Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 12

 

Alejandra returns from Medellin with news that the head of the International Red Cross in Colombia has made a visit to the FARC headquarters in Choco, the rural area I am going next, and has negotiated safe passage for fat men in Hawaiian shirts. I am not especially reassured by this news, because I would prefer we travel more anonymously, without advance notice. I suppose that may not be possible already, since El Colombiano has published a story, with pictures, which calls me the "padre de sostenibles" and given the dates and times of my workshops in Unguia, a remote, very poor city that has all the domestic tranquility of a Gold Rush miner´s town. And also we are now shotgunning throughtout the countryside a bunch of loudmouthed permaculture evangelists who know more about The Farm hippies than the average 20-something U.S. Ranger plinking mamasans in Colombian coca patches from the .50-cal waistgun of a Huey. So if I was hoping for anonymity, that´s already blown. Now I can only hope they buy the "pobreza perpetuo" story at the roadblock rather than peg me for a choice ransom. The roadblocks have laptops that check current bank balances, but I´m guessing they haven´t cracked into First Volunteer of Summertown yet (although it is not as though Racquel has an advanced degree in cryptography). Still, if they can build transoceanic submarines from Russian blueprints in basement factories, who´s to say?

 

The first permaculture course in Colombia is now drawing to a close. This is a wonderful group that has now grown to more than 30 participants and they have become fast friends. They know who are the dancers and who are the studious ones. They know which men always volunteer for physical work and who stays up late partying. This is a group that will be friends for many years, even while their paths diverge tomorrow and may lead back to different countries.

Today we have the final exam - a practical exercise in redesigning Hotel Montaña Magica to attract business while preserving its natural wealth - and tonight we end with fasting, tamascal (sweatlodge) and drumming at the full moon in a clear sky, across glistening white tides of mist that rise from the valleys.

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 13

 

This day begins by washing my socks and underwear in the scrub sink, and hanging them on low trees to dry, hoping that it doesn´t rain - not a very promising prospect to judge by the grey clouds above. Blanca has been up early making wine in 10-gal plastic tubs. Today it is blueberries in one tub and raspberries in another.

 

After evaluations and closing circle I grab my slide carousels and load into a car for another trip down the mountain to Medellin. All my luggage has been converted from rolling suitcase to Seal Line backpack because I will be returning late to the Hotel and tomorrow we leave in the middle of the night for the Northern Coast. My cameras and papers are triple zip-locked inside the Seal Line. Uncertain when or if I will have email in the Reserva, so I may be silent for a while.

 

Today I have a four-hour workshop at a University architecture school auditorium. We will basically repeat the opening day of this first, week-long course, with a few embellishments, like a 200-slide show of ecovillages on six continents.

 

The dangers in this country less frequently come from staying in one place than from travelling from place to place, which is why many in the city stay there. And yet, as the large and growing population of displaced people reminds us, that is scant solice to someone who just woke up this morning to find their town has become the battleground, or their farm has been sprayed with a transgenic fungus.

 

Tomorrow we will hop a puddlejumper to Apartado and then catch a panga downriver to a jumping off point in the jungle. By evening, after a cross-country trek, we should arrive in the Reserva Sasardí, in the Darien.

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 14

 

I am writing this from the third floor loft in Claudio Maduane's palm-thatched, open aired house in Reserva Integral Sasardi (8-23 N, 77-8 W), 300 clicks and 2 degrees of latitude from where I started this morning. Outside, a family of carita blancas (white-throated Capuchins, Cebus capucinus) shakes the tree next to the bodega as they move away from the territorial growls of the Alouatta (howler monkeys) deeper in the jungle.

 

This has been a day of successfully negotiated encounters, alternating between the military and paramilitaries, but now we are safe in the heart of the Earth.

 

De como cabalga la muerta: (How to ride death:)

En las alas de los zancudos (on the wings of long-legged mosquitos)

En el sigilo de la serpiente (with the stealth of the serpent)

En la delicia de la tempestad (at the delight of the tempest)

En el hocico de la maravilla hiriente (riding the snout of wonder's wounded).

 

-       Jorge David (a Medellin poet who now lives at Sasardi Reserve)

 

From Medellin we took a puddlejumper to Apartdado, 45 min by air, landing amid banana fields for as far as the horizon in every direction. After passing a quick military passport check, we hopped a taxi to Turbo. On the way we stopped at the Ministry of Environment for the Uraba region. We are hoping to connect with the minister, a man I'll call Steve, and tried calling ahead but they haven't been able to pay their phone bill for 2 months and their phone has been disconnected. The ministry is also a center for the refugees of La Violencia, so there is a squatter community on an acre of land behind the building, with wall-to-wall black-plastic-covered slabwood shanties, and the ministry porches spill multicolored children out onto the steps and into the driveway. The minister is at a peace conference in Costa Rica but the people say he is planning to come to the Reserva when he gets back, and possibly attend our course.

