, in the right-hand lane, is a 1970s Datsun pickup towing something like a trailer. Mel notices I'm looking past her, and she spins her butt around over the bench seat and stares out into the darkness. "What the hell is that?" she asks.

"It's a Datsun pickup," I tell her. "It's towing the front half of a Corvair. The Corvair's been spun backwards, chopped behind the doors, and the top has been removed. And it looks like the trunk lid's been taken off. Corvairs were rear-engine, and the trunk was up front. Look, you can see where the headlights were." And they look back at us as the pickup gains speed down the hill and overtakes us. The Corvair trunk and what used to be the front seat are piled high with scrap steel, washtubs, pots, pans, and the shin-high fence posts that you'd find around the grass in a municipal park.

THUD BUD WUD BUD THUD! From underneath the pickup and back-turned erstwhile car, tubular orange cones with a reflective ring around the top come spitting out. THUD WUD BUD! An amber safety cone rockets up from beneath the front wheel of the truck and fires across my hood, bouncing over the wipers and careening up and over my windshield.

"HOLY SHIT!" Mel and I yell. I romp the brakes and check to my right as the Datsun, makeshift trailer, and load of junk go shooting off a hard edge cut from the asphalt and launch out into the night, down a foot from where the blacktop was, and crash down against a rough dirt road.

Now standing on the brakes and clutch, I spin the wheel to the left and slide my truck into the dirt, gravel, and weeds of the median. The Datsun's headlights angle into the lane I occupied a second before, and with a twisting, slinging jump, it makes it out of the dirt -- wheels airbound, lights akimbo, throwing steel, pots, and pans behind it and across the highway.

"Oh my God!" I yell, correct my trajectory, and aim the truck back onto the blacktop. "Did you see that? Their lane ended. It just ended. No warning or anything. It ended. And they came into our lane! No warning!"

Mel releases her white fingers slowly from the dash and plastic interior of the door. Her eyes wild and chest heaving with gasps and a thrashing heartbeat, between breaths she hisses, "That's Mexico."

White bits fall from the trailer and bound along the road in the bathing light of my headlamps. Two minutes after the near-death experience, the right lane ceases to be just a dirt path, and a hard-edged shoulder, a foot up from the dusty floor, marks the reinvention of the second lane, and the dead eyes of the Corvair pull into it.

Not wanting another two-ton steel mishap, I punch the throttle and pull away from the Datsun. The uphill swing works in my favor, and the mini-truck hauling a load slows and drops back against the strain. Speeding up, I find Brianna's and Tony's taillights ahead of me and nestle into the rear position of the caravan.

Tony's rear lights get brighter when the brake lights come on, and he slows. Crossing the median, bump bump down onto the gravel, bump bump back up on the pavement, following Tony's truck we cross the opposite lanes of Highway 2. Past a barbed-wire fence that lies down with the wires dipping into the dirt we travel, and two by two our headlights shine on a weathered gray wooden sign with the words "Cañón de Guadalupe" painted on it in black.

"WOOOOOO!" I yell as I hop out of my truck and greet the other drivers and passengers. "Man, we are here!"

"Wait, wait," Tony pleads. He pushes his shoulder-length chestnut hair back over his ears and holds his hands up. "It's been a while since I've been here, but I think this washboard road is 30 miles; then we hit a rocky boulder road for 7 miles."

"Damn, man. That's going to be tough," a couple in the group agree.

"Yeah," Kip, who rode in with Tony, agrees. "But we can take it real easy. Stop to take a pee, have something to eat maybe." And from behind Kip the crisp crack and dip of a Tecate top pops. Kip steps to the side, and behind him is Brianna chugging from a red and gold can. "Aaaah!" She stops and holds the beer up. "What? We're in Mexico. Let's have one while we drive. This is a private road, I'm sure."

Gravel scrapes and skrits from under our soles as we race around the back of our vehicles and dig through the jostled supplies for cold gold beer.

"There's also a dry lakebed we can cross, but we can't see the tracks at night," Tony tells us, pointing out past the scrub brush lining the side of the road. "It's just open desert. It's a good bet you'd get lost at night."

With that the truck doors slam, starters crank over, music blares from tinny dash speakers, and the hard rubber tread of our tires crunches through the pebbles and stones of the road as we ease away from the sign and down the bumpy road.

Condensation forms on the outer edges of my fingertips and rolls, transitioning from aluminum to skin, and evaporates in the bustling air of my pickup cab. "I'm done," Mel announces to me over the rushing wind. "That's all the booze that's going to fit up Ariel's tailpipe," she informs and sets the piñata on the seat between us. Cones of illumination emanate from the dark hood of my truck and reflect back only the whiteness of a dusty road like moonlight on snow. On the side of the road, the greenish-gray vegetation and fencing give way occasionally to the dark husks of burnt-out cars.

"That's four," Mel says. "So far, we've passed four flipped-over cars on the side of the road." Her voice is shaky like a child playing horsy on an adult's knee because we're shooting down "the bumpy road." The bumpy road is a stretch of hell, carved with ruts situated every six inches, perpendicular to the road and three inches deep. So when Mel says "road," it comes out "ro-o-o-o-o-a-d."

I test different speeds, shift gears, ease the throttle on and off to get the smoothest ride. Thirty-five miles per hour sets the truck up on the high spots of the chuckholes and puts us motoring above turbulence, like a boat that rises up over choppy waves and skims the surface of a lake. The truck still shakes but not the way it does at lower or higher speeds. I try to keep it at 35 to keep the shaking to a minimum.

Only occasionally do the tires find a harmonic vibration between the four of them. When the truck does find the harmonic, the front tires drop, the rear tires pop up, and then they start swapping positions like a seesaw. Little clips come flying off from the grill on each side of the radiator, our gear in back levitates above the rails of the bed, and the doors shake inside their jambs and clang and pop open. Mel and I develop our skills at grabbing the handles and leaning in to slam the door without having to slow down or stop. Eventually, the harmonic shaking stops, and we stream over the waves smoothly once again, only to hit the shimmying shake a few minutes later, lean out, slam the doors, check by rearview mirror that our stuff is still stowed in the back, adjust the throttle, punch the clutch, grab a gear, and race off again under the Mexican moon.

"All right, Mel!" I yell into the cab of the truck. "Let's do it!"

