switch backs

When asked if one of his current theories was inconsistent with a prior theory, John Maynard Keynes responded: “When the facts change, I change my mind – what do you do, sir?”


I am no Keynesian.  However, I am more than willing to change my mind when the facts change.  And they certainly have changed for me when it comes to the livability of the Mexican highlands.


Just two weeks ago, in high and dry, I wrote about my first foray into Mexico's high country: "As we were driving through the countryside (and I must confess I did far more sleeping than looking), it occurred to me that I have seen landscape like this before.  Not only in interior Spain.  But also southern Texas."


The drive between Guadalajara and Guanajuato is the type of land I remember in Laredo during my pilots training days. 


But I have discovered this last week that central Mexico's cities can offer a lot more than cattle ranches and cactus hills.  The area around Morelia and Pátzcuaro looks a good deal like central Oregon.  Hills.  Mountains.  And, best of all, trees.  Real trees that combine into decent forests.


I am still in Pátzcuaro as I write this.  But, during the next few days, I want to tell you about Morelia, the Rosario Butterfly Sanctuary, the ruins at Tzintzuntzan, and, of course, Pátzcuaro.


And, I need to do all that before I head off to Mexico City next Tuesday.


I would like to promise notes from the road.  But the combination of internet connection issues and getting too involved in living my trip gets in the way of postings while events are happening.  Even though I wish there had been some way of showing you the butterfly sanctuary while I was there.


So, sit back and, I hope, enjoy.  Over the next few days I will tell you some tales of high adventure in high country.

the way i was

As you know from my post earlier in the week, I just started reading Donald Miller's  A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.


He relates the following anecdote in his first chapter.

The saddest thing about life is you don’t remember half of it.  You don’t even remember half of half of it.  Not even a tiny percentage, if you want to know the truth.  I have this friend Bob who writes down everything he remembers.  If he remembers dropping an ice cream cone on his lap when he was seven, he’ll write it down.  The last time I talked to Bob, he had written more than five hundred pages of memories.  He’s the only guy I know who remembers his life.  He said he captures memories, because if he forgets them, it’s as though they didn’t happen; it’s as though he hadn’t lived the parts he doesn’t remember.

That paragraph struck me because I have been thinking along similar lines recently. 


We all know we are the sum of our experiences.  But what does that say about personal freedom when we can't even remember how we got where we are?  Almost as if we all are stuck in Alzheimer Cul-de-sac.


I started down this road on my trip back from Puerto Vallarta.  It is just a little less than two years ago that my brother, Jiggs, and I made the drive south.  On Highway 200.  The road from Puerto Vallarta to Melaque.


For whatever reason, I decided I would stop at the same Pemex stations we stopped at on that road trip.  And try to reconstruct what we did at each stop.


It seemed to be a simple exercise.  Delimited in time, place, and circumstances.  Certainly my memory could handle that task.


And, after a bit of thought, I realized we only stopped at one station.  That made it easier still.


The experiment almost crashed on takeoff.  I knew we stopped at only one station.  But I was not certain which.

And then I saw it.  Just north of  the village of José María Morelos.


Just seeing the station reminded me that we had first stopped at a Pemex a few miles north, but there was no grass for Jiggs.


That burst of memory reassured me.  Maybe I would remember what happened when we stopped.


I pulled in -- and nothing came.  I remember letting Jiggs out.  But I do not remember who was driving.  I do not remember where we parked.  Whether we bought gasoline.  Or snacks.  How long we stayed.  Whether it was hot or cool.


I simply could not recall.


And that was less than twenty-two months ago.  How much of our lives do we simply misplace?


I have no doubt, though, that I will remember that station in the future.  And for the worst reasons.


I needed to fill the gasoline tank.  For some reason, I pulled up on the wrong side of the pump.  The hoses in Mexico must be longer than those in The States because the attendants never have trouble getting to the tank.


But I will not do that again.  Out of habit, I have always checked the meter to be certain it is at zero.  In two years, I have never seen anything other than zero.


This time, the truck was between the meter and me.  Just as I stepped out to see the meter, the attendant clicked the trigger. 


"35 pesos" were already registered.


I asked the attendant to stop and showed him the meter.  He said he had put that amount in the truck.  We had a little exchange in my broken Spanish.


It wasn't until I started to leave that he shrugged.  And reset the meter.


It could have just been a misunderstanding.  So, I decided to stop in the Modelorama for a Coke Zero.  When I took it to the clerk, she told me it was "veinticinco pesos" (25 pesos).


"¿Veinticinco pesos?"  I repeated the amount to her.  She said, "Si."


I was aghast.  I have never paid more than ten pesos for a soft drink that size -- even at an Oxxo.


Back on the shelf it went.  She shrugged.


