Remembering May

Flooding in San Pancho in August and September has devastated the pueblo.  Food is running short in the tiendas, and water and other essentials are in short supply.  More than 60 people are living in our community center having lost everything in the flood.  They are homeless, the land on which they squatted and built makeshift homes is now covered in water and their possessions have been lost to the river, washed out to sea.

Thankfully, there are no casualties.  No one, to my knowledge, has been severely injured.  But the story of our friends Fernando and Yuri having lost their home - everything gone, animals dead, the refrigerator and other appliances that provided the basis for their baking and organic egg business seen floating by on the river - that story brought tears to my eyes.

Fernando, who gave up a life as a journalist in Spain before moving first to Colombia and then here to San Pancho, and used his life savings to buy ranch land in the valley when it was still very cheap, is San Pancho's best baker.  On this land, he and his partner Yuri, a Colombiana, built a palapa out of discarded telephone poles, installed solar panels, and created a little paradise where they raised rabbits and eggs, baked bread and pastry, and lived quietly and, to all outward appearances, happily, remote from the noise and the bustle of the pueblo.

Now, all of it is gone.  Last I heard Fernando was pulling the boat on which he sailed from Spain to Mexico, and his yellow school bus that once carried San Pancho's Cardboard Circus from town to town, out of the mud, hoping to salvage the remnants of a life once whole, now in pieces.

I wrote this entry before the worst of the flood.  After the rain, after the certain renewal, after we find our feet again and rebuild, I'm sure we'll figure something out.  But, it's a time of struggle in San Pancho.

I find that when things get tough, it helps me to remember better times, to remember that we are the lucky ones, even now, in the midst of a flood.  In that spirt, here is a memory of an easier time in San Pancho.

May 2010

In May I moved from one end of San Pancho to the other.  I left behind our rental on Calle China with not a little sadness.  It was a pretty house full of beautiful art and fascinating books.  I loved my 6 months there.  

I left that house because it was time; time to get away from the constant stream of neighbors crossing our porch on the shortcut from Calle America Latina to Calle China; our neighbor Ramiro whose love of ranchera music and tequila often kept our household up through the night for days at a time; the Saturday disco on the Plaza del Sol filling our house with pop music so loud that we needed to shout to be heard; the 24/7 crowing of the two dozen or so roosters in our neighbors' yards; the truck vendors with their loud speakers advertising newspapers, gas, cakes, bread, fish and fruit; and the occasional primal scream therapy sessions in the healing center next door.  

I wanted quiet, and I found it in a little house on the second highest hill in the pueblo, overlooking ranch land and the jungle at the very end of Calle Tahiti in what, for about a month, was the only truly tranquilo corner of San Pancho.  And it was quiet - blissful, sleep-all-night, daydream-all-day, nothing-but-bird-calls-and-the-wind-in-the-trees quiet  - but briefly, and then things changed.  

By the end of the month, construction was in full swing on a new polo stadium going up in the valley below us.  The owners of our local polo club are building a full-sized polo stadium on former ranch land, complete with stables, a bar, and a restaurant.  When it is completed, it will replace the half-sized polo field in town and put San Pancho more firmly on the Latin American polo circuit.  

It's a sad thing this new development, at least for us and for friends who live adjacent to the new development.  I worry that constantly watering of acres of lawn will deplete the aquifer serving San Pancho, and everyday the landscape seems to change a bit more as it is denuded of trees and sculpted into hills and flatlands to accommodate buildings and parking lots.  Even the river that runs through the valley has been rerouted, I fear, with terrible consequences.  

But at least the construction isn't constant.  There are still many moments of calm during the day, the nights are mercifully quiet, and the view across the jungle and into the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental is a beautiful as ever. 

My new neighborhood is less developed than Calle China.  Here remnants of jungle are just a few steps from our door.  Hummingbirds and honeysuckers in all shapes and sizes hover in the woods just a few yards from our dining room window.  Wrens and orioles in a remarkable array of colors, from jet black to bright orange and yellow are common here.  And magpie jays with yard long tails, emerald green parakeets, two kinds of woodpeckers, crows, cowbirds, ducks, even, just now and then, a rare Elegant Trogan feed and fly in the trees nearby.  

Lizards are everywhere.  Sometimes the driveway seems alive with them.  I've spotted iguanas, including an old male at least two and a half feet long, several kinds of skinks, noles, and geckos.  I imagine there are more varieties than I know.  Scorpions are also abundant here.  They're nasty little creatures whose sting can be dangerous.  Fortunately, the mortal enemy of the scorpion, the scary-looking nameless flat, jet black spiders shaped like crabs, are even more common.  They lurk in the corners of the bathroom, under chairs, below the deck, beneath rocks, just about anywhere there is shade to hide in you are likely to find one.  

To my eye, the prettiest wild things in our little stretch of jungle are the butterflies.  They come in all shapes and sizes.  The most remarkable to me are church fan sized butter yellow giants with flexible wings.  They fly, often in groups of three or four, with an odd, awkward, halting grace amongst the shrubs around our house.  They're so big they seem more like birds than bugs.  

The butterflies bring to mind a vignette from the classic Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel 100 Years of Solitude.  In it, a character is followed everywhere by a cloud of giant yellow butterflies.  I wonder if Marquez had this species in mind when he wrote those pages?  These butterflies do seem to hover.  Now and then I feel like one is following me.  

But, my favorite critters are the pair of chachalacas who are building a nest nearby.  The Chachalaca is a bird beloved by the people of Nayarit.  They disappeared from populated areas a while back but have recently returned.  I can hear them cackling everywhere in the woods around us as they run along the ground or perch in the trees, looking like slightly smaller and plainer versions of wild turkeys. 

The pair nesting by my new house are so close you can hear them pecking and pulling at twigs and branches as they shuffle about, looking for food or building their nest.  They are near enough to see the iridescence of their feathers and their red ringed eyes.  Occasionally they even look back at me. 

Here are some pictures of my little corner of the pueblo.  You'll see that the view really does go on and on.  

My house, or at least my house for now, is the only wooden house that I know of in the whole of San Pancho, and for good reason.  Maintaining it requires engaging in a daily, unending battle with the elements.  On wet days the doors and windows won't close.  The decks need to be sealed two or three times a year.  We've twice dealt with leaks.  It seems as if everyday a new piece of siding starts to pull away from the exterior walls.  

Storms cause the windows to rattle.  Lightning envelopes us in electricity and light.  Thunder literally causes the house to tremble.  When big rains come, we have to close up the house and use bungie cords to hold down the awnings to keep the water out.  

The closest thing I've experienced to being in this house during a thunder storm was once being caught in heavy rain and rough surf in a fishing boat at sea.  To call it startling would be an understatement.  At times, it can be downright frightening.  Good thing summers in San Pancho are slow (like molasses going uphill in a blizzard).  The storms serve as a form of entertainment - a bit of novelty in the midst of nothing in particular to do.

In spite of its drawbacks, I love the solitude and the view and the cozyness of living small.  I'm happy in this house.  And we have a car now, so there's more to do, places to see.  When our house gets too small, we can get out of town and enjoy something new.  A new job provided the funds for the car, and that's added interest to my life in San Pancho, too.

But now I'm getting ahead of myself.  I don't think those things really happened until June.  I'll tell those stories another time. Oh, and by the way, do you see that dog in the doorway?  That's a story for another time, too.