I maneuver our craft to the center of the road and stab the gas a little. On the left, I start to overtake Brianna's pickup, and I ease back down to match her speed and glide in next to her. When I'm even with her window and I can see the glow of her face in the dashboard lights, she turns to us and Mel leans out, hooking her knees inside the door, and with both hands Mel yanks up her white tank top and bra and screams "WOOOOO!" out into the dark void between our racing trucks.

Brianna's face twists into a laugh, and her truck slows down as she loses her focus on driving. Mel replaces her shirt, and we sidle up next to Tony. Once again, "WOOOOO!" she screams out, and I can see Tony's face crack up into a sly smile and he reaches one hand off his steering wheel and pulls his shirt up, in turn, to reveal his thin, hairy chest, and he drives with his right hand. Mel collapses back onto the bench seat, and her laughter is chopped by the shaking of the truck, and I ease the truck back into formation behind Tony's and in front of Brianna's.

After our doors pop open a few more times and we've cracked another beer, the caravan slows to a stop. We both exit the vehicle and take our positions in various spots of light and shadow, by bushes and alongside the road, and we all, all eight in the convoy, pee.

"I'm going to stop," Mel says.

"Stop what?" someone asks.

"Stop counting flipped-over, burnt-out cars," Mel answers. "That was the 12th."

I notice a single tennis shoe up the hill, turned over on a rock. I scan the vicinity for the other of the pair but don't find it. All I find are two wooden crosses, whitewashed, printed with names, and hammered into the dirt past the sneaker, ten yards up the bank.

"Tony, are you sure you know where we're going? Let me see the directions."

If you take the bumpy road to its completion 28 miles from Calle Dos you'll come to a white gate. The gate separates the two sides of the campgrounds. Arturo's camp is to the right, 7 miles up a road that isn't much of a road, but more like a lane in the terrain that isn't overgrown with grease brush, ocotillos, and barrel cacti. Other than that it's just the side of a hill, rocks, boulders, stones of every size. This is why you need to bring a truck to Arturo's camp in Cañón de Guadalupe. A car doesn't have the clearance to make it. You'd tear the oil pan out from under you in anything except a pickup or an SUV.

At the top of the boulder drive are the campsites. Each campsite has a tub built up of concrete and rock and is fed by a pipe from the hot spring on the hill. Each site has an area for fires, a metal grill for cooking, a no-kidding porcelain toilet that flushes in an outhouse, and a palapa -- a shade structure made mostly of thatched palm fronds.

After two more beers and miles more of bad road, the dust rolls off the top of our tires and swirls in the yellow-white cones of our headlights. Before us hang the fingery leaves of tawny palm branches over a rectangle of wooden support studs in a configuration about half the size of a garage with a park bench and picnic table beneath it."This is it, man!" Kip yells. "We're here!"

We hustle about. Situating our vehicles in the perfect spot, pitching tents, opening cots, and inspecting the hot tub. One by one we plod through the center of camp across the floor of thick dust, cracking beers, changing into swim trunks, throwing towels over our shoulders.

"What time do you think it is?" Ed asks. We're each up to our necks in steaming spring water. "I looked at my cell phone, but it doesn't work down here."

"My truck clock read just after 1:00 a.m. when we pulled in," I answer.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

"Man, that bumpy road takes a lot of time."

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.

"Damn, it's rough to get over too."

Crunch.

"We'll ask around tomorrow and get directions to the dry lakebed," Tony tells us. "It's supposed to be smooth sailing all the way to Highway 2, no bumps or potholes or anything."

Crunch. Crunch.

"What the hell is that crunching noise?" I yell. With water cascading down from my shoulders and kicking up from my knees, I push myself out of the tub and reach over to a camp chair and pluck the flashlight off its seat.

"I hear it too."

Beaming light shoots from the electric cylinder in my palm and sprays against the thick foliage of the surrounding trees.

"It sounds like somebody's eating cookies up there."

The crunching stops in the location of the light beam and starts up in a different location from wherever I aim the torch.

"It must be some creatures that live in the trees."

"And eat cookies."

Bugs swarm the glowing tip of the flashlight, the sting of mosquito beaks burns into my shoulders at hot poker points, and a beetle buzzes past the cone of light and lands on my collarbone.

"Yeee! Yeaghughyiggy!" I shriek and swat at my chest and neck. The beetle lands with a soft plff in the dust and squirms about on its back. I nudge it over with my toe, and it takes flight again. I switch the flashlight off and splash back into the tub to save my skin from the swarming, biting insects.

Across the canyon in the campground opposite ours we hear a dogfight break out. "It's okay," an American yells. "They're okay. They won't hurt you." The clamor reaches a peak, and one dog yelps out into the night air, "Yarp! Yarp! Yarp!"

"Jesus," Kip says. "How often do you hear a dogfight like that?"

"That's Mexico."

Among twenty- and thirtysomethings in a hot tub, 100 miles inside Mexico, on the side of a mountain surrounded by palm trees and overlooking a purple nighttime desert, the conversation rolls from the valleys of everyday life -- bitching about jobs, money, TV -- to the peaks of the big topics -- love, sex, the afterlife.

"I think it was the Middle Easterners who thought that since the sun and moon affected the big things on earth, like the tide and crops, that the smaller stars affected the smaller things," I tell the group after we identify a handful of constellations and zodiac signs. "The different zodiac constellations had different houses and, depending on where they were when you were born, affected how your health and money and relationships went for the rest of your life." For some reason while I'm explaining this I think that making a little "house" with my hands is going to relay my point better.

"Is that true, Mel?" Kip asks.

"I don't know. Why ask me?"

"Well, you work for NASA."

"As a graphic designer. I make pamphlets and presentations. I work in my apartment in Hillcrest," Mel says, cocking her brow at Kip. "Besides, I don't think NASA navigates the solar system using the old horoscope charts."

"It's like what we talked about in the car," I say. "I don't believe in astrology, but where you are physically defines your options. Where you're born. Where you move."

"A neat trick to stargazing is to stop thinking that you're looking up but instead to think that you're looking out," Brianna instructs us. "Like out a window."

We sit in silence for a minute and adjust our perception of the night sky, the stars, and our orientation on land.

"Whoa. Trippy."

"Yeah, that's trippy."

"Trippy."

"On that note...," I say, splashing out of the tub. After unhooking my towel from an ocotillo bush, I soak the residual water from my skin with it and stagger to my truck. Nestling into a pile of camp pads, pillows, and blankets arranged in the back of my truck, I lie face up, stargazing until my lids ease shut and block out the dancing lights of the Milky Way. I fall asleep listening to the critters that eat cookies in the foliage of the palm trees surrounding my truck and the camp with my friends contained in a hot tub.

