October 7, 2018
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, TENT IN FOREST IN EL ROSARIO NATIONAL PARK ADJACENT TO SAYAXCHÉ, PETÉN, GUATEMALA
Somewhere near El Subín, along the narrow, bumpy highway, walked a slender woman wearing a traditional hupil/blouse, multicolored but mostly reddish, and a long, multicolored but mostly black skirt. Both looked handwoven, though the Chinese market these ethnically-specific traditional designs in mass-produced, intricate weavings, so I never know. Atop her head she'd twisted a towel into a halo-like ring, and atop this rode a red plastic bowl the size of a basketball bottom, certainly also Chinese made. It was filled with yellow masa, or cornmeal paste, for making tortillas. Carrying a baby in her arms, she walked with grace and dignity.
Aboard the rattling, jarring "half-bus" -- larger than a van or cumbe, but half the size of a regular bus -- I'd been staring at the side of the face of the traditionally dressed woman across the aisle and one seat up, silently feeding on the strength of character indicated there, her calmness, her tested, knowing gaze.
But, all the people aboard the old bus were magnificently defined characters worth studying, from the wild-eyed bus driver who looked like he'd been on an all-night binge, to the local indigenous folks, representing various ethnic Maya communities that had been settled in the area by the government several years ago. Entire villages from the overpopulated uplands had been moved here, so that often the languages change from town to town. Also, there were three or four tired looking but self-assured, thick-fingered Honduran men heading south toward home after working in jobs farther to the north, a few students wearing uniforms of their schools, and me.
The previous night I'd taken the overnight ADO bus from Mérida in the northern Yucatan Peninsula, to Tenosique, Tabasco state, not far from the border with Guatemala's northernmost state, the Petén. From Tenosique a half-bus carried me to the border at El Ciebo, where I went through customs, and then from El Ciebo south to La Libertad, Petén, and then another half-bus to the town of Sayaxché. At Sayaxché I crossed the Río Pasión (Passion River) in a long moterboat with a thatch roof, bought some bananas, and hiked to El Rosario National Park on the town's east side.
As I write these words on Sunday morning in the tent, a Howler Monkey roars and water drips onto the tent -- yesterday's afternoon shower still filtering down through the forest's layers, transferring from leaf to leaf like I did yesterday from vehicle to vehicle, getting here.
If you do a Google Maps search for Sayaxché, Petén, Guatemala, on the town's east side you'll see a little dark green square in an ocean of grayness. The grayness is ranchland and small settlement, and the little green patch is El Rosario National Park.
The last time I was here, I worked as the naturalist on an archaeological tour, in 1974 or thereabouts. Back then, a satellite image of the region would have shown the opposite to what's seen now: Back then it was an ocean of forest greenness surrounding a small gray spot beside the Río Pasión, and that was Sayaxché. Back then the road I took on Saturday from Tenosique in Mexico to La Libertad in Guatemala didn't exist. Nor did the weedy, exhausted looking ranches or the numerous little towns of re-settled folks from the Guatemalan highlands exist then. It had all been forest, and it was magnificent. Now it's all gone.
*****
MONDAY, OCTOBER 1, EL ROSARIO CAMPGROUND
Local people regard El Rosario National Park as the place to go -- normally on motorcycles -- to swim. A small lake with shallow, very clear water is surrounded by a fringe of thickly growing members of the Sedge Family. Overlooking the small lake lies a well maintained picnic area and campground which couldn't be nicer, except for the mosquitoes. However, I prefer the mosquitoes to the chemicals that otherwise would be used.
When I pay my 25 Quetzales (±US $3.25) for a night of camping, the three office attendants are curious, for they seldom receive international visitors here. I have problems understanding Don Regenaldo's fast-spoken, slurred, swingy Spanish and excuse my requests for repeated questions by explaining that my ear has grown accustomed to Yucatec Spanish.
"Ah, the Mexicans, those thieving barbarians," he says. "We know all about them... "
I might take offense, but he's expressed similar opinions about his own people and, having a daughter in Tennessee and a son in Kentucky, he doesn't seem too impressed with the US, either.
"Tennessee, that's a place with a lake, a pond, a spring, or something like that, isn't it?"
I'm delighted with it all, enjoying a certain perspective formally inaugurated -- or at least finally recognized -- in Mérida last Friday when I visited my philosopher friend Eric and his library. It's become a tradition that on my visa-searching trips I spend my last night in the Yucatan at his house, talking and reading.
Eric seemed to have noticed the trajectory of my thoughts as expressed in recent Newsletters. for his offerings upon my arrival were works on "The One Thing," though not called that. "Monism," is the term, rooted in Plato and probably earlier thinkers, mostly oriental, and later refined by the neoplatonists.
