This winter in Nayarit will likely be remembered most for its peculiar weather. It certainly seems to be on everyone's minds. Wherever I go, whomever I speak to, the conversation seems to center on the rain, the occasional storms, and that night when a gale caused the french doors of our bedroom to blow open with such force it drove us out of bed. Down the road, boats in La Cruz were blown right out of the water and a neighborhood in Punta Mita flooded.
Normally, this stretch of coast gets nary a drop of rain from December through March. Perfect is how many describe the usual winter weather. When they say the word, it practically drips with nostalgia for winter 2009 and 8 and 7 and every other season in the speaker's memory when each day followed upon the other, dry, mild, and sunny right up to semana santa, making New Haven or Columbus, Seattle or New York seem very, very far away indeed.
But not this year. This year the winter has been wet and windy and, now and then, downright stormy.
The weather seems to be affecting the ocean as well, causing rough surf culminating in high tides almost reaching the edges of beachfront homes and businesses. The unusually big surf has dramatically rearranged our beach more than once this season, and there's no end in sight. Even now, as I write, I can hear waves crashing on the shore two blocks away.
I often find myself speculating about this strange year. I wonder if climate change is responsible for the nutty unpredictability of it all, perhaps tipping nature's usual balance just far enough that normal cyclical fluctuations have been pushed into overdrive, taking us into new territory.
Or maybe our wild winter is dictated by the stars. The duena of our house recently shared an astrological forecast claiming that a rare alignment of the planets will make this year, and especially the two months we are in the middle of right now, a time of unexpected and dramatic change. If the planets have their way, it's time for us to snap on our seat belts and brace ourselves for a wild ride.
In spite of the crazy weather, winter has been good to us. After the heat of the summer, the cool temperatures are a relief, making sleep easy and the days less daunting. I often walk for hours in the cool of the morning, exploring the jungle, climbing steep side streets into exclusive enclaves to enjoy the views between the mansions of the rich and famous of the pueblo. I no longer soak my clothes in sweat; no longer suffer the embarrassment of being the wettest man this side of the playa in todo el pueblo. Now and for the next several weeks, I will glisten rather than drip.
In addition to cool weather, the winter also brought us unexpected but welcome news on the work front. Entre Amigos, a group I've often referenced in this journal, has invited Jon and me to manage a cafe in it's new educational facility.
The cafe is one piece of a more complex plan by which Entre Amigos hopes to achieve economic self-sufficiency. It's a good plan - good enough that we helped to raise the money to build the cafe. When we committed to the fundraising campaign, there appeared to be a tenant in place, ready to take the space once it was completed. But the deal fell through, and the door opened to a new enterprise, a new chapter in our lives in Nayarit.
Tomorrow we'll fly to the U.S. to renew our visas and rummage through the basements and attics of friends in search of cookbooks, coffee accessories and juicing equipment. We hope to build a sun oven, and set up a no-energy cold press coffee brewing system. In short, we are going crunchy, granola, hippy even, and loving the adventure. I may be enjoying my cactus and mint juice with a touch of vodka, but I'll keep it to myself and happily become a guru of good health and ecologically sustainable eating.
My dearest wish is for the cafe to become the basis for a food security program for San Pancho. That dream is one I've nurtured since the end of the last summer. In September, at the very end of the low season, we learned that many families were going hungry here. People were showing up at the Entre Amigos bodega, then still under construction, asking to work for food.
That people would go hungry in San Pancho, on the edge of one of the richest and most verdant jungle eco-systems in Mexico, bounded by the Pacific Ocean, traversed by a river and streams full of bait fish and shrimp, and in the shade of old fruit orchards is a puzzle and a tragedy. How have we become a people whose children must go hungry in the midst of such bounty?
Now, with a food service business based in a community center built by an organization that is dedicated to education and sustainable economic development, the opportunity to do something worthwhile seems plausible, the dream of a program to improve the diets of the community tangible. We will certainly be in good company. Many here have been working on the issue of food security and have much to teach, including our Spanish teacher who shared the delicious albondigas recipe I posted a few weeks ago.
I know it is naive to believe that we will be able to simply start on this project without having had so much as a conversation regarding food issues with a single hungry person, but I'm game to try. After a lifetime in social change I'm accustomed to making plans and having things go in no way as I expected. My life is littered with failed speculation nonetheless amounting to something worthwhile, simply as the result of trying.
So we will try. Hopefully, our efforts will amount to something. Certainly, we'll have fun and that counts as a measure of success, right? I'll keep you posted on the results.
this is sooo perfect!!
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