July 3, 2013: A Place That Makes You Feel Free

for the "We Said Go" Travel contest

 

Yesterday, I led my intern on an 80 mile trek through the remote regions of Northern Guatemala’s Altiplano, into the country’s immense rugged granite and limestone fortress known as the Cuchumatan Mountain Range. It was a journey into the heart; into the landscape that 11 years ago set the course trajectory for the rest of my adult life. We started the travel at 5:30 am, from the sprawling 8000’ city of Quetzaltenango, walking into the rapid sunrise in search of a city bus. Bicyclists take advantage of the early morning tranquility and whiz by us on frames in various stages of disrepair and mismatch, of which their owners are blissfully unaware or willfully complicit co-conspirators. A bus ride bounces us across the city to the incongruous replica of the Parthenon that sits like a lone sentinel on one of the town’s highest hills; a holdover from one of the most especially bizarre time-points in Guatemala’s bizarre history. Then a walk through the mud and sights and scents of the labyrinthine board and thatch and corporate logo umbrella shielded market to the Minerva Bus Terminal, which even the locals describe as more of a concept in space-time theory than an actual physical location. Boundaries seem to shift, fluid, like erosion tainted river water after the flood.

 

We emerge into a diesel-imbued fog, directed to a camioneta bound for Huehuetenango (pronounced Way-way-ta-nan-go), the ayundante yelling in his rapid sing-song voice, “Huehuehuehuheuhuehuheuhuehe” as he flourishes with his hands and ushers us aboard. A camioneta is an US school bus that has been deemed unfit or unsafe or otherwise at the end of its useful life. It is purchased and retrofitted with steel racks on top of the roof to hold cargo and another set above the seats to hold smaller luggage. There is a ladder from the back tire to the roof; this is so the ayudante (driver’s assistant) can haul large parcels containing corn, plasticware, rebar, palm leaves, live goats, tomatoes, or the occasional gringo suitcase, to the roof for safe passage. The whole outfit is garishly painted and further decorated with memorabilia from Warner brothers cartoons or superhero movies, religious knickknacks and proclamations of eternal life, chintzy North American Native art, and/or pinups of half naked Playboy models- all in accordance with the owner’s individual tastes and inclinations towards divinity or its opposite. These buses constitute the major source of travel for Guatemala’s poor, of which I am a definite candidate at this point.

 

It is hard to describe how uncomfortable a camioneta ride is for someone my student’s size. His 5’10” frame just does not fold well into a seat designed for 7 year-olds. The driver tells us we are leaving in ten minutes. I have found that there are two types of camioneta drivers… those that follow a rigorous schedule, drive with care, and make up fares by getting a lot of passengers en-route before other buses get there; and those that will not leave until the bus is some magical percentage of full, drive like they are trying out for the Indy-500 to make up the mythical target of “destination arrival time.” Today’s bus is of the second variety. We wait for 30 minutes, go to another bus stop, sit another 30 minutes, and then to a third. Then we take off as if shot from the barrel of a gun, handling blind curves hugging the surface in a blistering perceptible lean. The radio blares some combination of disco, US light rock, and Mexican rancheros. We straddle mountain passes and meander along a high ridge until descending 2 and a half hours later into Huehue’s warmer clime. A treasured friend meets us at the chaotic Huehue terminal with a car whose glory days were lived in 1982. We pile from one uncomfortable form of transportation into another, and start heading up the mountain to Chiantla. Notable on the journey is the presence of a regimen of uniformed and fully armed soldiers- whose apparent job it is to watch over and guard traffic during road reconstruction. Guatemalan tax dollars at work.

 

****start contest entry here****

 

We stop for breakfast in Chiantla, at a restaurant with a walled courtyard garden burgeoning with flowers fountains and insects and birds; that serves fajitas, pancakes with fruit, and the country’s best European style desserts. I splurge and get Nutella for breakfast as we warm in the morning sun peeking through the clouds. We catch up with my friend in an unhurried manner that is hard for anyone who has never left the US, to understand. There is time to languor and talk about his baby’s first steps, my intern’s field work, the deaths of firefighters in Arizona. Rainfall patterns, for we are climate change workers. Ninety minutes later, we say our goodbyes, and journey onwards and upwards. Our destination is two miles into the air. I walk my student through the Central Park with its ancient church and statues of the Virgin Mary made of silver, its faded murals and gilt lines ceiling joists. There is age and wisdom and spirit present. Solemnly we leave, and find a van headed to the highland market, piling in. Switchback after switchback of dangerous curves and 1000’ drops, where thieves have stolen the guardrails in order to sell the metal.