 

Turbo is a bustling port town, lots of street vendors and hustlers, lines of horse carts lined up to carry supplies to and from the open panga boats that come and go constantly. I am expecting to hear the theme from Gunsmoke that always comes up when Marshall Dillon rides into town.

 

The horses are very skinny, the carts large, and half of the horses I have watched working the docks have been lame, most of the teamsters being teenage boys who could care less.

 

The population here is much more black than farther south. Mine is one of only three beards I have seen, and one of those resided on the chin of what appeared to be a graying Oxford biologist, boarding a panga for parts unknown, undoubtedly surveying some part of the vast rainforest that beckons from downriver.

 

Only the main streets of Turbo are paved, turn a corner and the storefronts front dirt roads, freshly slaughtered meat hanging in the dusty wind, shops selling used motorcycle parts, horseshoes, and lots of fried foods. For the panga ride most people purchase black plastic bags for their belongings for a few pesos apiece. Vendors walk through the crowds at quayside selling Bics, hats, machetes, flashlights, bug spray, watches, batteries.

 

My first contact with the paramilitaries happens while Alberto Ruz and I are sitting at an outdoor restaurant. A tall man in plain clothes, nothing fancy, walks up and asks if I speak Spanish. "Si," interjects Alberto, establishing that he is the alpha male. The man asks what we are doing in this part of Colombia and Alberto tells him we are touristas on our way to the Reserva. He asks for identification and says that he is from Immigracion. Alberto shows him a travel visa and I show him my UNIDA ID card. He nods and returns our documents, then leaves. I was certain he was not Immigracion because he kept his distance from the three military police, standing only 20 feet from us, and kept his back to them while he examined our documents. Alejandra tells me later that if they had wanted to take us, they would have done it right there, so not to worry. Okay.

 

At the quayside we are greeted by a Kuna Indian man and woman. The Kuna woman, whom I'll call Lucy, will accompany us to Sasardi. She is the sister-in-law of Felipe, ENA's principal contact for the Caribbean region (who has studied natural buildings at Earthhaven with Chuck Marsh and Peter Bane). Lucy tells of a priest, Fr. Lionis Moreno,who has created 8 "communities of peace," safe havens for refugees. Each of these is 30 to 50 families, up to 1000 people. There are no weapons and no political affiliations allowed. The tenets of each village are three-fold: work, discipline, and organization. There were 9 such settlements in Uraba but one was recently massacred. Lucy works now with displaced peoples, or DPs, and she is going to Sasardi to take our permaculture course in hopes that it may help in her work.

 

The Kuna man, Rafael, tells a story which is both sad and courageous. But before I get to that, a word about the Kuna may be useful.

 

The Kuna are one of the great surviving indigenous peoples of South America. In many ways their story is similar to the Haudenosaunee, because they have preserved their sovereignty through unswerving integrity and superior organizational talent. The Kuna inhabit the West Coast of the Caribbean Sea from the Panama Canal to the northern coast of Colombia. They extend inland as far as the mountains, but their largest settlements are on off-shore islands. I met their paramount chief at a conference in Virginia last year, an albino man who seldom speaks.

 

The Kuna's strategy for cultural survival for the past 400 years has been to know more about their enemies then their enemies know about them. They send many of their children to be educated in universities and to return with valuable skills and tactics to assist in the preservation of their nation. They are especially skilled in medicine and law. It was the Kuna who were among the first to take advantage of the United Nations biospheric preserve program and to establish themselves as an internationally protected reserve - the largest such entity currently in the program. The Kuna language, distinctive dress, lifestyle, and traditions are now protected by international law. Essentially the Eastern half of the entire area between the Canal Zone and the Colombian border is a United Nations Kuna Park. The Kuna are pledged to protect biodiversity in that space. They don't inhabit unhabited forest. They pump freshwater to their islands and enlarge the populations there. They spurn electricity, telephones and satellite TV. I don't know how many Kuna there are, maybe tens of thousands, maybe more, but they are an example of resistence to globalization that is truly amazing.

 

Now here is Rafael's story.

 

In his village there is a ceremony welcoming girls into womanhood, which is one of the big events of the village. There was a 13-year-old girl whose time had come and so a villager was sent to fetch sugar to make cakes and fermented drinks. This villager was coming back with his mule-load of sugar when he was stopped by La Guerrilla. They asked him to explain the sugar but he was deaf and dumb, so they tortured and killed him by burning him alive. Rafael was sent by the Kuna to find the guerrilla chief and make two demands. First, the perpetrators had to be tried and punished. Second, there had to be reparations paid to the family of the man who was killed. Rafael says it is unlikely the guerrillas will do either, but the Kuna had to do this thing or they would never respect them, and the Kuna would not respect themselves. Thus far, the Kuna have been better at avoiding the war than the Kogi, who are now at the center of the fighting and are being massacred by all sides. Our elder brothers the Kogi may not be around long enough to die of global warming.

