My grandmother had a television set when I was a youngster growing up in Powers.
A small black-and-white set that sat in the living room. It was the only television I could watch in our small town. We did not have one at our house.
I did not watch it much. But there is one movie I recall from those days. "Lost Horizon." A Frank Capra film based on James Hilton's novel of Shangri-La, a utopia nestled in the Tibetan Himalayas.
The scene that stuck in my young mind was the aging process that the Mexican-American actress Margo suffered when she left the confines of Shangri-La. Rather like that border around Toyland that once crossed, you can never go back.
I may have found Shangri-La in Mexico. Or its spiritual third cousin.
Early this morning we left Zacatecas for our next stop -- Real de Catorce. The town is advertised as a ghost town. It isn't. But it is the shadow of what it once was.
To get there, we drove four hours through the desert to the northern part of San Luis Potosi. The scenery was beautiful -- in that rather arid beauty that lingers on the edge of deserts.
Lots of Joshua trees, magueys, and scrub brush, all backed by mountains that seem to be holding secrets.
Most of those secrets are minerals. And humans have been trying to pry those secrets from the mountain rock for thousands of years. First by the Indian tribes. Then the Spanish. Then foreign mining interests.
There was only so far our bus could take us.
The town lies in a valley completely surrounded by mountains. When the mines were mechanized at the end of the nineteenth century, the Ogarrio tunnel was built to facilitate motorized transportation. The tunnel was completed in 1901.
But the designers did not have tour buses in mind. So, we abandoned our bus on one side of the mountains and moved our group and our luggage to a fleet of jeeps that took us into what seemed a lost city.
Well, a lost city that is regularly visited by the crystal-fixated or peyote-minded along with Catholic pilgrims and pleasure-seeking tourists.
After we settled into our hotel we visited one of the abandoned mines that surround the town. You can barely see it in the photograph above on the horizon in the upper right.
Because we were in a town that time forgot, we were heading to the mine the way visitors would have in the nineteenth century. We rode horses.
This was my mount. A nasty piece of work named Hombre who instinctively knew my riding skills were well past their pull date.
But the view on the ride up was stunning. Abandoned haciendas. Mountains. Valleys. All of the makings of a good Western movie.
When we arrived at the top, our guides took us through the abandoned mine. And we finally had an opportunity to enter a mine that had not been Disneyfied for our security.
Every time I visit these mines, I develop more respect for the men who worked and died to please the power structure's desire for precious metals.
My friend Robin and I had a hobby of searching out old mines in the hills of California when we were both stationed at Merced in the early 1970s. Even in deterioration (or maybe because of the decay), mines interest me. As a writer. And as a photographer.
These old stables have a nobility equal to that of any Mycenaean palace.
On the ride back, I caught this glimpse of Real de Catorce, masquerading as the Latino understudy for Shangri-La.
This is the first place in Mexico where I have heard Porfirio Diaz, the dictator overthrown in the Mexican Revolution, praised so thoroughly. And that is understandable. The chaos of the Revolution left the mining industry devoid of leadership and investment.
While our guide was discussing him, I could almost imagine a still-living Porforio Diaz playing the role of the High Lama in "Lost Horizon" -- dispensing bromides in the ruins of the mine.
Real de Catorce is just that sort of place.
But I did learn my lessons in my grandmother's living room. I am not going to fall in love with a local girl and take her to the other side through the Ogarrio tunnel. We all know that will not end well.
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