I wake up to my friend Renée poking my feet and in a loud voice berating me, "Get up, sissy. First one to fall asleep, you wimp."

"You're a sweetheart," I yell from under my pillow. I had strategically smothered my face beneath all my bedding in the middle of the night to keep the mosquitoes from doing that soft-buzzing-soft-buzzing-soft-buzzing-LOUD-BUZZING-LOUD-BUZZING-LOUD-BUZZING thing in my goddamned ear all night.

"Whatever," she says. "Here's your coffee." A porcelain mug clung-clunks against the tailgate of my truck, and a little hot liquid singes my toes. I sit up.

"Mmmm...," I say, sipping from the cup. "Mexico." My free hand reaches up to rub my right triceps and deltoid. Counting with my fingertips, I register over 60 mosquito bites on the back of my arm and top of my shoulder. The texture of my skin feels like those orange massage balls you can buy in Sharper Image. "Super," I say to no one before taking my next sip and easing off my tailgate.

"You ready to hike?" Brianna asks me from the center of camp.

"Almost," I answer. "Let me put my shoes on and grab a couple beers."

"If I remember correctly," Tony starts, "we just walk out of the camp up the hill, and there are arrows leading us to the trailhead."

"The trailhead?" I ask. "What about after that?"

"If I remember, it's fairly obvious the direction we take," Tony gestures up the shale cliff. "We just have to follow the creek up until we run into the upper waterfall."

After I lace up my black Converse All-Stars and put a Tecate in each pocket, I follow the group out of camp and up the hill.

The trail starts off easy. Arrows of white, painted against the larger boulders, guide us along our way, and we traverse the rocks without problem. Tony scouts ahead of the rest of the pack and from time to time will stand up on a tall rock and show us which direction we should be taking. "From up here it looks like there's a trail over this side of the creek and up along that ridge."

Beneath the shade of a gigantic palm we stop to rest, and I pop the last of my beer. "Jesus, I should've brought some water," I say.

"We packed some. You can have some of ours," Renée offers.

"No, thanks," I say. "There's water in beer."

"How long were we supposed to be out here?" Mel asks.

"This morning Tony said it was a half-hour hike."

"How long have we been out here?"

"An hour."

Sweat rolls down our hot red faces. "Where'd Tony go?" I ask.

"He went to scout around and find the trail again," Kip answers. Gulping down the last of my beer, I crush the can and Brianna takes it from me and places it in her backpack. "Thanks," I say. "Well, let's get on it. We either have to keep going until we find the waterfall or turn back."

A black outline of Tony set against the bright backdrop of the sun-raging sky waves his arms from atop a high boulder of granite. "It's just around the corner," he yells down. "I think I know where we are now."

"Tony, I'm going to slap the hippie off of you if we don't find this damned thing," I yell up to the shady figure. His outline shakes with a little laugh and brushes the hair back over his ears.

"I told you it's been a while since I've been up here."

Rocks crunch under the soles of our shoes as we start back down the trail out of the shade of the big palm. Scratching, poking, nettling plants drag across our shins, and our hands sizzle against the expanse of sun-soaked gray stone. I push on someone's butt to get them over a boulder, and they in turn lean down to pull me up by my arm.

Tony's above us again, on a rock to the right, his hand held out flat and at arm's length pointing to the sun and his head cocked to one side. "I think it's right over this ridge. Let's see. The sun's going this way...," Tony's voice trails off and his hand holds higher.

"Tony, we're lost. If we're lost, just say we're lost," I yell up playfully to my friend.

"I know exactly where we are," Tony plays along.

Scrabbling over the side of a sheer granite cliff, I stand up, and laid out before me is a perfect pool of shimmering water, and on the end opposite of me is the white, babbling, cascading waterfall.

"WOOO! HOO!" I scream, pulling my shoes off and shucking my shirt. "Come on, Tony!" I yell. "Jump in."

"I'm going to wait until everyone gets up here. I feel bad that it's taken so long. I think we were lost for a while."

"Don't feel bad, Tony. C'mon! We're here now!"

Whaau, the air rushes past my ears. SPLOOSH! The frosty water crests from my fingertips, over my head, past my torso, along my legs, and over my toes. The heat exhaustion that was cramping my muscles seconds before dissolves as my skin transfers the energy of my hot, pumping blood to the crisp pool and it's washed over the far edge and drizzled down on the rocks below. I scrabble up onto smooth rock containing the sunny side of the pool and look in. The cold, cold water evaporating off my hot, hot back is a delicious feeling, and in the water below me I can see my jostling, wavy reflection. I watch as my red face shifts to the pale bluish color of cold milk.

Diving contests take place. We each scale the surrounding cliffs at ever-higher elevations and splash down. One by one, as groups, holding hands, we jump in, paddle around, run our hands over the rough sandy bottom, sit in the clamoring waterfall, cycle in and out of the pool. At one point a green snake makes an appearance. Ed and I unsuccessfully attempt to remove the snake by its tail.

"Just grab it behind its head," Renée yells at us.

"Yeah," I say over my shoulder, attempting to corner the snake. "Why don't you just grab it behind its head?"

"C'mon, you ninny," she yells. "Just grab it."

"What if it bites me?" I ask. "If I'm poisoned and I pass out, will you carry me down the hill?"

"It's not poisonous. It's a green garden snake."

"Are you sure about that? I mean, are you willing to risk it?"

"Oh, Jesus Christ," Chrystal says, jumping into the pool. "Get out of the way." And she reaches down in the water, submerges her head, and with her hands in front of her like an underwater outfielder snatches the snake behind its head and swims it to the edge of the pool and releases it.

"SISSIES!" Renée yells. "A girl did it!"

After the snake is removed, more diving contests, breath-holding contests, and funny-hairdo contests take place until late afternoon, until we wind down and we're all beneath the shade of a ledge cut from the granite stone, sleeping. We softly snore in the shadow of the big rock, stirring gently, rolling over, and dreaming the afternoon away.

We each wake and splash in. A couple more dips in. Duck our heads in. Soak our hats and shoes in. And as a group start ambling back down the side of the mountain toward home.

"That's funny," the normally quiet Ed speaks out. "I just saw a squirrel, a hawk, and a barrel cactus all in a line on that ridge."

"Why's that funny?"

