Log0025

Yermo

“Watch out Lizard! Oops, someone got him.” Yermo said as he served around the roadkill at 80mph.
72-year-old Yermo was a desert dwelling hippie who’d spent his earlier years selling pot in Ocean Beach, California. 4 wives and a lifetime ago. You might say Yermo had only just settled down; having his first child to his fourth wife, an ex-French investment banker, 25 years his junior. His son turned 8 next week.

Yermo was shuttling us across the desert so that we could hike the Paria Canyon; an upstream branch of the Grand Canyon. Here he ran a guiding business and led the local Search and Rescue team. My wife and I had planned to do this hike a few years ago, but flash foods had made the canyon impassable – 2 people ended up dying and another barely made it out alive. Yermo explained how he pulled the third man out of the canyon himself; mere hours from death.

Understandably, he gave us every warning and alert he could as we hurled down the desert road. Making sure we had the correct gear, an emergency locator beacon, adequate fitness, food and water.
His phone in hand texting, he had sweets everywhere, no seatbelt and was overtaking cars on blind hills; all the while talking about the need to take the utmost precautions when hiking the Paria. We all pick our poison I figured.