Musings from the end of the road

A gem among the garbage

Plancher Beach, about 20 km north of Malahual, Saturday afternoon

This should be the most romantic place to write: I'm sitting under a palm tree, its fronds interwoven with those of its neighbour, white sand forming a thin crust on my tanned feet and legs, the surf a constant ebb and flow in the background.

It would be the most romantic place indeed if there weren't some alarming accoutrements: the ruins of a house on the beach right beside me, wires and pieces of rusty, broken mortar, a few small piles of smoldering garbage, so close that the acrid smell fills my nostrils, the long stretch of beach – free of people, admittedly, but no more attractive because of it – lined with a seam of seaweed that's the ideal resting place for all kinds of refuse. Medicine and pop bottles, milk crates and plastic containers, light bulbs and things I'd rather not stoop down and investigate too closely happily share space with shoes bleached from long travels in sea water: on our half-hour walk along the beach I could have assembled at least five pairs, though they wouldn't necessarily have been matching.

Where am I? I am at the end of the road – literally. This place, Mahahual (or Majahual), is the last beach where we could stop on the way to Chetumal, and our hostess in Tulum had suggested we'd go there if we wanted to enjoy the ocean one more time. We drove most of the day yesterday, even though the distance was not so great, only about 180 km from Chichen Itza. Most of the time seemingly impenetrable jungle was on both sides of the road, a sea of green leaves and vines dotted with yellow, red and pink blossoms.

We stopped once in Tepich, a small Mayan town along the way, looking for a supermercado, but finding only mini-mercados, places where you can buy the very essentials, but often not even fruit (though most often several kinds of beer). We were looking for bread (which we found) and cheese (which we didn't), water and, yes, some cold Corona or Sol, hoping for a few bananas or avocados (in vain). Gerda and I attracted a lot of attention when we walked down the street a bit to check out a second mini-mercado: two women of considerable size and such light skin. The Maya are a very short people, and I have seen women who reached no higher than my chest, very few men are as tall as I am. Everybody greeted us with a friendly smile, and especially the women and children are always happy to interact, even without many words.

Looking for a spot to eat our meal we had some trouble to find a place to stop: no picnic areas at all, no open places on the side of the road. We decided on a small dirt road disappearing in the trees. It led to a few beehives and a field of newly planted bushes that looked like something to be cultivated, but which we could not identify.

As everywhere garbage of all manner was strewn on the road and in the surrounding area: people don't even consider to pick up the leftovers of their meals and take them with them. This is probably my biggest, or rather the only big complaint I have so far. It didn't smell like garbage, however, but the sweet scent of flowers filled the air, and I counted six different kinds of butterflies, among them two spectacular specimens, one big and orange, the colour of calendula, the other dark grey with a green or khaki pattern, depending on where it came to rest – perfect camouflage.

We turned off the main highway at a town called Cafetal and drove for about fifty kilometres through swampy no-man's land. Strange little trees as far as the eye could see, their roots growing a couple of feet out of the water so that the trees looked as if they walked on stilts. To me, it felt like crocodile habitat, and I briefly imagined what it might have been like to walk through this swamp when there was no paved road yet. Traffic was very sparse, and when we finally arrived at Mahahual we were quite surprised: it looked like a work in progress, with more hovels and half-finished hotels and houses - many of them long since abandoned - than finished and attractive places to stay. There were lots of advertisements for beach front lots, some newer, some almost overgrown by trees and hardly readable. Which boom was responsible for this mess? When had all this been conceived, and when would it ever come to fruition?

The beach, too, lacks the Carribean charm of the one at Tulum. It is a lot narrower and by far not as beautiful. We drove along the beach and finally decided on the Cabanas del Doctor for our temporary living quarters. The palapa is comfortable, nice and cool during the night and right across from the beach: the surf sings me to sleep at night, and I have to walk not fifty steps until I can let the waves lick my feet.




Sunrise at Malahual



                                            ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Meanwhile it is Sunday night, we are in Chetumal, very close to the border to Belize, and will take the bus to Flores, Guatemala, tomorrow morning at seven. What will we see on the way, and what will expect us there?

Snorkeling

Early morning at the Hotel Dolores Alba, about five kilometres from Chichen Itza.

