Somewhere in the Vizcaíno Desert in Baja California, Mexico…“I found a rattlesnake!” someone yelled out.  Several individuals I had been standing with disappeared, running in the direction of the the creature.  Not a huge fan of snakes I continued perusing the desert landscape alone.  It was not at all what I expected when I had chosen to travel to Baja.

I pictured a monochromatic brown landscape of cracked earth, sparsely populated with lone scrubby bushes or cacti, and dust balls rolling across it’s surface.  What I found was a lush colorful landscape.  There were yellow and purple flowers, green cacti of every variety (and spike) imaginable, and palm trees.  There were mountains, birds, lizards, and…apparently snakes.  The view went on forever.

My journey to this place in the middle of the desert with 20 strangers began in East Harlem, New York where I live.  I was looking for a job working with wildlife or the environment when I happened upon a website for the Global Field Program with a group called Project Dragonfly and a school called the University of Miami.  I flipped from page to page, this is what I wanted.  This was my dream.  I signed up and made plans to travel from Manhattan, New York to San Diego, California.  There I would meet up with 20 other adventurers bound for Baja California, Mexico.

My home is one of the most populous cities in the world.  It is an island about 12 miles long and 3 miles across.  I share it with about 1.6 million other people.  In the 12 years I’ve lived here I’ve grown used to the people, the noise, the trash, the concrete sidewalks, the glass and brick buildings, and the metal gates, grates and trains.

In the desert as I was left alone I let my senses absorb the change in scenery.  There were no people.  No noise.  No traffic.  No concrete.  No glass or brick buildings.  No metal trains careening through tunnels packed with passengers in a rush to get from here to there.  Just a group of 20 people who two days before had been strangers but now were friends.

This place made me hopeful that there are places left in the world worth saving.  It hasn’t all been paved over, cut down, or polluted.  And that there are people that can do it.

When a rattle snake sheds its skin, it also gains a rattle.  That is the best way to sum up the shift in my perception.  I left the desert feeling like I had shed something that was dead and I no longer needed, but also gained something that would help me in my journey forward.

This is a quote by one of my favorite musicians I discovered when I returned from Baja and I feel like it really captures the feeling that I had before and after the trip.