The bad thing about all this is what I will remember.  The memory of Gringo taxing will stay in my head.  But my fonder memories have already faded.


Maybe it has to do with what we choose to remember.  That we do not appreciate the good things as much as we resent the bad.


But I do know one thing, my overall memories of the trip with my brother and my dog are of a great time.


And having written about the more recent incident now gives me the freedom to toss it into the memory hole.  I will let Winston Smith tend it from now on.

kidding around

Why are these children smiling?

Maybe I should tell you a little bit about them before I let you start guessing.

For the last three months, I have been working with my local doctor and some resident Americans at the local Indian school.  Not the type of Indian school we think of in Canada or The States -- where Indian children were taken from their parents to be raised as young Europeans.

These are the children of Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca.  The families are migrant workers.  They follow the crops.  In our area, they arrive in early winter and stay through May.  Until the crops need no further tending and picking.

Fathers, and some of the wives and children, work in the fields during the day.  The rest of the families stay home.  Home for most of the migrant workers families are below primitive.

Some are lucky enough to stay at the Indian school.


There are living quarters for sixteen families.  A communal living area.  A kitchen where food is cooked by the school for the children. 


And classrooms where six assigned public school teachers teach the children in the evening -- when they return from the fields.

It is basic living. 


But, at least, they have the basics.  While they are here.  In May or so, most of them will move on.

Lack of education and skin color have kept the Mixtec and other Indians low on the economic ladder in Mexico.  And the Mixtec have had their share of problems.

They were a proud nation before they were enslaved as a vassal state by the Aztecs.  They thought they were going to be delivered by the Spanish when the Aztec were conquered.  But they ended up on the bottom of the social heap as slaves in mines and as peons on haciendas.

Like most Indians, Independence, Reform, and Revolution meant only that someone else ran the show. 


And if Mestizos prayed that their babies would have light skin and the hope of a better future (as they still do), the Indians know how they would be treated because of their brown complexions. 


The pervasiveness of discrimination by skin color seems to permeate world cultures.  Even in bleeding heart Red Cuba.  Mexico is no exception.

The fact that the older children must work in the fields to help support the family is not a good omen for future.  That is why the night school is change they can believe in. 


Children, who could speak next to no Spanish, are learning arithmetic, Spanish, and that amazing door that opens a whole new world of possibilities: reading.

And the reason for those smiles?   Here he is.  A bit of entertainment.

I had stopped by to see my doctor -- the same doctor who volunteers a good deal of her time at the school.  She invited me to come out to the school one evening.  A clown was going to be there.

So, I drove through the back roads on a dark evening -- dodging the usual array of domestic and wild animals.

It turned out the clown was American.  From Portland, Oregon.  Whose Spanish was minimal.  But a young woman was there to translate for him.

He did all of the low comedy magic tricks and pratfalls.  And the children loved every minute of it.  Each corny joke was welcomed as if Oscar Wilde had just flown in from Bloomsbury.


It was obvious he had previously worked with children of mixed ages.  The type of groups where the youngest crush to the front to be part of the show -- and the pre-teens hang around the periphery because they are too cool to be pulled in by the mere presence of an infant-entrancing clown.  And too interested to leave.


So, he started off teaching a young boy the old disappearing ball trick.  Of course, the balls ended up on the boy's nose and ears -- turning him into a mini-clown. 


His friends shrieked with laughter.  And he beamed -- being a star with the clown.

The next group up was a mixture of two girls and a boy -- just a little older.  This girl's eyes say more than my prose could.  Pure wonder.

As does the laughter of all three of them.

Then came the hard part.  Three pre-teenagers, who had been skulking in the back, were chosen to do what every performer knows can be a disaster. 

Not only were they asked to stand in front of their peers.  They were asked to use a wand to catch flying rings thrown by the clown.  It was a great exercise.  They had to trust the clown's throw and their own ability.


They missed some of the rings.  But everyone laughed.  No face was lost.  And when they each caught their respective rings on the final throw, they each looked as if they had just scored the winning football goal.

And then the grand finale.  No clown show is complete without spinning plates.  But, at this show, the clown only demonstrated the technique.  This young girl got to be the star. 


Blindfold.  Three plates.  And a priceless smile of accomplishment.

I had considered skipping the event.  Kids.  Clown.  Driving at night.  Not my favorite mix.


But, like so many other things in life, I need to learn that saying "no" is just another potential adventure lost.


So, who enjoyed the evening?  

It is too bad you cannot see me holding up my hand behind the camera.

willie nelson is my co-pilot

I am off on another trip to the Mexican highlands.  The Escape gets to take another rest.  I am bus-bound.


This time, I am going to Morelia, El Rosario Monarch Butterfly sanctuary, the ruins of Tzintzuntzan, Santa Claira del Cobre, and Pátzcuaro.  It is the ultimate Gringo tourist experience.