The sun has been up since six, and night sounds have been replaced by bird noise. The birds are not so easy to spot, however: the dense vegetation provides good cover.

We have spent the last day and a half here, and visited Chichen Itza three times. The first afternoon we drove over to find out if we needed to pre-book a guide for the next morning, and were told that we could go in for free since there was only an hour left. This was nice; it gave us an opportunity to walk through most of the site and get a feel for it.

The guided tour yesterday morning was very worth while, and we learned a lot. More about that at a later time, hopefully.

A special experience was the light show we watched at the site the first night. It was very well done, and we heard about things like the creation myth of the Maya and the history of Chichen Itza.

We were seated right across from the biggest temple, the castillio, many of the other buildings in our field of view, arranged around a huge open field. The light lifted each building out of the darkness in turn, but as much as this human-created splendour I was struck by the beauty of the star-filled sky that stretched above. Little remained of the artificial light that dimmed the sky around the hotel. The triangular face of Taurus appeared over the horizon, the Perseids a smudge above, and suddenly a big meteor streaked along the southern sky.

This was a moving experience for me, just like the one I had three days ago when we were still at the Posada los Mapaches:

We went to Akumal, a lagoon about 25 km north of Tulum, where snorkeling is supposed to be great.

I had never done this before, and while I really wanted to try it out was a bit apprehensive if I'd be able to. I was quite glad to hear that I wouldn't need the fins, and once I had figured out that the mouth piece goes all the way into the mouth, once I had practiced breathing deeply through my mouth only and to forget all about my nose, I was okay. The lagoon with its quite clear, very calm warm water was a perfect place to do this for the first time.

As soon as I put my head down I suddenly was in a different world, a world I knew nothing about. The landscape above the water had no consequence for what I saw now. Why is it that, although I knew about it in theory, I couldn't have imagined that rocks jutting out of the water, densely overgrown with vegetation, would continue under water, would be part of a landscape that was like nothing I had ever seen before?

Fish, big and small, swam by me unconcerned about my presence. The biggest, about half a meter in length, were of a deep marine blue, edged with silver, sometimes a bit of yellow; others, only slightly smaller, had the opposite colour composition. Swarms of smaller, black-and-white or yellow-and-black striped fish parted when I slowly made my way through them, only to close again behind me. Sunlight painted changing patterns on the rocks that sometimes were quite close to the surface so that I had to watch not to scrape my knees, with a rich growth of algae which the fish were grazing, intent on what they were doing, seemingly not interfering with each other at all.

I made my way along the side of the lagoon, gazed into deep crevices and caves without feeling the slightest desire to enter them: the dim twilight at their entrance would soon fade into ever growing darkness. No, their mysteries were there to be explored by more adventurous souls than me! I didn't see the famous sea turtles that were supposed to be feeding here, too, but even without them my life was enriched by this glimpse into a life I would never be part of.

Musings from Posada los Mapaches

Eleven pm, Posada Los Mapaches, Tulum, Mexico

It has been dark for hours – just as long, in fact, as if I were at home. This, however, is where the similarity ends.

I'm sitting in the walled yard of the Posada los Mapaches, wearing shorts and a short-sleeved blouse. A sudden breeze stirs the palm fronds and flamboyan  leaves above me, but when I look up, almost expecting another sudden downpour like this morning to blow in, I see stars and the moon. A few days past full, it is shrinking not on its right side like it would be at home but on top, resting on its rounded bottom in the velvet sky. Night insects – cicadas? - have been chirping softly but without interruption since night fell a little after five. For some reason my mind concentrates more on them than on the traffic noise from the highway, the only thing that mars this idyllic setting a little. Mosquitoes, claimed to be quite bad by some of the people who reviewed this hostel on Hostelworld, are no problem at all, certainly nothing even close to what we experienced in Alberta this summer.

It is hard to believe that we arrived only yesterday evening – winter and cold and the life at home are already far, far away.

After a five-and-a-half hour flight from Calgary we landed in Cancun at 3:30 yesterday afternoon, picked up our car and made our way to Tulum along the coastal Highway, 307. Traffic was steady, but not excessive at first, and thinned out more and more after Playa del Carmen. Driving seems to be less crazy than in Argentina, a fact none of us laments.

