Yesterday in some property listings I spotted a meadow for sale on the edge of town, to the east. 10,000 sq feet for $35k. I decided to get on my bike and go. See if I could get there. Manifest this meadow in my day. Though I hadn’t envisioned buying such a rural plot. I saved a mental image of the map and headed north and east.
This trip would take me further into the eastern reaches of the town than I previously had ventured. Further east means further uphill. The town is surrounded by hills on three sides, so if you look to the east at night you see the lights of all the houses reaching up the hillside. But I learned yesterday it’s not one continuous hillside, as it appears from a distance. Instead you climb a large hill and from its crest you see… the rest of the town. Like, there’s a whole other half of the city over there. Really I don’t know what’s over there, because I could only see to the next hilltop.
At times I was pushing my bike up and down steep hills. Or down and up. I started navigating according to the grade, in the manner of a goat, rather than by compass direction. I became disoriented. I never reached my goal. When I doubled back, I spotted what looked like it might be an unpaved road, a very chunky road with large eroded rocks, branching off from the paved road. It appeared more of a walking path than something cars could use. I looked at Google and it was there, on the map, an official road. It seemed like it might get me back to the flatter part of town more efficiently, so I pushed my bike into this more functionally and culturally ambiguous territory, a dirt road through a wooded ravine near a dried up stream. I remember it as wooded. And there were a lot of people living along the road, and nearby, in the grade above it, in improvised shelters. Cinder blocks, tarps, corrugated metal. And a lot of dogs in the road. Groups of dogs socializing. I rode and pushed my bike past many dogs, hoping none would be overly protective of the ravine and its inhabitants. They looked at me, but didn’t bark at all. I must have passed twenty unleashed dogs on that road, and none made any show of aggression at all. They adhered to the pattern elsewhere in town, where dogs behind fences bark loudly at you, but dogs roaming free are usually mild mannered.
A ways down the path, it turned up a steep hill, and a few cars made their way downhill toward me… they lumbered very slowly down the hill, steering around exposed rocks and deep ruts. I pushed my bike up that last hill and then a short ways after that I could see that the road was indeed connecting back to the less organic, more familiar parts of town.
I biked home, had another look at the map, and realized there are two separate communities in Ensenada where the streets are all named after South American countries, and the one I had set out for was not the one with the meadow for sale. The one with the meadow is substantially further east. I think I’ll try one more time to bike to it. The distance itself is not the issue. I need to choose a flatter route.