"It just reminds me of the time I lived in Arizona. There were these ground squirrels that lived in burrows all around my house. One day I came home from work and saw one pegged to the top of a barrel cactus in my front yard. It was stuck and squealing."

"How the hell does a squirrel get on top of a cactus?"

"That's what I wondered," Ed says, squinting his eyes and looking up to the right. "I figured out it must've been snatched up by a hawk but dropped there before the hawk had a good grip on it."

"Did it live?"

"Yeah, yeah, it lived. I dragged it off the cactus with my work gloves on my hands so it wouldn't bite me and I set it free," he continues. "I saw it a couple weeks later. It came out to splash in a puddle of water I made while I washed my truck. It had a bum leg and was smaller than its brothers and sisters. It was sillier too. It's funny how silly it acted because it hadn't been out adventuring around and learning how to behave like an adult. It was still a little kid, kind of. I suppose he grew up all right after that. I'm not sure. I didn't see him after that."

Shading my eyes against the damning sun, I scan the ridge for more hawks and see a flock of quail run and flutter and tear around and over and down the rocky bank.

Bounding over rocks and sliding down boulders is quicker than boosting up over rocks and climbing boulders. We're halfway back to camp after ten minutes of sauntering down the hill. Over a rock and around a palm tree I'm halted where I stand.

"Hi," I say and stick out my hand. There's a woman in a red bandanna standing in front of me. "I didn't think I'd see another person all weekend. My name's Ollie."

Grabbing my hand and shaking, she introduces herself, "Hi, I'm Lisa. It's strange to see an American down here. I'm from San Diego."

"We are too," I say and gesture to the group behind me. Tony walks past and says, "Nice to meet you. It's weird. We're probably neighbors, but we haven't run into each other up there. We had to come to the side of a rock 100 miles into Mexico to meet."

"How far is the waterfall from here?"

"Just up the way. It's easy to find."

"Good luck!"

"See you. Oh, my friends are behind me. Don't be startled when you run into them."

"Okay."

Beneath the purple shadow of a boulder, Tony and I find easy footing, and the trail is evident. My shirt, cooled by the water, seems light on my shoulders, and we amble along leisurely.

Snap! A branch in front of us breaks, and from around the boulder appear three dogs, their sharp, intense, determined barking shattering the air around us. Ground squirrels, quail, and sparrows skitter, flutter, and beat their wings along the upper ridges, in retreat from the terrifying pack.

Tony squats and raises his arms to menace the oncoming snarling, slobbering canines. I spin and reach behind me. "Hold your ground!" Tony yells at me. He thinks I'm turning to leave. "They'll chase you if you run." I'm not turning on my heels to flee the confrontation. I'm fumbling along the ground for a fist-sized rock. In a second I've found what I'm looking for, and I take my stance next to Tony, the rock high over my head.

"Call your dogs off, man!" I yell into the surrounding canyon. "Hey! Get these goddamned dogs!" my voice pitches higher.

"Oh, they're friendly," a woman's voice says, and she comes around the boulder and stands over the growling, drooling, hair-raised pack.

"Yeah," I scream. "They look real friendly! Now, call them off or I split their skulls open with this rock!"

"No! No!" she yells and grabs the collars of two of them. "They're friendly." The dogs are still going nuts, tugging against her restraining hands, snapping their jaws at the air, and in staccato bursts voicing their fear and hatred. Her husband rounds the corner and holds the third one by its collar.

"Get the hell off the trail!" Tony yells at them. "What are you thinking bringing those rabid goddamned dogs out like this?"

"Oh no, they're friendly."

"I'm sure Lisa told you we were down here. She was supposed to tell anyone she came across."

"Yeah? She didn't tell us you had wild dogs with you!"

After a couple more harsh words forced from us by our squeezing adrenal glands, pumping hearts, and racing lungs, the couple assures us once again, the dogs are very friendly, and we pass by. "Our friends are behind us. Don't let those fuckin' dogs bite anyone, get it?"

One by one we pass the rest of their straggling group, comprising children and old women, eight in all.

Back in camp we each grab a beer from the icy water of the cooler. We each crack one and hold it up and touch the thin aluminum cans together. "Here here," Kip says. "A job well done." The cold amber liquid slides down our parched throats in waves, and we each break from it and gasp, "Aaaaah!"

"I'm starvin'. I'm cooking that carne asada," Renée says.

Kip and I pile some wood in the grill along with some charcoal, spray it down with starter fluid, and strike a match. Flames lick up from around the blackened bars of the grill. "That's how you clean a camping grill in Mexico," Kip says. "Fire kills everything, and you're good to go."

Soon the smell of blistering steak wafts over the camp. We're called up one at a time by Renée to fill our tortillas with meat and cheese, and we sit around the table, wordlessly chewing on food.

While the sun bursts over the ridge in a spectacle of hue, Kip and Mel get up without notice and leave the table. We sit beneath the color-streaked levitating clouds and marvel at the sight. When the orange and pink are replaced with purple and gray a few moments later, Kip and Mel return with a halo of light below their chins.

"Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday, dear Renée! Happy birthday to you!" we all carry on together. Moon Pies with candles routed through the center of the marshmallow-y disks are passed around, licked, bitten, and scraped away from paper plates.

"Thank you, thank you," Renée says, blushing. "I'm very fortunate to have you all here for my birthday. I mean, who else would drive across the border, down a washboard road, and up the side of a hill for little ol' me?"

"Here here!" Kip says and raises his Tecate. The thin aluminum pops in and out as we touch cans above our heads.

More toasts are made. Toasts to Mexico. (MEXICO!) Toasts to Chrystal. (THE SNAKE WHISPERER!) Toasts to the constellations. Toasts to silly ground squirrels. Another round to Mexico. (MEXICO!) And a couple to us. (YAY! US!)

Behind me, my truck door slams, and I turn to see who's digging through my gear. Brianna holds her finger to her lips to keep me quiet as she smuggles out a papier-mâché mermaid from my front seat.

"All right, Renée," Ed says. "Here's your big birthday present. Close your eyes."

"Oh," Renée gasps, a little startled. "Okay."

Ed produces a handkerchief from his back pocket, and from behind her camp chair he blindfolds Renée. "What the...?" she says and touches the blindfold.

"All right, get up," Ed instructs her. "We're going to spin you around. Now, we don't have any way to pull this up or down on a rope, and we forgot our baseball bat. So we're just going to point you in the right direction and let you go. Here. Here's a two-by-four."