When I looked for rooms in Tulum on the internet I fell in love with this place: Mayan style huts right across from the entrance to the Tulum ruins, about two kilometers north of Tulum. There is only one private room, which my brother-in-law Kurt and sister-in-law Gerda are using, and four dorm-style rooms for four people each, with bunk beds, one of which we share with a guy from Spain. The bathrooms are shared, but everything is clean, and the owners are very friendly. Chelo, a woman of around sixty, is the owner/manager, together with her two sons. She greeted us with a big hug when we met her this morning.

We decided to spend the day at the beach, and visit the ruins in the afternoon, but we woke up to dark skies, the humid air pregnant with rain, and sure enough, breakfast was barely over when the skies opened. It didn't last very long, however, and by about ten-thirty we were on our way to the beach. Already tour busses and tourists were everywhere – until we had passed the entrance to the ruins, and the surrounding market where merchants offered all kinds of more or less authentic Mayan art and crafts.

We managed to ignore their offers and beckoning and kept walking, and soon we had reached the beach – almost free of people at this time. We spread our towels in the shade of some palm trees, making sure that we didn't come to sit right under the coconuts. Supposedly more people are killed each year by falling coconuts than by sharks ...

The beach is every bit as beautiful as the descriptions we read: powder-fine white sand, no rocks, no shells, the ocean a deep blue-green in the distance, but the most vivid turquoise close to the beach, until it starts to pick up that powdery sand and looks like cafe con leche – mucha leche.

It is late, after midnight, the cicadas are still singing, and the traffic noise has ebbed a bit. I better go to bed like the rest of the group: tomorrow is another day!

Time to leave

Rainy day in November

A week ago I returned to the parklands of central Alberta, left behind – as always with a tinge of sadness- beach and forest, oyster shells and starfish, colourful foliage and colourful meals, putting, ferry by ferry, plane by plane, distance between myself and the island.

We were granted another whole week of decent fall weather, nights colder than they had been, down to -12 or -14, day temperatures hovering around the freezing mark, trees now all bare, grass tan and brown. Yesterday it felt like Chinook weather and got all the way up to +11, which made digging up the leeks a pleasurable task. There have been other years, years when I had to use all my force (and the digging fork’s leverage) to get this work done, hard frost having arrived much earlier, catching me unprepared.

Tonight I woke to the quiet whisper of rain on the metal roof – a nice sound, soothing, putting me right back to sleep. The rain continued, sometimes drizzle, sometimes pattering drops, for most of the morning, let up around noon, and returned in the middle of the afternoon. 

We drove for an hour to attend a going-away party for a German harvest helper, and on the way already the drops on the wind shield suddenly flattened out, clung and slid down reluctantly: this was a different kind of moisture. Fields on the side of the road showed a hint of white, and by the time we reached our destination it was snowing. When we left, sometime after nine o'clock, road conditions were decidedly poor, snow accumulating on the slippery highway, gravel roads softened by the rain and now slick with slush. I was glad to be home after a much longer drive than normal.

Sure enough, Environment Canada had caught on, too, as I found out when I looked at the weather forecast after our return:

Weather warning in effect.

Tonight

Periods of snow ending before morning then cloudy with 30 percent chance of flurries. Amount 5 cm. Wind becoming north 20 km/h after midnight. Low minus 5.

It is time to leave, and it seems we are leaving not a day too soon.

Tomorrow we will embark on another adventure. This time we are going to explore the Mayan ruins in southern Mexico and Guatemala, and the natural beauty of Costa Rica. My musings, then, will once again come from places 'away from the farm', and I will try and update them regularly.

Ever since I started reading adventure stories as a child I dreamed of the jungle and its mysteries. I can hardly believe that this dream is about to come true! 

Musings from a place by the sea

I have exchanged the farm for a small island retreat this week, as I have done at this time of year for the last four years. It is a place where the busy world seems to stand still for a while, where the mind comes to rest and thoughts turn inward. People come here to be nourished in body and soul, to meditate and write and simply 'be'. Meals are delicious, exclusively vegetarian, and during this week they are taken in silence to honour the needs of the participants of a silent meditation workshop. It is, as some tell me, a place for 'hippies', and most certainly as different from my usual environment as it can be.

