FIELD NOTES

Notes from the road, in chronological reverse.

13 entries · 7 regions · 26 days on the road

2026

MAY

◆MAY 26, 2026

Still Here, Still Moving

Three weeks into Oaxaca state and I'm not done with it. There are towns I meant to visit and didn't, roads I turned back from, conversations I want to continue with people I've only briefly met. The south of Oaxaca opens into Chiapas and I know that once I cross that line the pull will shift and the Oaxacan chapter will be behind me.

road · meditation · oaxaca

◆MAY 24, 2026

Oaxaca, Mexico

Night Drive South

Drove south after dark because I'd been sitting still too long. The road from Oaxaca toward Miahuatlán is narrow and winding and I don't recommend it in the dark, which is partly why I did it.

road · meditation

◆MAY 22, 2026

Oaxaca, Mexico

Mezcal and the Patience of Fermentation

Visited a palenque — a small-scale mezcal distillery — outside Miahuatlán. The maestro, Ignacio, has been making mezcal on the same land as his grandfather and his grandfather's father. The agave he uses today was planted by his father twenty years ago.

food · mycology · people · oaxaca

◆MAY 21, 2026

Oaxaca, Mexico

Ruins at Monte Albán

Up here the wind has an opinion. It comes from the south and west in alternating gusts, and you get the sense that this was part of the selection logic for building a city here — wind as a feature, not a drawback.

history · meditation · oaxaca

◆MAY 19, 2026

Oaxaca, Mexico

Slow Bus to Teotitlán

Two hours for thirty kilometers. The bus stops whenever someone raises a hand by the roadside, which is often. By the time we reached Teotitlán the bus had gained and lost about twenty people since the terminal.

road · people · oaxaca

◆MAY 18, 2026

Oaxaca, Mexico

Market Morning in Oaxaca

The smell of copal and fresh tortillas at six in the morning. I followed a woman carrying a basket of marigolds through three wrong turns before I found the good stall — the one in the back, near the herb section, run by an elderly woman and her daughter, who charge more than the other stalls and are worth it.

food · oaxaca · people

◆MAY 16, 2026

Oaxaca, Mexico

Fungi of the Sierra Norte

Drove into the Sierra Norte in the morning when the cloud was still low. The pine-oak forests up here are some of the most biodiverse in North America, and the fungal communities follow the complexity of the trees — both in species and in the density of the underground networks.

mycology · oaxaca · sierra

◆MAY 14, 2026

Mexico City, Mexico

Teotihuacán Before the Tourists

I paid a guard twenty dollars to let me in at 5:45am. He opened a side gate, pointed me toward the Avenue of the Dead, and went back to his thermos.

meditation · history · road

◆MAY 12, 2026

Mexico City, Mexico

Mercado de Jamaica at 5am

The flower market opens before the city does. By five in the morning the trucks are already unloaded and the stalls are full: birds of paradise, dahlias, marigolds, tuberoses, something orange I couldn't name.

food · mycology · mexico city

◆MAY 10, 2026

Jalisco, Mexico

A Day at Chapala

Mexico's largest lake, and it's been shrinking for decades. The original shoreline is marked on old maps like a ghost of what was. The town has adapted — the docks are longer than they used to be, reaching out toward whatever water remains.

road · meditation · water

◆MAY 8, 2026

Guadalajara, Mexico

Three Sessions in Guadalajara

Met a luthier named Rodrigo who has a small studio above a taquería in Analco. His walls are covered in instruments, half of them unfinished, none of them for sale. He told me he doesn't sell instruments, he lends them to people he trusts and waits to see what comes back.

music · recording · people

◆MAY 6, 2026

Sinaloa, Mexico

The Coast at Sinaloa

Three days of highway and then the Pacific. I've driven this coast before, years ago, but I always forget how the sea here is different from the sea up north — warmer, slower, more willing to let you in.

road · coast · camping

◆MAY 3, 2026

Sonora, Mexico

Crossing at Nogales

The line at the border starts before dawn. I got there at 5:30 and there were already forty vehicles ahead of me, most of them semis carrying produce north. I was the only one going south with a surfboard rack.

road · border · desert

POSTS	13
REGIONS	7
DAYS	26
MILES	1,847
STARTED	MAY 3