Read this fascinating chronicle of a trip to Espinazo del Diablo, in the Sierra Madre Occidental, in Durango.
Whenever someone repeated the phrase "Espinazo del Diablo" in the course of a conversation, we knew that a story would begin in which the risks were implicit, adventure and excitement. Very soon I would be faced with the dilemma of going to meet him when the driver of a rickety bus asked the passengers: "Do you want to get off and walk or pass the Devil's Spine with me."
We were in the highest and most dangerous part of what in those years was still a gap that went from the sunny port of Mazatlán to the city of Durango. I remember that my mother told me, with that northern rudeness that always characterized her: "Don't move, let your collones go down." We continued on, the gap narrowed, on the side of the road the passengers looked out the windows and clung to the railings of their seats. The noise of the engine became deafening, the ladies crossed themselves and held the Hail Mary in their mouths. The bus gave the last pull, the body shuddered, I thought at that moment that we we would go to the precipice… But finally we left and a few kilometers later we reached a small plain. The sun was beginning to set.
The driver shouted: "We arrived in the city, we are going to rest for a few minutes." We got out of the truck, the loose, white and soft snow invaded my shoes, the landscape was enchanting. The driver headed towards one of the log houses, the fireplace showed signs of life, it seemed somewhat hot, although the temperature was not very cold yet. We were in "the city", in a small hamlet of lumberjacks who in those years were totally removed from the world.
Oak and pine forests surrounded us, much of the Sierra Madre Occidental, over which the gap rises, kept its vegetation intact. The word "biodiversity" had not yet been invented and deforestation problems, although they were already important, were not as serious as now. Consciousness seems to only wake up when it is too late.
I never knew if it was a restaurant or a canteen, the truth is that the bar and the kitchen worked at the same time, serving the locals and those who, like us, ventured along that little-traveled route. The menu consisted of roast beef, jerky, beans, and rice. In one corner, three patrons accompanied by a guitar were singing the run by Benjamín Argumedo. We settled on a table with a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth.
Other trips came to my mind: the one we had made years ago to visit Yucatan following the coastal highway, which still had no bridges and that to cross the rivers we had to do it in pangas; the hazardous journey from Tapachula to Tijuana aboard the trains that at that time made the journey in a good number of days; the visit to Monte Alban in a Mexico-Oaxaca trip which had as a prologue thousands of curves on the road. All those trips were long, even tiring, full of surprises and nuances, but in none of them had we been in such a secluded and lonely place. When the men who were singing left, I went to the door to see how they were lost in the thick of the forest.
Shortly after, we continued on our way that took us to Durango and then to the city of Parral, Chihuahua. When the cold was more intense, we returned the same way, the driver no longer stopped in "the city", which at dawn looked like a ghost town. El Espinazo took us by surprise, a little asleep when passing by its crest, without uttering a word. Many years have passed and I have not found anyone who has crossed the devil's backbone in a rickety truck, sometimes I think that this route does not exist and that everything was the product of an imaginary trip to the heart of the Durango mountain range.
