At the end of the pier it is quiet.
A few birds face the wind and move reluctantly.
It will be hot this afternoon, humid, and the clouds will go away till night when the winds blow them back, like un-anchored sailboats.
Early mornings are a good time to be about when people are asleep and dreams are still in their beds.
This morning, on a walk to the Sir Barry Bowen Bridge that separates north from south Ambergris Caye, I am still in San Pedro Town and take shelter in a bus stand because rain is moving in with dark clouds behind it.
San Pedro Town is in the center of Ambergris Caye in the Caribbean Sea, south of Mexico and east of Guatamala.
As you walk south, away from town, you run into Mahogany Bay Village, an upper end real estate development with a hotel option, custom townhouses, and a three stage development plan starting in the low two hundred thousand U.S. dollar range. As you cross the bridge north you run into the Akbol Yoga Retreat, and further along the road, Captain Morgan’s Casino and Resort.
The land, either north or south from San Pedro Town, is not much higher than the sea. Running parallel to the main paved roads is marshland, lagoons, scrubby trees and tangled roots.
Standing in the shelter with me, three children adjust their trash bag raincoats and talk. The biggest of the three is an older sister who directs her siblings like her mother taught her to do.
Guatemala, to the west, is even poorer than Belize, and Nicaragua is even poorer than Guatemala. The chances these girls will become pregnant and have three kids before they are 21 are large.
As the morning rain abates, the girls leave the bus stand and walk back towards town. I wait for the rain to really stop, not in any hurry.
On an island, you quickly come to the end of the road no matter which direction you go or how fast you travel.
How many kids can’t change their future because no one tells them what their future will be if they don’t change?
This trip the window seat is mine.
It is most difficult to be in the middle seat with a window passenger on one side and an aisle passenger on the other. Invariably those seat passengers are overweight, have to use the lavatory, don’t speak your language or want to talk about their kids. The window seat is good because you can look out a spyglass porthole window, see the wing shaking and try to guess what state or country is below you. If you grow weary you can lean your head against the plane’s thin skin and feel it vibrate until it puts you to sleep.
For most of this flight I don’t even see Earth.
When you see a break in the clouds you get to look at water, fields, cities, freeways, runways. Occasionally a fantasy pops between my ears about landing the plane on clouds and taking a hike, but that whim goes quickly as it comes.
Only angels walk on clouds.
In the air is the most boring and least risky period of any trip.
In the air your only concern is landing safely.
On land, your concerns multiply exponentially.
Granite boulders are common along this foothill trail.
They are spread like giant marbles dumped out of a cloth bag onto the school playground at recess. Some of the boulders are clumped together, others stand alone in a patch of cactus or in the shade of a stubborn juniper with gnarled branches.
Along this trail, lichen cling to the granite.
Lichen comes in shades of green and consists of two symbiotic organisms. The fungi part sinks roots into resisting rock, extracts nutrients, holds on for dear life. The algae part piggybacks on fungi and uses photosynthesis and nutrients to make food for both of them.
Winding up the trail on a morning hike, through a planet in transition, all looks stable, but nature is far from stable.
Googling- lichen on granite- brings you life’s variety, delicacy, and will to survive.
Symbiosis describes human relationships, as well as natures.
New Mexico was once at the bottom of a great sea.
Over millions of years, carbon creatures died and drifted to the bottom of that sea and became preserved in silt. Layer upon layer of silt turned to stone and the fragile bodies of once living creatures became captured and preserved. My Geologist brother Neal likes nothing better than hiking mountains, looking for geological treasure chests and opening them to find fossil pieces of eight.
This morning we return to a quarry he was introduced to in junior high school.
A teacher brought he and a friend here to scrape away layers of shale and discover ferns, brachiapods, and other marine life. These days a teacher wouldn’t risk the field trip but that trip set two kids into lifelong careers.
As I look up at the quarry walls this morning i can easily see geological epochs as they were deposited in layers. Even a foot thick layer took thousands of years to form..
Neal knows the layers we are looking for on this dig and finds us a promising hunting spot in the side of a crumbling bank in mountains that used to be under water.
Hawks fly over us on a clear cool fall morning and we have brought our small cardboard boxes for specimens, rock hammers, scrapers, newspapers for wrapping what we find, bottles of water, a few apples and sunflower seeds, and lots of hope.
Any day you can poke into pre- history and find something only you are seeing for the first time in 250 million years, it is a good day.
There used to be a small stream here that meandered down the hill and went over the edge of the canyon and fell into a deep dark hole below us.
The land’s owner built himself an observation platform, erected a light pole, and built a water wheel that generated electricity to power the light. The chances were good that no one would be out at night and walk over the cliff and fall into the chasm, but it was a place he could bring guests and have a beer as they watched the water wheel turn, throw rocks into the dark and listen to them splash at the bottom on hot summer nights.
There is no water coming down the hill now so the water wheel is stopped, its blades providing climbing opportunities for vines and weeds. Insect webs reach across the gap between blades and the generator is rusting. The water wheel was built with welded iron arms, bolted wood planks, and pieces cut from old tractor tires. The hub of the wheel is a rim off a car.
On a ranch, people get used to making stuff. It keeps them interested and uses junk that accumulates.