 

As we shake hands and leave Rafael and go to the dock to board the panga, we are asked by the military to show our passports. The young man examining mine is fascinated by the number and variety of stamps – probably 30 or more – and asks me in Spanish what I do. "Desarroyo ecologico," I reply. "Teacher?" he asks in English. "Yes, teacher," I respond. He lets me pass.

 

The panga is one of the better ones; we have been lucky. Some are wooden, even dugouts, and if it rains they pass a plastic tarp over the passengers. This one is fiberglass hulled, about 20 feet long, with a canopy, sits 15 passengers and a whole lot of freight, and has a three-man crew. Its twin Yamaha 115 Enduros cut an impressive wake.

 

We will make several stops on our 2-hour trip and some of the passengers have agreed to carry letters or packages to leave at these stops. One woman is loading a dozen crates with supplies for a small trading post – vegetable oil, fruit drinks, sugar, flour, etc. This is risky because we have been told the military intercepts cargo like this so that it can't go to the guerillas.

 

Each of us pays our 18000 pesos ($9) and the panga shoves off and motors downriver. We pass 3 pangas of the Red Cross moored along other quays, excellent boats, and their multicultural crews are dressed in uniform t-shirts of red and white. Where the river meets the Bay of Uraba we pull up to a military barge and all of the men are asked to disembark. We are frisked carefully and our documents examined. The soldier who looks at my passport asks what country I am from. "USA" I reply. Then he reads the name in my passport and asks me what my name is. This inspection is so cursory I wonder why they bother. If I wanted to smuggle guns to La Guerrilla, I could have left them in my camera bag in the panga or with a woman, or packed in my luggage.

 

On our way again, we head out into the deep water of the bay. The weather is good today – no whitecaps – but it is still as wet as an Opryland ride. When the weather is bad the ride can last 4 hours, no extra charge. We cross a brown plume containing lots of garbage, rotting fruit, etc., which is being scavenged by pelicans. We are now in the Caribbean Sea.

 

Just outside the port there is an empty oil tanker, riding high at anchor, waiting to pick up a cargo of crude from the pipelines. It may be some wait, because the pipelines have been recently blown up by the guerrillas and the State-owned company is reluctant to reopen them.

 

Most of the way across the Bay of Uraba we are in brown water, the soils of the banana plantations and cattle ranches. Then suddenly, as the Darien coast looms up on the horizon, the water turns a turquoise blue, bottle-nosed dolphins form a color guard, and we are in the outflows of rivers of one of the great biological treasures of the world. This is home of 35 nature preserves, one of the two deepest biodiversity reservoirs in this hemisphere (the Toledo district of Belize being the other), and matched only by one similar treasure in the other hemisphere (in Indonesia).

 

This coast was first glimpsed by Rodrigo de Bastidas (Rodrick of the Body Shop), part of the Oojeda and Balboa flotilla of 1501. Christoph Colon passed across this bay and skirted this coast on his 4^th Expedition in 1502. Darien takes its name from Santa Maria la Antigua del Darien, a colony established by Pizzaro in 1510, the first European settlement on the continent. Santa Maria was on the left bank of Rio Tanela. By 1515 it had 800 ha. Under cultivation for rum, exporting cane sugar, grown by Indians taken as slaves. The up-river travels of slavers such as Colmenares from this port produced considerable displacement of the Indian population and abandonment of very large areas which had been in sustainable agroforestry for perhaps centuries. Apparently the slave trade didn't work that well after the Indians left, and the sugar plantations failed. Santa Maria was abandoned in 1519.

 

After putting off passengers and supplies at stops along the coast, we enter the Bahia Trigana at the northern tip of the Choco district, and land at Playa Trigana, a small tourist beach (8-22 N, 77-6 W). There is no dock, so we have to wade ashore. After a leisurely swim in the bay, we organize the luggage and load it onto two pack mules which Claudio, our host, has arranged to have waiting for us. We have a quick lunch of arepas con queso at an 8 x 16' beachside stand and talk to Christina, the proprietor. She opened this stand in 1991 and began cooking lunches for the dozen or so people who live along the beach and the (very) occasional  tourist. She serves cocteide comaciones (shrimp cocktail), plantain con queso, arepas, hogies, sweets, chips, soft-drinks and beer. As chickens scratch the beach behind me, I scan the shelves to see what people buy. It has pretty much all the basic supplies you'd need – dried beans, rice, canned goods, condiments, razor blades, misc. pharmaceuticals, vege oil, coffee, rum, tequila. They spent about $1000 to fix up this stand and fully stock it. Christina tells us that her house, which just back of the beach, has been invaded by bats, but she's getting good at slingshotting and hopes to be rid of them soon.