And all of that in four days.  Even Patton did not move at those speeds.


But, once again, it will give me an opportunity to see parts of Mexico I have not yet seen -- and will undoubtedly want to see again..


After all, I had my sights on a home in Pátzcuaro a mere four years ago.


And who knows?  We may even see a guest or two along the way.


Be patient, though.  Blogging on the road is not something I do well.

picture pluperfect

My pastor's wife lent me a book the other day.  Donald Miller's  A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.


I would be hard-pressed to choose whether I prefer him or Anne Lamott as my favorite faith essayist.  Probably both.


In this book, he recounts some life lessons he learned while turning his memoir (Blue Like Jazz) into a movie.  Paragraphs like this are what I like about his writing:

 

The thing about trying to remember your life is it makes you wonder what any of it means.  You get the feeling life means something, but you're not sure what.  Life has a peculiar feel when you look back on it that it doesn't have when you're actually living it.   

Last month, in dog days of winter, I mentioned I have recently had a series of events cause me to think about the late Professor Jiggs. 


Those thoughts have been underlined this week with news from Wyntopia that his dog is entering her final stages, and news from a friend in Morelia that she had to put down her dog.


Life is complex.  Sunday morning my friend Cor pulled me aside at church and told me he had a gift for me.


And this is what he pulled out of the bag he was carrying.

It is a painting of the photograph that accompanied my post about Jiggs.


Cor has painted several murals around town and is well-known in the local art community for his paintings.  But he is better known, to me, for being one of the kindest souls I have ever met.


His wife, Marie, died this past year (marie greive).  She was incredibly fond of Jiggs.


For me, the painting is a perfect expression of my love for Jiggs.  But I also think of it as Marie's love for Jiggs, Cor's love for Marie, and Cor's Christian love for me.


As I looked at the painting, I realized Gloria, a periodic commenter, had suggested that Jiggs's photograph was worthy of a painting.  It turns out she was correct.


In one of the lessons he drew from his own life, Donald Miller concluded: "You get a feeling when you look back on life that that's all God really wants from us, to live inside a body he made and enjoy the story and bond with him through the experience."


If that is true, I can feel that bonding through this painting.


Thank you, Cor.  It is more than kind.  It is love-ly.

plants of a feather

Los Jardines Botánicos de Puerto Vallarta  (The Puerto Vallarta Botanical Gardens).


I cannot remember when I first saw the sign at the top of one of the hills leading south from Puerto Vallarta.  But I know I have driven past it at least a dozen times promising myself: "Next time I will stop."


Well, "next time" finally got here.  On my drive north, I decided this is it.


Two things tipped me over the edge.  The first was Debi.  She told me one of the reasons she and Tom come to Puerto Vallarta is to visit the gardens.  That made me curious enough to stop.


But there was also a second promoter of the gardens.  My bird pal: Howard Platt.


When my "hobby of the month" obsession settled on photographing birds, Howard told me I could save a lot of money by looking at his on-line photographs. 


He was correct.  He has some great shots -- including birds photographed at the Botanical Gardens.

 

When the Escape and I crested the hill on Wednesday, I pulled into the parking lot, grabbed my camera and binoculars, and I was off -- to do my best John James Audubon impression.  Without the flintlock.


I must offer one confession, though.  I am not an avid gardener.


I can appreciate the beauty of of a well-planned and better-maintained landscape.  But I do not go all weak-jointed over a well-turned stem as did some of my fellow visitors.  There must be a pornography level in every hobby.


But I do like birds.  And this is the time of year to find birds in Mexico.  The migrators are still here.


I did make a large timing error, though.  I arrived at the park around noon.  That is too late in the day for most birds.



But not all of them.  I saw several species I had not seen before -- and some I could not identify.  There were two warblers in the bush that I could have identified only in the hand.  They were simply too hyperactive and obscured to draw an identification bead on them.


The best viewing were two feeders near the garden restaurant,  That approach is a bit like attracting dolphins by smearing a three year old with mackerel oil.


However, without the chumming, I would not have had any of these photographs to share with you.  (I would have had more if I had turned off the auto focus on my camera.)


This is a yellow-winged cacique.  They are everywhere in the garden.  When you cannot see them, you can hear them.  They were the sole species at this feeder.

But they had competition from this tough little guy.  A yellow-cheeked woodpecker.  His mate was just below him on the same limb, but in the dark.

And he would put up with no competition when it came to food.  Even though the caciques were quite a bit larger, he would drive them away.  Until they used their numbers to overwhelm the feeder.  This shot was taken just as the tide of battle was changing.  The thrush and his mate could only look on.

If I ever figure out how to get better photographs with the camera I have, I just might invest in some better equipment.  That will make these nature stops a little more pleasant for all of us.

any puerto in a storm

Well, there was no storm on Thursday.  But there may as well have been.