Renée's face beneath the blindfold registers only surprise at the events taking place around her in the short time it took for her to stand up, but she rolls with it and grasps the wood stud with both hands. Still a little dizzy from the spinning but aiming in the right direction, she locates the piñata with the two-by-four, swings back over her shoulder, and POP! blows the aqua-green body right off the mermaid's white and red head. Finger-length plastic bottles of gin, vodka, and whiskey skitter across the dust floor and slide beneath the picnic table and find room in the dark corners of the palapa. "Hurray!" we all yell out and scramble to find our favorite type of booze.

The head of the mermaid is left to hang in the center of the palapa as a warning to all other mermaids who might try to invade our camp.

By now the bumps on my arms and chest are lighting up like a pinball machine, and if I have more than a second to waste with idle hands, they reach for the mosquito bites and rub and scratch and tear at them with hard-edged nails. "Stop scratching," Mel says and holds cold beer cans against my shoulders.

"Yeah," Renée says in a snotty tone. "If you hadn't gone to bed before everyone else you could've sprayed down with mosquito repellent like the rest of us."

"Super. Thanks."

"Just make sure you do it tonight. Or you'll just be a pile of bones by the morning."

It's decided upon as a good idea to spend the rest of our last night in Mexico soaking in the natural waters of the piped-in hot springs. Beer is gathered in coolers, dragged to the tub, chairs and towels are pulled over, and we settle ourselves into the pool, feet to the center, and arms spread out around the rocky concrete rim.

Across the canyon the sound of a dogfight kicks up in the night air. Half-drunk and soaking in the hot tub, the eight of us yell, "Oh, they're friendly!"

A child screams, and the dogs' barking reaches a high-pitched, frightening timbre.

"Yeah!" I scream and stand in the knee-high pool of steaming water. "They're friendly!"

More beer. More dogs barking. More yelling. More fun, and into the bed of my truck after my eyelids get too heavy for me to manage.

"Oh, Jesus," I say and run my left hand over my left calf. "No-o-o." My voice trails off into the deep, choppy tone of morning throat gravel. I forgot to put mosquito repellent on. A blanket covered my upper body and the pillow sat over my head, but in the middle of the night my legs slipped out from the bedding pile and the stretch below my shorts was left as a big white field for midnight mosquito games. My fingers count the bumps around my left knee. Half dozen. One dozen. One and a half dozen. I stop counting after I sense two dozen bumps from the soft flesh on the interior across the kneecap to the smooth hinge of the exterior. "Super," I say and rub my ankles together like a cricket and use the rough bumps on each foot and heel to scratch their corresponding sores on the opposite foot.

"Here's your coffee." Clung-clunk.

"Thanks."

Sliding my butt across the plastic liner of my tailgate, I set my feet against the dark tan earth. My head cocks to the side as I try to figure out why one foot is closer to the ground than the other, but it's early in the morning, and it's taking me a second. I sip my coffee and gaze at my feet. After two more sips, the blanket of morning fuzz is peeled back from my mind and I shout, "No. Dammit. SHIT!" and scramble around to the driver's side. I find my rear wheel on that side sitting on a thin bed of deflated rubber tread.

"What's the matter?" Kip asks from the center of camp.

"My tire's flat."

"From last night? We didn't drive anywhere."

"It must've picked something up on the road and leaked out slowly. I didn't notice until right now."

Creeek, my door opens and pops on its hinges because it's been sitting for a couple of days and dust has been forced into the slight openings and settled on the greased moving surfaces. More dust puffs off the seat back as I lean it forward and rummage for my star wrench. Camo blanket. No. Rope. No. Army surplus MRE. No. Here it is. Star wrench.

I spin the chrome wrench in my hand, pull the camo blanket out. Spreading the camouflage polyester cover across the ground beneath the tailgate, I lean under into the shade and ease myself down.

That's not a lug nut. I reach up and finger the nut holding my spare tire in place and see that its edges are square instead of hexagonal like the sockets in my star wrench. I replaced the tires a month before the trip, including the spare. The retards at the tire shop must've lost the lug nut that holds my spare in and replaced it with a nut that no earthly wrench, at least no wrench in Cañón de Guada-Goddamned-Lupe, Mexico, would fit -- sonovabitch!

I lie there staring at that stupid square nut. "What's happening?" Kip asks as his shoes scuff the dirt around my waist.

"I'm screwed," I say. "I'm covered in mosquito bites, I have to get home today to work, my tire's flat, and I can't get the spare out. I'm sure I'll be fine, but I'm going to lie here for a minute and lose my cool."

"Okay," Kip says and his heels turn against the little stones set into the dust and walk away.

I stare up at that stupid nut.

Tires roll down the road ten yards away from my truck. "Hey, does that guy need some help?" a woman's voice calls out.

"No, we're okay," Kip says.

"Where are you guys from?"

"San Diego. You?"

"San Diego," Kip answers. "Funny who you meet out here, huh?"

"Yeah. You guys leaving today?"

"Yeah. After we eat and pack and he fixes his flat."

Kip's feet stroll to the door of the SUV, and he continues the conversation in a lower tone. I stare at that stupid nut.

"AHA!" I yell up into the undercarriage of my truck and pull against the bumper to slide out from under it. I run around to the passenger's side and creeek-pop the door open, pull the seat forward, and rummage. Under a 15-piece tool kit in a hole for a six-by-nine speaker, I find the can. The can that is the opposite of that stupid nut in the symbolic sense. A golden can of hope and salvation. Along the side of the can is written in block white letters, "FIX-A-FLAT."

"YES!" I hiss and pump my fist. I scan the directions on the label. Okay. Thread tube onto valve. Okay. Push button on top. Okay.

Rechecking the directions in the sunlight and following them, I attach the tube and press the top button. Shhhhhhhhhhhhh, white foam creeps up the tube to the tire valve, and the flat rubber circle plumps around its metal center, and the rear quarter panel on the driver's side rises up. The tube stops pumping foam and continues with air until the tire is hard and at full attention.

"Did you fix it?" Kip asks.

"Yep. Thank-you-God, I left this stuff in my truck from Burning Man. Man, I got lucky."

"That's Mexico," he says. "When you think you're screwed, luck pulls you out."

"Who were those folks?" I ask and watch the brake lights of the burgundy vehicle light up and the wheels creep over the boulders on the road.