But, then the pure, simple monism developed conservative and liberal interpretations, and eventually all kinds of permutations manifesting as a hodgepodge of religions and philosophies. Learning what has happened to the revelation of monism, that now the concept is lost to the masses, is an insight in itself, a teaching, helping me see more clearly the future.
*****
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 2, EL ROSARIO NATIONAL PARK
In the dark corner of a forgotten closet in a seldom used hut at the rancho a pile of books lay moldering, dark-spotted with mildew, page edges gnawed by mice, smelling of mouse pee. I didn't want to chance bringing my Kindle reader on this trip, so I took a book from the pile. It was The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, a translation of Jan-Philipp Sendker's 2002 book in German, Das Herzenhören. I'd never heard of Sendker, but his book turns out to be wonderful and beautiful.
I'm astonished that such an unknown book could be so good. However, isn't this exactly what's to be expected from general evolution?
For, in evolution, first there's a flash of genius, or inspiration of a kind seldom seen, or an instance of unrivaled dumb luck, that results in an explosion of evolving, interrelated consequences, all echoes and working-outs rooted in the first epoch-making event. In this case, it's the first book ever published, that led to the present, when masterworks like The Art of Hearing Heartbeats become so commonplace that they can turn up rotting somewhere as this one did. The situation is a kind of white noise in which the splendid lies hidden amid a tidal wave of mediocrity and trash. And, what happens to an evolving system when it's most exquisite parts receive no more attention than its least inspired ones?
It was the same this morning when I met my first Senna grandis and its huge fruit-pod. "Good for the stomach," Don Reginaldo later told me, "but smells like feet not washed for several days." And how many similar, maybe even more remarkable living beings occupy the forest? Evolution brought the forest into its present diversity but then a powerful force to which the forest community was just so much white noise destroyed nearly all of it. And now we shall see what comes of all the exhaustion and poverty that has taken the forest's place.
And it was the same with humankind's discovery of the One Thing, of Plato's monism. The revelation now is just a footnote in a white-noise ocean of Wikipedia entries, and we'll just see what comes of this.
*****
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 4, MAYA BELL CAMPGROUND JUST BELOW THE RUINS OF PALENQUE, CHIAPAS, MEXICO
I had just begun knowing what's in El Rosario National Park, but the mosquitoes were ferocious and my citronella-based repellent didn't effect them at all. Also, the book was coming to its end and I had things to do back at the rancho, so at dawn on Wednesday I packed up and headed back north.
My experience at the El Ciebo border crossing has been the least stressful, and the immigration officials the least corrupt, of any crossing point I've found on Mexico's southern border. Since it's hard to find current information about this crossing, here's a review:
Take an overnight ADO bus to Tenosique, arriving at dawn, then a taxi across town to frequent half-bus and taxi service to El Ciebo, go through customs and take another half bus south. Most buses are going to Flores near the ruins of Tikal, so if you want to visit El Rosario you must leave the bus at La Libertad, and take a half-bus to Sayaxché. Cross the Río Pasión on any of the frequent ferries, some for pedestrians, some for motorbikes, and another for cars and trucks. The whole one-way trip from Tenosique to El Rosario National Park or Flores costs about US$15. I never had to wait for the next bus more than half an hour, usually less than 15 minutes.
On the return trip, most north-running buses at La Libertad only go about 80% of the distance to the border, so you get off at the intersection with El Naranjo. When I arrived there, a half bus was waiting just for us continuing on. In Guatemala passport stamps for entry and leaving are free. On the Mexican side everyone has to pay an entry fee of about US$25, but that's the law, not a shakedown by the officials. You pay at a bank a quick walk from the immigration offices and get a receipt, which must be kept, else you'll have to pay again when you leave Mexico. Visitors by air often don't know they are paying this because it's included in their ticket price.
*****
# During the entire trip, except for two glimpsed in a tourist van at the border, and upon my arrival at Palenque where there were many, I never saw another gringo-type person
# One bus driver had a large bundle of horsetail ( genus Equisetum on his dashboard. "For decoration," he explained.
# Eurasian Collared Doves already have invaded the little villages along this route that so recently didn't exist.
# Normally after harvesting, farmers knock down their corn plants so they'll decay easier and not be in the way during the next planting, with their feet. One farmer is seen in a large field cutting down stalks with a Weed Eater.
# The only intact forest seen during the entire trip through the Petén was at El Rosario, and on near-vertical faces of a few limestone hills. Passing through the landscape remembering how it was back in the 1970s, my feelings about the human taste for animal flesh (maybe 90% of the land now is occupied with cattle-producing ranchos) and humanity's unwillingness to control its own numbers, continue to harden.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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