The cold front that had turned Chicago writers to thoughts of Jack London moved on gentler paws over Puerto Vallarta.


There was an obvious shift.  The Madres, that give Puerto Vallarta its distinctive beauty, were cloud-capped -- like Dutch maidens. 


No bright blue skies on this day.  Gray was the new blue. 


Hardly what one expects of Puerto Vallarta in February. 


At least there was no rain.  For a moment, I thought I felt a couple of drops.  But it was just an overly-exuberant house cleaner on the balcony above.


There will be plenty of time for rain this summer -- when the Mexican sky can turn on the water works faster than a wronged teenage girl.


I had only two items on my agenda before heading back to Melaque.  A quick trip to Costco, and lunch with friends.


I have never been a world-class shopper.  Going to the store is a utilitarian exercise for me.  With one exception.  Costco.


Now and then in Oregon (usually on a Saturday afternoon), an urge would hit me -- I needed to make a Costco run.  It may be the same urge that smokers get to have a cigarette.  There is no logic.  It just is.


That urge has visited me from time to time in Melaque.  But it passes fast.  The nearest Costco is a four-hour drive away.  And there is nothing at Costco worth a four-hour drive.


When I started looking at Mexico as a place for retirement (in the halcyon days when my brother's family and our mother were talking about making this a family project), Puerto Vallarta topped my list.  For me, it was a place of endless activity.  Ziplining.  Mountain biking.  Snorkeling.


It never occurred to me (at the start) that all of those activities happen outside of Puerto Vallarta.


Inside the city, it is all expense, traffic, and no substance.  Any town whose history places the romance between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton high on its historical list is plumbing the shallow end of the cultural pool.


One reason I wanted to get back to Puerto Vallarta was to see what Costco had to offer on this side of the border.  I had a list of "Things I Miss," and I hoped Costco could stop my material jonesing.


One nice thing about Mexico is its ability to teach me I do not need most of the things I want.  And if I do not listen to the lesson, Mexico will be certain I pay a premium for my lust.


In The States (with one notable wide-screen exception), I do not recall ever spending more than $200(US) during any single shopping trip to Costco.

I outdid myself in Puerto Vallarta.  $3,350.40(MX).  That is about $278(US).  Not a terrible amount.  But I surprised myself.  And that was after I put a few items back on the shelf.


Some things were cheaper than at a Mexican retail store.  Others were simply more convenient.


Two items made up the bulk of the purchase.  A replacement for my failing backup external drive ($130(US)).  More expensive than in The States, but less expensive than Office Depot. 


And a replacement snorkeling set to replace the set I lost when my truck was broken into.  $49 (US).  About what I would pay in The States for the same set.


Most of the other items were household supplies.  Most available in other stores, but cheaper at Costco in bulk.


But there were two extravagances I could not pass up.


The first was lemons.  We do not have lemons in the local stores.  And there is no good substitute for making salad dressings and soups.  A three kilogram bag for almost $12(US) -- but worth every drop.  I just need to figure out how I am going to ration them.


The second verges on the decadent.  I have several dishes that call for Parmesan.  Real Parmesan.  What is called Parmesan in Mexico is -- well, bad.  It makes the dandruff in the green Kraft cans seem good.


But there it was.  Wedges of Parmigiano Reggiano stamped with its official birth mark.  I didn't even bother looking at the price.  I had to have it.  David could not have looked on Bathsheba with more lust in his heart.


And this particular vice came with a respectable price tag.  For 700 grams -- $25(US).


I suspect this will be my only trip to Costco -- at least for a bit. 


But I would gladly make another trip to spend time with Thursday's lunch guests -- Tom and Debi of Merida.


I knew from her blog that they were going to be in town, and I was determined to see them again.  I had a great time meeting them at this year's bloggers' conference in November.

They had discovered one of the few non-touristy sea food restaurants in town -- with great food.  We decided to meet there.


There is something about the blog community.  I always have trouble getting my long-time friends to understand it.  That it is possible to develop a good acquaintanceship with fellow bloggers -- even without ever meeting in person.


That was true with the three of us.  We started our conversations as if we had just seen one another the previous week.


We do know a lot about our respective lives in Mexico from our posts.  I asked about their building projects and bat problems.  They asked me about my quest for summer cool.


We sat and talked for almost three hours.  Enjoying an amazing meal of shrimp-stuffed calamari.  (Take a look at Debi's blog for details.)


I have no theory on why these acquaintances develop.  But I suspect people who are willing to leave their home countries for a new life, and who are willing to publish that life on the internet, are the type of people who are willing to take the risk of relying on the openness of strangers.


What I need in life are more acquaintances like Tom and Debi.  And far less reliance on the myth that I can buy happiness on the shelves of Costco -- wholesale.