"They were down here just like us. They camped up the hill a little ways. They came here and are going back out along the dry lakebed," Kip says and lets it sit between us for a second. "They said it takes half the time and there are no bumps, not like on the road. I got directions from them if we end up going that way."

"I don't see why not," I say. "If it saves us some time and keeps us off that road, I say we do it."

Tents are packed away. Bourbon is poured into coffee cups. Tecates are cracked open.

"I'm only having one because I'm driving, but damn they taste good. It's already getting hot out here."

My arms and legs are paraded in front of everyone for them each to yell, "Holy shit! You should've used bug spray." Yep. Thanks.

Bagels and cookies are munched on and returned to their cellophane sleeves. Peanut butter is sealed in its jar and tossed into the back of my truck. Camp chairs are folded and put back in their slick canvas bags, slung over shoulders, and placed with the rest of the gear.

"Good Lord, it's hot."

"Here. Here's some spray-on sunscreen. Keep applying."

Stiff coffee is swilled. Trash is collected and deposited in receptacles. Breaks are taken in the shade, and work is divvied up until spoons are cleaned and repacked, boxes are filled with supplies, and the camp is returned to the state that we found it in, with only the hint of burnt charcoal left, floating from the steel box covered with a wire grill.

My worn key slides into the ignition slot on the steering column, and Lucille, my 1995 Ford Ranger, stirs from her long nap. "Good ol' Lucille!" Mel yells, buckling herself into the passenger seat.

1:00 p.m., the clock radio reads. Time enough to get home, unpack, and get to work at around 6:00 p.m. Perfect. Spray on some sunscreen to hold off the harsh light beaming in from the windshield and we're off. In a lazy line of zig-zagging, over to the right to avoid this rock, over to the left to avoid that one, we roll our trucks down the side of the mountain, keeping them in the lane between the rows of scrub brush that outline our track.

Ambling down the dusty trail for a beer's worth of time, we slow to a corner and make a right-hand turn. I'm following Tony's truck that's shuttling Kip, who has the directions. Behind me Ed is driving Brianna's truck with her, Renée, and Chrystal all tucked away inside their extended cab. In my rearview mirror I can see the red aluminum cans in each of their hands held high to counteract the rocking of the truck on the boulders, and I can see their giggling faces. Their truck gets off the boulder-y road and lights down on the bumpy road facing right, behind me and Tony.

Once we're all aligned we start off again. Dust billows up behind Tony's truck and covers me. Dust billows up from me and covers Brianna's truck that Ed's driving.

"Wish we had some air-conditioning," I apologize to Mel. "We could roll up these windows and keep some of this crap out."

"Ah, it's okay. We're in Mexico. I expect to get a little dusty."

On the bumpy road we pass an olive grove with a hay-bale farmhouse situated in the center of the plot. "Man," I exclaim. "People live out here."

"Well, yeah," Mel says in a surprised voice. "People live everywhere. People live in Alaska and on islands in the Pacific Ocean. This is only a few miles out of a dry lakebed and 20 miles from the city of Mexicali."

"Talk about your limited options though. If you're born out here on an olive grove, guess what you're going to do the rest of your life?" I say. "I suppose you're right though. It's remote, but it doesn't mean they're unhappy." Pausing for a second to mull over her answer, I then say, "Speaking of the dry lakebed, why are we on the bumpy road still? It's been about half an hour."

"I don't know. Kip was pretty drunk this morning. I guess he figured he didn't have to drive so he could get shithoused."

"That's awesome. Our navigator is trashed."

Tony's truck slows, the dust cloud he's kicking up abates, and I can see his glowing brake lights. A left-hand turn signal kicks on and blinks through the haze. I throw my lefty on and pull at the wheel, and our convoy bumps up over an irregular hump in the road, and we're off down another dirt road.

"Where the hell are we going?" I ask Mel.

"I have no idea. I thought we were supposed to get to the bottom of the boulder-y road and then we were supposed to be on the dry lakebed for half an hour. We've been driving for at least twice that by now."

Our trucks pull along through olive groves until we come across a farmhouse off to our left with a clearing around it and what looks like a performance stage in the middle of the open lot.

"That's weird," Mel and I say.

"What do those signs say?" Mel asks.

"I'm not sure. I can't read all the words, but that one is 'Federales.' I know what that means. That's the federal police down here."

We continue on into the compound. On our right are lines of military vehicles, and before us is another large hump to overtake. Our trucks bump up and over. I follow Tony's truck and lose sight of him as he crests the hill and drops off the other side. As I cross the peak of the bump I see Tony's truck stopped at the bottom.

A man is talking into Tony's window, and I ease closer to hear what he's saying. We're in the front yard of a house, large by American standards, huge by Mexican standards, and if you think about where we are in Mexico, a few miles in the desert away from Highway 2 and 20 miles after that from Mexicali, then the damn house is downright enormous.

"That's easy, amigo," the swarthy, shirtless man says, gesturing in front of Tony's truck. "It's down to the right and straight ahead. I'll take you there." And with that the Mexican steps up onto Tony's rear bumper and grabs onto the rack on top of Tony's camper. Another man comes down from the knoll and steps up onto the passenger's side of Tony's black bumper.

Tony's rear tire spits dirt, and we traverse the yard on our way deeper into the olive grove. The men tap on the camper and we turn. Right. Left. "Go straight now, amigo," the man yells and points into Tony's mirror. Farther into the grove.

Around a bend in the row of trees and we're upon a concrete building where a muscular man is shaving his head in the stream of an outdoor shower.

"What the hell is going on?" Mel asks.

"I have no idea."

I lean out the window and yell, "Tony!" He cranes his head out his window and back to look at me. "What the hell are we doing?"

"I don't know," Tony says. "I asked these guys to show us where the dry lakebed is and how we can get to Calle Dos, but we're here now."

Brianna's truck pulls in and boxes me into the yard. To my right is a metal scaffold structure with a water tank atop it. To my left is the concrete building. Before me is Tony's truck. Behind me Brianna's.

"Something's wrong," I yell. "Let's get the fuck out of here!"

I throw my gearbox into reverse and look behind me. Ed gets the hint and starts to back up. The hefty man in boxer shorts scraping shaving cream off his head lumbers over to Tony's truck and leans in. Ed and I are already backing out, but I stay to wait for Tony.

The man points. Tony leans his head out, and his backup lights come on. "Okay!" Tony hollers at the shaving man. "¡Gracias!"

Our trucks all spin, angling backwards down the road, and once we're lined up again with Tony in front, we start off deeper into the olive grove.