                                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I wake up this morning it is barely light, but from my window high up in Bluff House I can see that the tide is very low. It is a special gift when this doesn’t happen during the night, and I put on my jacket and rubber boots and walk down to the beach.

Not even the geese are awake yet, and the faint glow from the east that turns the smooth ocean into a sheet of muted light is hardly enough to see where I put my feet. I walk along the tide line, small piles of seaweed dropped haphazardly along its course by the receding water. In a little while the geese will be here, tousling the piles with their beaks, looking for food. So far it is very quiet. Only the regular heart beat of the ocean is keeping me company, small waves moving in, spending themselves with a little hiss on the shore, leaving only a trace of foam that will soon be gone.

With the growing light the world around me is waking up. A short unmelodious call makes me look up: my old friend, the heron, flapping overhead, neck curved and feet outstretched. He lands on one of the big rocks jutting out of the water during low tide.

Next are the geese, appearing out of nowhere, or so it seems: suddenly twenty or more of them are walking along the beach talking to each other in low voices. Yesterday afternoon they were gathered for a nap, all of them standing on one leg, head tucked under their wings.

It will be a little while longer until the bald eagle couple will appear. Yesterday morning I watched them glide overhead before they came to roost on one of the big evergreen trees along the beach. I’m always surprised that such big majestic birds can have such meek, high voices. The hawks that kept me company at home during harvest time sound much more sure of themselves. But maybe they don’t need big voices, maybe their size is sufficient to ensure their status at the top of the bird hierarchy. 

This place by the sea is once again folding me into its arms, nourishing me as it has done since I first came here. 

Winding down

Another week of October lies behind us, and yet another week of beautiful autumn weather. While it is a little cooler than it has been highs are still around ten or twelve degrees, and the warm colours haven’t completely faded yet.

I’d love to have this kind of autumn every year, the very slow decline, the very slow shutting down. I don’t mind the shutting down at all, just as I don’t really mind winter (except for its length sometimes) – but why does the beauty of autumn so often have to end with a big bang towards the end of September instead of lingering almost into November? It is lovely to see the blossoms of the sunflowers wilting one by one instead of being burnt to a crisp by a hard frost in their prime. There were still enough left for two small bouquets yesterday, but I’m afraid these were the last ones.

For a while I will be able to pick pale yellow and lavender pansies. For years they have been growing right out of the red shale on the west side of the house, originally from seed scattered long ago from the big planters, now self-seeding every year. They are such hardy things; every summer they brave the harsh conditions, blazing sun without much shade, unprotected from strong west and north-west winds, rarely if ever watered.

I brought in one more big bouquet for the copper vase in the front entrance, and I can’t feast my eyes enough on its glowing beauty: faded corn stalks, pale green topped with delicate blossoms the colour of unbleached linen, paired with a few bronze-and-gold leafed branches of the Evans sour cherry.  It is at its most glorious when the late afternoon sun slants in through the tall window; then, the leaves take on a life of their own, seem to be giving off light instead of receiving it. 

Slowly, the garden is getting emptier. With a forecast low of -6 for tonight I finally caved in and harvested the six huge heads of red cabbage, piled them onto the wheel barrow and brought them to the shop. The biggest of them weighs about five kilograms! While I am pretty sure they could have withstood those temperatures I didn’t want to take any chances, now that they made it this far.

All that is left is a bit of broccoli (a meal, no more), a row and a half of carrots (which, I hope, can stay where they are for a while, because they never taste quite as sweet as when they come in fresh from the garden, with a bit of dirt still clinging to them), almost all of the leeks, which can also stay out since they are not prone to freezing unless it freezes really hard, the beautiful Swiss Chard plants that provide as much aesthetic as culinary pleasure, a bit of lettuce – and, last stragglers in the fruit department: strawberries! I can gather only a scant handful at a time, and they are a tad leathery after the recent mild frosts, but their sweetness is unsurpassed.

Colour is now largely limited to the cherry trees, and today’s strong winds have done their utmost to  strip them, too, of their leaves. Chickadees still frequent the dried sunflower heads; not all are empty yet. The squirrel seems to have a storage chamber under the front deck: several times in the last while I have watched it disappear there with something in its mouth. Leo, raw energy in a sleek young dog’s body, chases both chickadees and squirrels enthusiastically, but so far without success.

