Hugging the northern border of Baja California, a highway called La Rumorosa cuts through the Sierra de Juárez. It’s long been regarded as one of the world’s most dangerous highways. Viewed aerially, the road looks a bit like tinsel tossed carelessly—the ribbon-like curls and switchbacks are staggering. A handful of modern safety measures have been implemented over the years—signage, guardrails, expansion from two precariously narrow lanes—but it’s still iconically treacherous.
La Rumorosa owes its etymological heritage to the Latin rumor, and is named for the whispering sound of the wind as it moves through the canyons. At certain points along the road, one can look down the cliffs and see the clustered exoskeletons of overturned cars. Above these, the road is sporadically riddled with descansos: memorial crosses, inscriptions, sun-blanched silk flowers, toy cars that look uncannily like the real thing fifty meters below. The route is a tortuous archive of individual tragedies and shared mourning, a testament to the extraordinary commonness and uniqueness of loss.
This confluence of universal and particular mourning was top of mind when my partner and I drove La Rumorosa early in January of 2019, a few months after my mother’s sudden death and a few years after the equally sudden death of my father. Newly orphaned, I felt myself to be a part of something that was massive, dreadful, and unique, but also small, basic, and ultimately as common as the fact of being alive.
A paradox of grief is that it’s an occasion for both community and isolation. While the experience of loss is innately personal, it can also catalyze the desire for connection. As humans (and perhaps not even exclusively as humans, as various
