![endless sky mule endless sky mule](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/40/18/ca/4018ca1b8c1ad57c30e100a2f6025457.jpg)
They had already been waiting for two days and were about to turn back when they heard us coming over the ridge.
![endless sky mule endless sky mule](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/endless-sky/images/c/cc/Protector.png)
Finally we made it to the base of Sandia Mountain and we were delighted to be united with Matilde and Andrea, who had ridden in from the East (near Bahia de Los Angeles). We made teas from ferns, roots, leaves and seed pods, and I learnt a little about local medicines and survival. The sky was a glorious display of stars every night, and I was up around dawn every morning (although apparently my snoring woke everyone else up a little earlier). The company was superb, and the sharing of stories, common names of plants, and endless regional anecdotes made the time pass quickly, despite my restlessness each day that we did not reach the base of the mountain. This peak had been the highlight of the previous expedition in 1967 for Reid Moran, botanist of the San Diego Natural History Museum, and I was clutching his fieldnotes and dreaming of what I might find at the top. We spent the next few nights slowly approaching Sandia Mountain – a lone high-elevation peak at the southern end of the Sierra Libertad.
![endless sky mule endless sky mule](https://www.tnmartistry.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Mountain-Sunset.jpg)
The flowering heads have quite a strange spike-like appearance and are purple (no green parts as they do not need chlorophyll to generate food, they simply steal their nutrients from other species), when I returned with these strange specimens the ranchers teased me mercilessly that I had actually dug up and murdered baby cacti by mistake and there was much laughter around the campfire. We set out early the next morning to Rancho Santa Cruz, where a surprising number of annual wildflowers were in bloom and I was delighted to find the parasitic plant ‘Orobanche’ or ‘broom-rape’ poking out of the sand. Their route roughly follows that of a group that made the trek in reverse 50 years ago, in 1967, from Tecate (on the US-MX border) to the very tip of the Baja California peninsula at Cabo San Lucas. The women are riding to promote safe travel in Baja California and women’s independence. The intrepid and inspirational group of women travelling the entire length of the Baja California peninsula on mule back, known as “La Mula Mil” had invited me to join the most remote stretches of their journey to collect plants in little visited mountain ranges. A 15-day old foal pranced around her mother in the yard, and we made holes in the new leather on my spurs, and cooked what would be our last stove-top meal for quite a while.
![endless sky mule endless sky mule](https://poetryandplacesproject.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/wapiti-73516_1920.jpg)
We rode in the truck with bales of hay on the roof, down a long, straight and dusty road, that took us to Rancho La Union, a beautiful ranch, with kitchen cabinets made of cardón (cactus) wood, with handles of deer horn, and fabulous hosts. With Trudi Angell, Leslie Pringle, Nacho Chiapa, Tomás Murillo, Matilde Murillo, Andrea Flores and others. Sula Vanderplank, Biodiversity Explorer, Botanical Research Institute of Texas Board Member, Next Author: OMearaCarolyn Published on: MaPublished in: Notes from the Field