Now I can see where new nests have been built in the lilac hedge and the poplar grove during the summer, the intricately woven masterpieces of gold finch and robin and several kinds of song sparrows, often with a piece of string threaded in, the messy abodes of magpies and crows, and, high up in one of the old poplars, the lair of the red-tailed hawks. 

Often geese are passing overhead in the evening now. They don’t seem to be in any hurry to leave, and why would they be when the table is still so richly set in the stubble fields?  They fly in small groups, in formation even if they only return to their temporary home for the night. Sometimes they fly so low that I can hear the soft whistling song of their wings, accented by a quiet honk by one or the other goose in the flock, a reassuring little sound as the day winds down.

How long, I wonder, will this all last? Long enough, hopefully, that even the last fields will be harvested, that combines and tractors can be put away for the winter, another year’s work done.

Digging potatoes

After three days of muted light and soft drizzle last week sunshine and wind have returned. Incredibly, not even the full moon a couple of days ago has brought a hard frost – strange, when sometimes we fear for our crops in field and garden even at the time of the full moon in August. Tender plants like beans, cucumbers, and squash, of course, wilted in the light frosts of mid-September, but everything else, if it had been touched at all, has quite recovered. How much longer can this last?

It is early afternoon, and like the two preceding days I am digging potatoes. I am on my hands and knees in the soft, dry dirt, cool, but pleasantly so with the sun warm on my face and back. The plants have long ago wilted, the reddish-brown stalks, now leafless, just firm enough still for me to pull, which breaks open the slightly crusted surface. Most other gardeners would now use the garden fork to expose the yellow tubers, but I use my hands to carefully pry them out of their hiding place. I have not ever quite mastered the art of using the fork without spearing any potatoes, and I hate the sound of a tine entering the crisp, moist flesh. It feels like an act of barbarism. Only when I feel I have unearthed most of a plant’s chiIdren I push the fork in from the side to catch any escapees.

I used to hurry to get this work done, under time pressure as for so many others, trying to fit as much into a day as possible. Small children needed attention, my help was needed with field work, meals needed to be cooked, and snow and hard frost could be just around the corner.

This year I am taking my time. The harvest is finished, children are grown, have moved away from home or don’t need much attention anymore, meals for two or three are not much work, and snow and frost are no immediate threat.

It is good to do this slowly, to feel the crumbling earth under my knees, the smooth potato skin in my hands, almost free from dirt since the over-abundant rains of June and July gave way to almost perfect summer weather for August and September. The wind rustles the drying leaves of the corn behind me, from time to time a small yellow poplar leaf is slowly coasting down from one of the trees in the bush beside the garden, settling on the heap of potatoes I have just dug. Now and again the sound of a grasshopper’s clicking legs almost creates an illusion of summer, just like the distant quiet hum of a small plane. It is very peaceful work, and not a single car passes by on the road during this time.

Yet there are signs enough of fall, of the season drawing to a close. Once, a tiny frog, the smallest I have ever seen, not even an inch long, with tiny limbs, emerges from the ground, moving very slowly. What a rude awakening for the little fellow, probably quite settled in his hibernating quarters until I pulled up the potato plant. I see him push back into the loose dirt. This time he doesn’t have anything to fear from me.

A little bit further down the row I find more evidence of winter preparations: a handful of dried peas emerges together with the potatoes. I find no mouse nest; I probably destroyed the tunnel without knowing it was there, but surely this must have been a mouse’s cache. Like the squirrels who hurry back and forth between the big spruce trees on the lawn and the bush, often carrying small cones in their mouths, they need to make sure they won’t starve in the long hard months ahead.

I get up and stretch my back, surveying the row of golden potatoes waiting to be picked up later in the afternoon. Their gold matches the glow of the yellow poplars, is joined by the crimson of the dogwood, the pink blush of raspberry leaves and the first signs of bronze on the cherry trees that are still deep green for the most part. Only the little oak trees are standing totally bare, their brittle brown leaves spread like a dropped skirt around their trunks. 

Soon enough the bush will have shed its colour, but today I can still enjoy the different hues and, like grasshoppers and chickadees, the warmth of the autumn sun.