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“Verbatim Transcription of Notes of Gulf of California Trip, March–April 1940” is a collection of notes consisting of forty-six, single-spaced typed pages documenting the Sea of Cortez expedition, as well a two-page addendum called “Statement of Collecting Stations in the Spring 1940” that lists coordinates and topographical information for each collecting stop. The notes detail every aspect of the trip; passages describe incidents and locations, and list the specimens collected and weather conditions. The typescript also presents Edward F. Ricketts's personal observations and reflections about everything from scientific work, including his remarks on collecting methods and wildlife; to local culture, including in particular his observations about the friendliness of Mexicans they encountered; to interpersonal relationships among the crew, including humorous incidents involving mishaps on board their boat, the Western Flyer. But most significantly, the record of the trip itself is both a scientific log documenting the more than four thousand miles they traversed and the twenty-five collecting stations they investigated, and an extended philosophical essay on Ricketts's and John Steinbeck's musings about holism and transcendence.

This chapter focuses on the Mayo people and their land. The Mayos used to occupy the plant communities of the Rio Mayo delta's flatlands and beaches. After the areas were occupied by colonists, the Mayo villages found themselves scattered along more than one hundred fifty kilometers of the Gulf of California coast from northwest of Huatabampo to near Topolobampo, Sinaloa. Most Mayos work as day laborers in fields irrigated by Madrean waters and in many cases they are low-paid workers in the fields that belonged to their ancestors. One of the most prominent and famous Mayos was former Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Fernando Valenzuela.

This book serves as a guide to the identification, distribution, natural history, and taxonomy of amphibians and reptiles in Baja California, its associated Pacific islands, and the islands in the Gulf of California. It also gives information on their geographic variation, conservation, commercialization, and anomalous distribution patterns.

Edward F. Ricketts developed his “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” during the early years of his friendship with John Steinbeck, a period also marked by collaborations with Joseph Campbell, Henry Miller, and other friends and colleagues. At the heart of Ricketts's desire to articulate non-teleological thinking is his struggle to put into language that which by its very nature eludes definition. Deeply philosophical, Ricketts's essay is at times convoluted, but the significance of non-teleological thinking is of primary importance to his unified field hypothesis. Through “his thinking,” Ricketts believes, an individual may better accept and understand the world and ultimately “break through” or transcend. Ricketts and Steinbeck's 1940 expedition to the Gulf of California was inspired in part by their desire to integrate scientific inquiry with non-teleological thinking, and Steinbeck later included a revision of the “Essay on Non-teleological Thinking” in Sea of Cortez. The seventeen-page version included in this chapter, marked “Typed by Toni, March 1941, original to John,” is likely the draft the latter worked from while writing Sea of Cortez.