Journey with a Baja Burro

by Graham Mackintosh

The humorous and informative story of adventure traveler Graham Mackintosh's thousand mile walk from the U.S. border to Loreto, site of the first successful mission in the Californias. The peninsula,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0932653413
• ISBN13: 9780932653413
• Release Date: November 2000
• Publisher: Sunbelt Publications
• Length: 358 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A man, a mission, some wonderful moments.

Fourteen years after his trek around the coast of Baja California, Mackintosh, now a San Diego family man, is again drawn from the common world to a most uncommon journey. This time trekking southward in mountainous inland Baja with a pack burro. [I have had the great pleasure of meeting Graham Mackintosh and talking with him about his earlier book and about this one. For what it's worth, I found him to be the same gentle pilgrim that we meet in his writings.] "There was something very compelling and liberating about surrendering... From now on there would be no Mitsubishi, no Microsoft, no modem, no modern world, and maybe no home or wife -- just [the burro] and me, my goal, my God, and the good, simple people of Baja California," muses Mackintosh in a moment of introspective single-mindedness. Something that I enjoy about his observations, thoughts, and interests, if how often they closely resemble my own; one example being his delight in the company of a certain species of bird which I also particularly enjoy -- and which never fails to exhibit and inspire a certain indescribable joy -- the black phoebe.As in his earlier book, Into A Desert Place, frequently recurring samplings of the history of Baja (and Alta) California, including the accomplishments and abuses of the Spanish missionaries, are well related and seamlessly augment the story. Mackintosh labels himself 'a poor Christian and a worse Catholic' and, for this reader, many of the books finer moments center in the author's spiritual questionings, insights, struggles, perhaps heresies, visionary experiences, and graceful redemptions. "Behind the cool, hard, smooth rock, I sensed that there was another reality close at hand. That's how far I had come! I had seen the solid, indubitable forms of the great mountains and valleys dissolve into extraordinary visions; and at times I had almost felt myself dissolving into the world... I sensed it wasn't just an illusion. For a few precious moments, I had been freed from my hobbles. I had looked and stepped beyond... The journey... seemed, in part, a vital preparation for a much bigger journey to come."

Will intrigue a wide audience

In Journey With A Baja Burro, adventure traveler Graham Mackintosh returns to the remote desert setting of his previous book in his expedition a thousand miles from the U.S. border south to Loreto. He and his burro follow the trail which leads to most of the mission sites along the way; his humorous first-person account will intrigue a wide audience.

Journey With a Baja Burro

JOURNEY WITH A BAJA BURRO is a gem of a book. Graham Mackintosh has written of his walk with his burro Mision through the mountains and deserts of the Baja California peninsula so vividly and poetically that it comes alive in our minds. His relationship with his sometimes-exasperating animal companion is funny and touching. Reading JOURNEY WITH A BAJA BURRO will teach you a lot about this relatively unknown Mexican peninsula which extends a thousand miles below the border of California, and you'll have a lot of fun on the journey.Ann O'Neil, Longtime Baja California resident and author of "Loreto, Baja California: First Mission and Capital of Spanish California"

An Older, perhaps Wiser Baja Journey

I had wondered for years whether Graham MacKintosh would write another Baja book. His Into a Desert Place sets a high standard as a down to earth everyman-on-a-journey walking exploration of the fascinating and yet physically challenging Baja peninsula.This book resumes our acquaintance with Mr. Mackintosh in a much different place in life than Into a Desert Place. Rather than being a Brit teacher wholly inexperienced in Baja ways, he starts the book as a married San Diego "old Baja hand", veteran of many trips and no longer an initiate pilgrim to the ways of the desert peninsula. If the dialogue portions of the books are any guide, I'd guess his Spanish improved a good bit with time. His narrative style remains folksy, simple, intelligent and unadorned.In Journey with a Baja Burro, Mr. Mackintosh takes a burro on a trek from Tecate, Mexico down to Loreto. His travel itinerary takes him past the many missions along the way, and he gives us interesting bursts of history about each. One might imagine that such a work would merely mirror Into a Desert Place, but the intrigue here is that the author is a changed man, and his Baja has also irrevocably changed. We still see the down to earth narrative, the simple punning, and the flights into spiritual self-exploration that make the first work so down to earth and yet such a flight of fancy. But here we have a bit of the drama of day to day living that the itinerant wanderer faces when he is no longer 25, and his family waits, rather impatiently, at home. We all grow a bit older, and the beckoning of the open sky tempers for some of us with time--but perhaps not for Mr. Mackintosh.Mr. Mackintosh's gift is that although he understands that some of what he does is quite remarkable, he also understands the personal frailties that he brings to his courageous expeditions. This book is not the work that Into a Desert Place is, because the author, Baja, and perhaps the world itself is no longer quite the same. But this is a charming return to a alternative by-lane away from the great superhighway of suburban life, and I urge you to put on your turn signal for a walk with Mr. Mackintosh's burro at your earliest convenience. You need not read Into a Desert Place to love this one, but if you read this one first, I'm betting you'll go back and pick up the first one next.