The Radical Enchantment of Todos Santos
I'm leading a writing workshop this winter in one of my favorite places on Earth. Join me?
In December of 2003, my father, brother, and I drove 1,500 miles from San Francisco to the southern tip of Baja, Mexico.
Destination: Todos Santos.
I remember being a particularly arrogant flavor of college student then, junior year, back from a semester abroad “studying” in Barcelona and smoking nearly a pack a day and thinking I knew muchos cosas about the world.
We landed in this small town billed as an artist enclave and surf spot. Both things checked out. I fell in love hard.
Now anyone who knows me knows how much I adore the Baja Peninsula, and how much Todos Santos has shaped the course of my life. Since that first roadtrip, I’ve traveled back nearly every year since. Whenever I visit, something magic and unexplainable happens. It’s one of those “thin places.”
Over these two decades, much has unfolded on these visits. For example, since 2003, I’ve…
Accompanied John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin with (bad) percussion in a late-night jam.
Run 70 miles across the entire peninsula in a day to stop a gold mine and made a short film, “The Crossing,” about it. (Still no mining.)
Watched humpback whales come within 10 feet of me to rub barnacles on the sand.
Held one of the most endangered marine turtles on Earth, leatherbacks, in the palm of my hand, working with a local sea turtle rehabilitation effort.
Picked a fight with an ex-pat who wouldn’t stop harassing a woman I was with in the thick of La Paz’s Carnaval one night. Threw a full glass of tequila into his face. (Won.)
Tracked the most terrifying, world-ending comet ever to enter the atmosphere one evening with my brother as we camped and surfed along the East Cape. (A man we’d spent all day with in the water with would be attacked by a bull shark the next day, needing hundreds of stitches to survive.)
Slept under stars on plywood cots alongside ranch families deep in the eastern side of the Sierra Laguna, listening to ranchers talk about the sanctity of water and mango spirits.
Nearly stepped on the world’s largest rattlesnake while running down from the Sierra Laguna’s Picacho for the fifth time, southern Baja’s highest point, at ~7,000 feet.
Stumbled, more than once, out of these mountains hallucinating with severe heat exhaustion.
Lived for four months one winter in Todos Santos, befriending a new local community of chefs, activists, and artists.
Met Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service, which started a decade-plus friendship and one of the wildest jobs I’ve ever had.
A Sense of Place Writing Workshop
During my time there, I also became involved with the Todos Santos Writers Workshop, first as participant, then volunteer, then Associate Director. This year, for their tenth anniversary, I’m excited to share that I’ll be teaching a writing class: A Sense of Place. Here’s the blurb on the website:
“What can you tell us about an unfamiliar place—or a place we thought we knew? Writers such as Bruce Chatwin, Peter Matthiessen, Annie Dillard, Robert Macfarlane, Barry Lopez, Ada Limon, Martin Shaw, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ross Gay, Pico Iyer, Rebecca Solnit, John D'Agata, Gary Snyder, Lauret Savoy, and Joy Harjo deliver the world through a unique point of view, connecting the reader with the writer’s inner world. Referencing these and other classic travel, environmental, and nature writers, this craft workshop aims to generate new work through exercises focusing on Todos Santos, with guided walks through the pueblo magico’s historic locations and hidden corners.”
I also end with this: “…the quality of attention to landscape—to the living, breathing, whispering world—is primary to produce any lasting writing. There's no better place to deepen our creative practice than Todos Santos.”
The whole workshop is directed by well-established authors in the literary world. From coyote-journalist Rex Weiner, to master memoirists Jeanne McCulloch and Karen Karbo, to the great Christopher Merrill, director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa and who was once appointed onto Obama’s National Council on the Humanities, this weeklong offering invites you into a place that drips with aliveness, an opportunity to pair up longings for mid-winter warmth with meaningful deep dives into craft.
Also, we can hang out together in one of my favorite places. Tacos. Salt water. Desert trails. Whale migration. Sea turtles. Surf. It’s all here—just needs…you.