When we clear the grove, the vast expanse of the dry lakebed opens flat and lies before us, spanning from horizon to horizon, circumscribed by distant purple mountains -- the closest range a deep violet and the farthest a steel blue-gray. Three columns of black smoke rise from pinpoints before the hills and fade to slanting cones, ominous and terrible in the sky -- the particles that compose them black but illuminated in the sunlight.

Tony's tires slide his pickup to a stop.

Stretching my legs and back pushes my diaphragm up, and in a yawning voice I say, "Ahhh. Finally. The dry lakebed. We must've taken a wrong turn somewhere."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Tony mutters through the tight-lip formations of a mouth cracked by dehydration and sun.

"No sweat. We're doing fine."

"Yeah, we're okay," Ed chimes in. "No sweat, Tony."

"All right. Besides being really freakin' weird, that was actually a productive stop. We took a wrong turn on the bumpy road," Tony admits. "The bald guy told me to drive to a pile of tires and turn right. He said we'd see the tracks of other cars in the lakebed. We follow those to Calle Dos."

"Fantastic," I say. "Let's do it to it. I still have to work today."

"You work from home," Renée says.

"That's true, but I have a lot of things to get done."

"What was that place, anyway?" Kip asks, a little freaked out by the oddity of the situation.

"It was a drug rehab center," Chrystal, who speaks a little Spanish, informs us. "That's what those signs said."

I dig through the blanket of dust covering my supplies in the back of my truck to pull out a dented bottle of water.

I crack it, take a sip, and sigh, "Ahhh. Warm and plasticky, just the way I like it." Mel takes a sip and sprays my shoulders and arms down with sunscreen.

"Eew," she grimaces. "The grime on your arm is gritty. This coat of lotion is just going to make it worse."

"We'll be showered and relaxing on the couch in three hours," I express with full confidence. "What time is it?"

"Lucille says," Mel yells back to us, poking her head through the open door and gazing toward the radio, "2:22 p.m."

"Let's hit it."

"Let's do it."

"Ándale."

In the trucks and on the trail our spirits are lifted a little. We've each got a beer, and in the reflections of mirrors, mine and Tony's, I can read the smiles on people's faces to mean they're not worried about being lost anymore.

We come across a pile of tires, and Tony makes a right. Ed and I follow, and we're out on the bright, open lakebed. Ed whips his truck up a gear and passes me on the right and cuts it to the left. His face is laughing in a playful manner for the first few seconds and then contorts to a mask of fear. Something's wrong. His truck goes squirrelly and wobbles across the buckskin-tan surface, slides to the side, and almost upends. At the last second before flipping over, his truck tips to two wheels but rights itself and stops.

Tony and I stop our trucks, get out, and run toward the other truck, Ed and Brianna's, with the rest of our friends inside, that has almost tipped over, and we're a little freaked out. Once out on the crust of the lakebed we realize it's not totally dry but rather a slippery coat of mud across a hardpan bottom layer. My feet slide to one side, and I nearly wind up on my ass.

"Whoa!" I yell out. Ed hops out of the truck and slithers across the mud, catching his hand on the door to prevent a fall. "I guess that's why they said stay on the track. This stuff is slick!"

"You guys okay?"

"Yeah, it was a little freaky, but we're cool. Brianna threatened to shoot me if I crash her truck."

"All right. Get back on track and follow us."

"That means everybody stay in a line on the trail," Tony hollers at us with his hand held vertically to the side of his mouth, projecting his voice to us across the open space.

Back in line and gunning our engines, we make our way out across the desert.

"Burning Man's held in a place like this, isn't it?" Mel asks. "What do they call that?"

"Yeah, it's in a dry lakebed too. They call it the playa. I think playa means 'beach' in Spanish."

"That's right. The playa. The beach. We're having a day at the beach."

"This is a little grittier than a day at the beach," I chuckle. The dust is blowing through the cab of our truck in waves, and the max air from the vent is blowing it across our chests and arms.

My arms are dark now. The tattoos have taken a deeper hue, and the skin beneath them has tanned to a walnut color. Mel keeps spraying me with sunscreen, and the grit sticks to it. The thin layer of lotion atop my exposed skin gets a black film built up. In the rearview I can see that my face under the brim of my straw cowboy hat is now nearly charcoal.

Mel and I pick up our discussions of surroundings, stars, fortune, and love. We're soon engrossed in a deep conversation about making out with strangers in the basement of the Kava Lounge by the airport in San Diego.

"I wonder when this road is going to curve around," I absently breathe out.

"I don't know. Why should it curve?"

"Because this road is going south. Mexicali, Calexico, hell, San Diego and the U.S. are to the north of us. We must meet up with another highway on the other side of this playa, and that takes us north to California."

Shielding the digital clock in the dashboard radio from the omnipresent blinding rays of the sun affords me a glimpse of the time: 4:44 p.m.

"I thought this was supposed to take half an hour," Mel says.

"I thought so too."

We're driving toward a dark horizon line inside the boundary of the foothills leading to the mountain range we've been driving toward for almost three hours. My foot probes deeper beneath the dash to goose the accelerator pedal more and more as the trail gets lighter, the dust reduces quite a bit, and we're on a lakebed that hasn't been traveled and tamped down by many cars. "We're almost out of road. It keeps fading," I tell Mel.

Tony's truck banks upward and starts up a dune and disappears behind the ridge. When I cross the summit, I see Tony's truck sliding to a stop, and I stand on my brakes. Ed, in Brianna's truck, slides to a stop beside me.

We stop a few feet before the bank of a marshy creek. Vegetation grows thick along its bank. "I didn't think we had to cross a creek," I tell Mel.

"Neither did I."

Tony's out of his truck and approaching mine.

"Tony," I say. A realization sits across my head like a halo. A feeling pulls at my stomach. It's the same feeling I had at the waterfall and the same terrible perception I had in the olive grove.

"We're lost again, aren't we?"

When I exit the truck and walk toward Tony, I pass my front fenders and hood and laterally Brianna's truck slides back from my side view to reveal a charred husk ten yards away along the bank of the rivulet. Turning my head to focus on it, I see that the blackened, upside-down carapace is a burnt-out, flipped-over Volkswagen Beetle -- stripped bare and lit by looters.

"Goddammit! Goddammit!" Kip yells.

"Take it easy, Kip. It's not Tony's fault. We just got some faulty directions," I say.

"I know. I know."