This wheel is a John Currie creation. He and Uncle Hugh always tinkered with junk piled in the corner of a barn or discarded in a pasture filled with weeds, dead brush, and cow chips.
Water wheels are old technology.
They will be resurrected at the next big reset in human history.
This Memorial Day weekend boatloads of city folk are out and about.
On a usual hike up the Embudo Canyon trail in the Sandia Mountains Alex the architect and I encounter only a few bipeds.
Today, two parking lots are full of cars and dogs scamper across the canyon with noses to the ground. From the second parking lot it is a mile hike up Heartbreak Hill past a city water reservoir to a rock dam built in the thirties by a rancher with thirsty livestock. At the dam there are cottonwoods and rock formations that peer down at you as if you were on trial at a Survivor Series tribal council. There is no council this morning but there are rock climbers testing themselves.
Two rope lines stretch from the trail, up the rock face, over the top of the spires. A man in yellow reveals in conversation that the lines are tied to pitons on top and are for safety. The climbers, young and old, climb the rock face freestyle, but remain tethered to the lines in case of slips or miscalculations. There are two adults and three kids on this outing. It is the first time I have seen climbers here and the cliffs, though appearing formidable, are nothing more than child’s play.
On the hike back down to the parking lot, it is cool, an untypical spring day.
I don’t take up their offer to climb.
When you get a few years under your belt you start to decline stuff you have no business declining.
Some of the grandest moments on a trip to the ocean are when you wake up and when you go to bed.
First thing in the morning the sun pushes itself up onto its throne and has its cleaning staff sweep away darkness with stiff brushed brooms. Last thing in the evening the sun falls tired under the waves like a huge prehistoric creature grabbing one last breath before diving to the deep.
You walk the beach and see clouds tinted with reds and yellows and pinks. The sand and water meet like opposing armies and you can look far to the horizon where sky dissolves into water.
On a morning or evening walk, you feel breezes tug at your shirt sleeves and sand grabs your toes.
Sleeping on the hotel balcony with a blanket and a pillow for my head, sunrise and sunset are always welcome.
Waves roll in and out like drum rolls and it is okay to be insignificant.
As our tour boat moves slowly through the water, paralleling Stone Island, we see mangroves form a wall to our east. We leave the marina and head north past large shrimp boats, tuna ships with miles of net piled on their decks, one of the largest fish canneries in Mexico, the Pacifico beer bottling plant, some ship repair yards and ocean going vessels in various shades of rust.
Rounding the northern tip of the island, we head now, towards the south, on the opposite side of the island from where we began. You can look further south and see breaking waves as waters of the Pacific meet waters of this estuary fed by rivers. Mangroves grow where salt water and fresh water meet and they are crucial for this aquatic environment.
While we chug along, a pelican flies down to the deck at the bow of our boat and looks at Polo, our guide.
Pelicans are odd looking birds with huge beaks, beaded eyes and bald heads, huge jointed wings. This visitor’s webbed feet splay out on the deck and he isn’t going anywhere.
Polo reaches for his microphone and tells us a story.
“This is my friend Juanito,” he begins. “He comes and joins us on most of our trips. I will give him fish later for a reward …”
“Some years back,” Polo continues, “we found this pelican who was covered with oil and couldn’t fly. So we wrapped him in a coat and took him home and my family cleaned him up and fed him till he could fly again. We had him at home a year before we brought him back here and let him go. His home is over there …”
Polo gestures at the mangroves.
“He joined us on a tour one day and now he always comes to see us. He is a very smart bird. When I feed him he knows which fish to eat and which fish to leave alone.”
After telling us about the value of mangroves to the ecosystem, and stressing the importance of fishing to the local economy, Polo feeds Juanito his first treat.
For a bunch of tourists, on vacation, Juanito is a high point.
It isn’t every day you are visited by a Pelican and get to watch him grab a fish in his beak, wiggle his long neck to get the fish down to his stomach, then look back at you with contentment and anticipation, as his friend, Polo, reaches into a white five gallon paint bucket for yet another snack.
Juanito takes this fish gently from Polo’s hand, and swallows.
He has become, and he knows it too, our official trip mascot.
Back in the day, after school, our tribe would gather around the new black and white television in the family room and watch TV serials.
There was Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, the Little Rascals, Gene Autry, the Three Stooges, and Tarzan.
One of the pleasures of childhood was watching Tarzan, live in the jungle, free from teachers, swinging on vines, communicating with a grunt, fighting evil men stomping through his jungle with guns on their shoulders and gold on their minds. Every show a lion would get one of the slave traders and make him lunch, which brought cheers. To be able to swim every day in crocodile infested waters and pal around with Cheetah,who was always the middle of mischief ,was the greatest luck.
This morning, our expedition is going to Stone Island outside Mazatlan, visiting a beach with no hotels or development, having locals make us lunch, then taking the long boat ride back home.
Around nine in the morning we board the Acutus, following Polo, our guide for this trip.
These tours are a mainstay of a vacation. You take them for the tidbits they bring, and, over time, you accumulate insight into a place from someone who lives here and knows it.
Life here follows tides, seasons, weather.
Chugging around Stone Island, we become just another piece of the Mazatlan puzzle – a small tour boat in the lower right hand corner of a colorful jigsaw puzzle, a slow moving excursion boat with sun burned visitors wearing baseball caps and straw hats.
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