blowing in the wind

One of the most powerful scenes in Schindler's List takes place on the streets of Krakow.

Middle-class Poles are going about their daily return when what looks like snow starts falling. Only upon closer inspection do they see it is not snow. It is ashes. Human ashes.

Such images stick with us, even when we know they are merely cinematic. Because they are based on fact.

This morning when I sat down to read the newspaper, ashes started falling into the patio. Even though I knew they were not Holocaust ashes, I instinctively made the connection with The Great Horror.

But not all ashes are equal. These ashes represented one of the things I most appreciate about Mexico -- liberty.

When I was young, there was only one way of dealing with yard debris. Every Spring and Fall when my family and our neighbors tidied up our yards, we would make a pile of trimmings, cuttings, and leave and then set it ablaze. Most people wax romantic about the petrichor after the first rain. But I have always associated the smell of burning leaves with setting things right with nature.

All of that changed sometime in the 1970s. Burn piles soon became nothing more than stuff for nostalgia. A part of childhood relegated to stories told around a camp fire -- without the fire.

Not everyone went gentle into that good night. I met Mildred Sundeleaf in the 1960s through some political venture I was involved with. I do not recall the details, but I will always remember her.

She was a Knight of the Woeful Countenance -- ready to fight any incursions on the borders of freedom. Because of her objection to having her photograph on her driver's license, the legislature added an exception to the statute.

Every summer, she would host a summer party at her home on Oswego Lake inviting political thinkers to discuss the future of governance. As an act of her own civil disobedience, she would cram her outdoor grills with tree trimmings and burn them during the outdoor party. Not to grill hamburgers, but to tweak the nose of bossy authority.

The ashes in my pool this morning were of the liberty sort. My neighbor is clearing the untended lots across the street of the wild growth that has accumulated over the past few months. The ashes are from the pile he set ablaze this morning.

And that burn pile sums up one of the reasons why I moved to this part of Mexico. Not the pile itself, but what it represents.

The Oregon I grew up in is not the Oregon of my youth. It has become dominated by a certain bossy, finger-wagging attitude that made me wonder if there was not still some place in this world where a person could live a good life without a cocoon of regulation.

I found it. In Barra de Navidad. In Villa Obregon. In San Patricio. In Melaque.

Of course, it has taken me some time to accept the fact that if I want liberty, I need to honor the liberty of others, as well. Realizing that was a catharsis. Now, rather than complain about fireworks, barking dogs, crowing fighting cocks, clanging bells, and burn piles, I not only accept them as part of the tapestry of Mexican life, I celebrate them as the very reason I am here.

If I had been inclined to complain about the ashes, I would have realized just how silly the complaint would have been. After the ashes stopped falling, Antonio showed up to clean the pool. They are now gone.

Any inconvenience was transitory. But the sense of living a free life is permanent.

That sense is one reason I am looking forward to shaking off the shackles of home confinement in the near future. The governor of Jalisco announced yesterday that he is considered lifting the order in stages starting on 15 May. Good on him.

As my favorite parody folk song ("A Mighty Wind") puts it:

Yes a mighty winds a blowingCross the land and cross the seaIt's blowing peace and freedom

And that seems to be a good place to stop this love letter to Mexico.

Let me share the rest of that song with you.