Outsider-ing

“None of these people look like they do any biking…”

The words were uttered with what sounded like a combination of resignation and condescension, tinged with a flatness that sat where hope had been extinguished. Looking up from my mug of caffeinated zombie juice, I caught the eye of the man who had uttered them. He looked to be in his early seventies; lean, body bent in the way of someone who had spent his life biting the stem of a road bike, shoulders stooped forward in an aero posture even when standing, narrow wingspan but deep chest, bandy legs a time worn topo map of veins and tendons. Our eyes met but before I could nod a greeting he quickly looked away, carried on walking, wife trailing quietly behind as he went off in search of the real cyclists.

Part of me wanted to jump up and chase after him, tell him about the four hours I had spent the day before following goat trails through the desert until my throat was parched and my skin flayed by the dust and wind. I wanted to point to the tan lines becoming etched on my calves, the lattice marks of thorns, shake him by the shoulder and say “What the fuck do you mean? I do biking. Me. Right here. See me!”

I was pretty gassed from that ride the day before, though, and couldn’t muster the energy to move that fast. I also doubted that he would have considered the biking that I do to be valid.

And, to be fair, I understood where he was coming from. The café I was sat outside is bicycle themed to the point that they serve their drinks in ceramic mugs whose handles resemble old Modolo brake levers, and inside along with the pastries and beverages you can buy tire sealant and gloves and riding gear and a surprising array of anime figurines (if that’s your thing). There is a healthy local population of cyclists - strong road riders and a growing cadre of fast teenage rippers who congregate here before and after their rides - but the clientele that day were chunky and tanned and not in any way likely to be confused with cyclists. The topic of conversation one table away to my left was real estate, and at the table to my right the talk was swirling around pickleball injuries and boat repair.

Nobody in this tableau could really be considered local. Just a cluster of displaced gringos doing gringo things in Mexico. Therefore, they studiously avoided making eye contact with anyone outside of their designated pickleball/real estate/boat repair clique. I’ve written about this before, and so won’t bother digging any deeper here into the wherefores of that particular sociocultural oddity. A dead horse can only get beat so much.

I have been visiting this town for about 37 years now. The first time was on a sea kayaking trip in 1987, and the Baja peninsula felt a lot less civilized then. It was. Funny what cell phone coverage, fuel availability and ATMs can do to the perception of a place. But, in spite of my own learned familiarity with more and more of the thorn shrouded secrets of this peninsula, I’ve never really felt like I have been part of it. I am an outsider here. I am cool with that.

I’m an outsider everywhere I go. I was brought into the world as the result of the union between two displaced east coasters who found each other in California. That would technically make me a California native. But then those displaced east coasters moved to New Zealand, where I spent my formative years being called “the yank” in the small town where the displaced east coasters had landed. Since New Zealand never felt like “home” in that deep in the bones sense, it was relatively painless for me to move back to California at the age of 19. Was I seeking belonging, or just exploring available options? I don’t really know anymore. But just like back in New Zealand, I never really felt like I was “home” in California, in spite of spending almost 40 years there. It was painless, almost as easy as breathing, to move to Colorado. Where I am an outsider, again.

Being an outsider is probably not an aspiration for most. I think, and am just speculating here, that most of us carry some sense of “home” programmed into us; a map whose borders are defined by generations of dead relatives, given topography by the people you grew up with, map icons formed by the textures and sights and smells and sounds of the place that defined your physical world as you grew into the place where your family had also grown. This is a map that cannot be purchased. I do not have such a map. As an outsider, I have learned other ways of navigation, but I still feel like there’s something special about those maps that some people have, the ones that I cannot buy.

Maybe that’s all just romantic speculation on my part though. Maybe the entire spectrum – feeling right at home or feeling awkwardly alien, and all the many ways people find comfort or experience strangeness in between – springs from within ourselves and how we look at the world. Some people feel at home anywhere. Some people feel like outsiders wherever they go. Maybe. I can’t speak for some people, can only process what bounces around inside this skull of mine based on what my potentially suspect senses take in.

The day before, when I had been following goats around arroyos, I found some tire tracks that led to a trail that I had a feeling might exist around this area. It turned into something that ran for a few miles across ridges, dropped into arroyos and climbed back out, eventually dumping out onto a broad and empty arroyo just downstream from a local ranch. Beautifully thought out in some spots, janky and haphazard in others.

I followed the arroyo out to a dirt road, right as three gringos on e-bikes rolled past in front of me. They stared at me as if I was some sort of apparition. I waved. They rolled on. I do not feel like I am part of this desert, but I think I understand it just enough that it will hopefully not kill me without giving me a little warning first. I do not feel like I am part of those people, but I feel like I understand them less than I do this desert. I don’t lose too much sleep wondering why. I pinched myself, just to make sure I still existed. Yup, still here.

The next day, I walked to the café. My dog is definitely an outsider here. The local dogs can smell her before we even start down a block and from behind their fences bark bloody murder at us, sparking up a gauntlet of canine outrage that follows us and telegraphs our movement from one block to the next. "Gringo Dog! Gringo Dog!" They shout to each other in their dogSpañol, alerting the others that a stranger is among them. They sound monumentally pissed. On rare occasions some might be outside in the street. They become strangely subdued then, and will cautiously walk the circling dance of butt sniffing with my dog before we go our separate ways, tails wagging, along our tunnel of noise. This is the way it is down here. It’s okay to be an outsider, you just gotta learn to read the room.

At the café, I wondered about all this as I drank my coffee and listened to the latest pickleball injury report. I don’t mind being an outsider. If anything, this tangible feeling of not being from a place helps inform me, pushes me to ask questions, demands that I keep my eyes open, and reminds me to carry forward a sense of wonder and respect. I stood up to go, right as a couple of the fast local road kids arrived. They nodded at me, I nodded back. Might have to ask them about that trail one of these days…