 

We arrive, and we walk. We walk around the curves of the road, of this great flat expanse of impossibly beautiful greenery, 10,500' in the air. This is my old home. A mile down the road, I lead us up a rock studded, fenced rise, past small rilling brooks and surrounded by this seemingly endless tranquility of sheepherders and bunch grass and alpine flowers. Golds and purples and blues and whites, rosettes of ground thistles and stately spiked magay plants, little red and yellow tongues whispering the earth’s alkaline secrets. We are in the clouds, and the Altiplano is marked by small mountains but nothing to give away your altitude except the searing in your lungs and a sucking in where your body’s oxygen should be. Giant violet hummingbirds sip nectar from pico de gallo flowers adorning the tops of limestone walls erected to mark ancient territories. You can feel God’s finger upon the earth. We are always a step from just shy of being a part of the misting rainfall. Land and sky are blending into one.

 

I am remembering the happiest days of my life with every step. Collecting flowers from these fields to adorn a rough-hewn table handmade from the wood planks I carried a mile on my back. Lying on my back in the freezing cold at night watching one of the clearest night skies on the planet, seeing the Southern Cross for the first time, thinking how prescient were the songwriters who said you understand now why you came this way. Galloping my little stallion across the wet marsh where he could buck and play and kick his heels in the spray to his heart’s content. I think about my reasons for moving back here. I think about freedom. The freedom to have the breathing space to live life the way you want to.

 

These mountains wrap me in their majesty and are as spectacular as any place you are going to find. But there is something more. I see the vistas are arresting to my student, but maybe not life-changing yet. He sees the beauty, but does not perhaps yet feel the spirit. He has not yet waited in the sacred space of a 98 year-old anciana giving her last presence in her best clothes, the same ones she might have worn to her daughter’s wedding and grand-daughter’s birth. He is too young to have felt the despair of trying to make a permanent home in an increasingly disposable consumerist society, being shuffled off every 2 years as your self and skill set is rebranded "non-essential." He has not watched something he loves die a little every year under the onslaught of climate change, human desperation, and the ceaseless march of concrete. He does not grasp the importance of breathing spaces in this world. Hour long breakfasts. The rarity of a workforce that laughs together. The necessity of resourcefulness, using every available thing. The staying power of timelessness and indispensability. Why a pig is a family’s bank account. That the real reasons we have made such little progress against poverty in some places is because we are not speaking the same language of future. We need to come to their level first, and listen, learn, adapt our own thinking. 

 

Freedom, to me, is the song of the human heart and the spaces in this world that allow for human respiration and the stillness of human spirit and the joy of human wildness, and dreams. The convergence of your natural talent, your training, and your inclination. These things met for me in a tiny village named Paquix  that the rest of the world forgot about. The camioneta drivers understand it the best, I think. When they come to a particularly fearful stretch of road, they stop. They sit and contemplate the landscape. Then, knowing they have a living to make, they make the sign of the cross and they drive on through, understanding that each day may be the last.

 

In places like this, life simply feels a little more real. It leaves a good taste in the mouth. It is the freedom of balance, and a culture based on kindness. It is a weaving of the constant dichotomy acceptane-resistence. It is a chace to show the next generation how to see with their own eyes and feel with their hearts why natural and cultural diversity are relevant in the internet age. For that I will always walk an extra few miles.  

Author's Note

contest entry starts where marked, halfway down

I also have 5 photos to accompany this entry, but either the signal here in Guatemala or WC itself is not permitting me to upload them this morning. I will keep trying, and would gladly e-mail them, as well.

Reviews

[Emily B]

oh, wow, marie, you take us along every step of the way

[Marie Anzalone]

Thank you, Emily, that is what I try for with these pieces- immersion. A reader should be able to feel at least a little bit like they are actually there in the piece, in the story, in the action, in the presence. You do it without trying. I am learning.

[Emily B]

i call it boiled down to the bare bones :) it's all in the stock

[Marie Anzalone]

I fear I still have the need to show my ingredients. Maybe one day i will evolve to the big people's table.

[Emily B]

i'm just a woman of few words