Usually reticent, Ed speaks up. "This was supposed to be something easy. That American couple in the burgundy SUV said it was real simple. It took 20 minutes to find the lakebed and 30 minutes to cross it. So far, this hasn't been easy or simple."

"You're right," I said. "Ed's right. We've just taken some bad turns. We've got to turn around. That's all. We've driven almost three hours in the wrong direction."

"Which way did we come?"

"From the north to the south."

"Why were we going south?"

"I don't know. I was following you guys, shooting the shit with Mel. I thought we had a handle on it."

"Where are we now?"

"Well, the sun is over Cañón de Guadalupe now. We're quite a ways south. We have to backtrack. I thought this road would turn back to the north or we would meet a highway out here that headed that direction."

"No such luck."

I see, in the back seat of her truck, Brianna's mental breakdown presented on her face. She covers her mouth and nose, and tears stream from her eyes.

I grab a branch off a bush and strip the leaves off. I jam the stick into the dust and start drawing. "This is where we turned from camp." Draw a circle. "This is the road." A line from the circle. "This is that rehab center here. This is the right-hand turn, the left-hand turn, here's where we exited the olive grove." My hand jolts at the realization; my gaze darts upward and catches Tony's, Ed's, and Kip's in an instant. We know why we are lost.

"We turned right at a pile of tires and headed south. There was probably a second set of tires farther down the road that if we turned at would point us north." The stick breaks in my hand, and I move to the dusty windshield of my Ford. With my fingertip I draw a detailed diagram. "I'll bet there's a second pile, here, to the west." My face, reflected back to me through the gritty windshield, shows how dirty I've become with the dust and grease, smoke and grime of a long haul through the desert. And across my eye shines a streak of sunlight, bent around from the top of the glass to the side in a thin sliver.

It's almost 5:00. If we've gone two hours in the wrong direction and we backtrack, that'll be almost 7:00 when we get to the pile of tires. We have another hour to get out of the desert before sundown. After that we'll have to camp. There's no way we'll see the desert road in the dark; hell, I can barely see it now. And Ed's already demonstrated that we can't blaze our own path, even if we see the lights of Mexicali on the horizon and try to drive to them in the dark across the mud. Too many unknown variables with that scenario -- barbed-wire fences, creeks, glass to puncture a tire. I've already used my Fix-A-Flat and can't get the spare out. How much water do we have? How much gas? Everyone has about half a tank. We should be good, but it'll be close. We have a tent to pitch. We have some bagels and peanut butter. A couple gallons of water. Stuff to light on fire, maybe a signal of some sort. We'll be okay, but we've got to get out, get headed in the right direction.

"What about your work?"

Laughing, I turn and say, "Man, I ain't worried about work right now. I just want out of this desert."

"Here we go," I say from my driver's-side window, jamming my transmission into reverse.

"Who wants to take lead?" Tony asks from the cab of his pickup.

"I'm taking lead," I yell, and the drivetrain of gears, shafts, cranks, and pistons that make up the heart, lungs, and guts of Lucille start to whine in unison as I back her up over the dune and turn her around.

Convoy. We're lined up and hauling ass now. I'm not worrying about spraying dust on the others. They aren't worried about falling behind. We are moving across the sand at a pace our pickups couldn't handle forever but is necessary for our time constraints. One hand on the shifter, one on the wheel, I drive the accelerator down and focus ahead on the tracks gullied out by vehicles before us and on our own tracks. Hauling. Mel and I keep the chatter to a minimum. Focus. Our eyes watch the clock as we motor across the playa.

6:30 p.m. Tony pulls alongside. "Those are the tires we turned right at originally."

"All right," I shout over the noise of our engines. "Let's keep on it. We've got an hour and a half before sundown."

"Let's do it."

¡Ándale!"

Our eyes divide the time between the sun, the clock, and the crumbled, cracked crust of dirt in front of our grille. Sky's turning pink and the sun's getting low. 7:00 p.m. The road's getting deeper, the tracks are worn. Must mean more people have come this way. There's the theoretical second pile of tires, standing guard to the road leading to Calle Dos and out of this desert. Sun's squinting down across that ridge. 7:50 p.m.

"Look!" Mel yells. "Telephone poles on the horizon."

"WOOO!" I scream.

8:15 p.m. The sun is a white, broad line running the length of Guadalupe Peak, and the dusty road leads to an entrance to Calle Dos.

Tony pulls along the left side and Ed pulls along the right and we stop.

"There's Calle Dos!"

"I've got to pee."

"Me too."

"We'll get to San Diego around midnight, I figure."

"Your boss is going to be pissed."

"She'll understand."

At a gas station three miles down Calle Dos, we cheer, hug, and dance. Our faces, arms, and necks black or red from the weather. Our heads white with dirt. The teeth of our smiles whiter. We dance and sing, "We didn't diiiiIIiiie! We didn't diiiIIiiie! Nyah nyah nyah nyah!"

The Mexicans pulling into the station in clean cars, pressed shirts, and black felt cowboy hats stare at the filthy, silly, yelling crowd of Americans and shake their heads in a "stupid gringos" fashion.

Sipping a Coke with real sugar and crossing the border at Mexicali, I see a young athletic kid jump the fence and run off. "That guy's an American now," I say.

"He must've thought his options on this side of the border were limited," Mel agrees.

A border guard waves us through, and we're on the other side. And everything looks weird. In America. The signs aren't hand painted; they're manufactured from aluminum and neon. The buildings aren't asymmetrical leaning sheds but straight upright and square. They aren't built of tin sheets and scraps of wood but brand-new lumber and plywood, coated with a skim of stucco and painted all one color. Rigid and perfect, bright and lit up by fluorescent bulbs that beam out of clean windows.

I turn to Mel. "Damn," I say and take a pull off my Coke. "Almost killed by a crazy driver with a makeshift trailer, hauled off by mosquitoes, lost on our hike, splashing down in the cold pool beneath a waterfall, Chrystal tossing that snake out, damn near attacked by dogs, drunk, in a hot tub, flat tire, lost in the foothills, asking directions at a federal rehab facility, lost again in the dunes of the desert, snatched from the jaws of death. Woo! How's that for a weekend getaway?"

"That's Mexico," she sighs and turns to me. "You're not going to be able to finish your work tonight. Your boss is going to skin you alive."

"Nah. Not if I tell her this story. That was Mexico, baby. Things are different down there."

"That's Mexico," Mel agrees.

That's Mexico.