 

After lunch we head up the trail, a 2.25 km trek of surpassing beauty. Overhead a family of Capuchins, a perezozo (sloth) with her baby, and the chatter of loros (parrots). We enter the Sasardi reserve, taken  from a Kuna word meaning "clear water." We follow the stream, and the rocks become our path. The mule handler leaves on a different, longer route around, and we begin to clamber up waterfalls, one after another, for most of an hour.

 

At a brief trail stop, I see my first Seba amarilla, a tree that drops fruit the size of pumpkin squash, that lie on the ground for a few weeks and then explode like a land mine, sending shrapnel of seeds over a 100 square meter area. What remains behind is not a crater, but a huge, beautiful, yellow flower.

 

At 280 meters above sea level we break out into a clearing and arrive at Fundacion Darien, a cluster of thatched houses on the fingers of 3 or 4 steep ridges. The community central kitchen, gardens, laundry house, utility sheds, trade shop, offices and several homes are all on one central ridge which has been partially cleared and cultivated with low growing bananas, bamboos, ornamentals and medicinals. Here there are aguacate, mango, pomo roga, mamobcillo, algarrosa, cacao, totumo, papaya, achiote, avocato, plantain and yucca. Pina, limoncillo, batata, frijol, aji, and tomate flesh out the open areas. Arriving late and being quite tired, we have some steamed rice and coconut with boiled beans and potatoes and are shown to our sleeping spaces at Claudio's. Even before the sun has set we are 10-7.

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 15

 

8-23 N, 77-8 W, BP 124/87 P 67; IR 6-8 mR; NIR 0.

 

Up at dawn, the overnight rain having just subsided, we clamber down over slippery rock steps, holding hanging vines (careful, there are 12 different poisonous snakes here and some of them like to pretend they are hanging vines!), to reach the bathing pool below Claudio's house. The water is cloudy grey from the rain, but we wade into the deepest pool and swim under the waterfall to shower. Climbing back up, Alejandra slips and gets all muddy, so she goes back to the pool and starts over.

 

Breakfast is hardy. I'm guessing they had this ready for us for dinner but nobody showed: vegeburgers, stir-fry tofu and tvp, boiled plantain and hot chocolate.

 

We jump right into the first class of the day and go until sunset. Lunch of boiled coconut and rice, beans and a cabbage salad becomes a daily affair, as predictable as the flight of the loros, an hour before sunset. Dinner is a little more varied, but usually light. Tonight it is corlada, a sweet green oatmeal soup, with bread baked on a large dutch oven buried with firewood on top of the Lorena stove. A pair of Smooth-billed Ani (Crotophaga ani) fly over in pileated style (a few flaps and a sail), with whining, long-drawn "oooeeeck" chatter as they go. These dark cuckoos, about a foot long, have a 2000-3000 mile range, moving as far North as the Everglades, as far South as Argentina. They nest communally here at the edges of open fields, and pick ticks from cattle, pigs and occas.

 

Did you like that excerpt from the poem of Jorge David yesterday? I got that from the wall of the office here. I translated it using my pocket dictionary, so you take your chances trusting my translation. I like it so much I want to find more of his poems and translate them. Here is the whole poem:

 

Las Exigencias del Paraiso

The Exigencies of Paradise

By Jorge David, Medellin biologist, on an early visit to Reserva Sasardí.

 

"Olvidate de todo cuando estes en el paraiso."

"Forget everything while you are in Paradise."

 

Amanece y el tambor te sacude los suenos, se desgaja el dia

Waking up, and the drum which shakes your dreams, divides the day

Y te pierdes en el aura de las corrientes

And you lose that glow from the river of energy

Que te encarcelan en la telarana de las rosas

To be able to place value on the cobwebs on the roses

 

El paraiso puede aprisionarte con su brillo

Paradise may be imprisoned with your brilliance

Y apalearte con sus caricias

And shudder with your caresses

Cenizas riega sobre tu rostro al menor descuido,

The ashes blowing in your face a minor inconvenience,

Y enormes plagas enfila sobre tu arrogancia.

While enormous plagues take a bead on your arrogance.

 

Aqui todo es feroz y bien oliente,

Here all is fierce and smells good,

La piel debe resistar los mas arduous rigores,

Its skin resists your greatest effort,

Las piernas deben tener la elasticidad de los vientos

Its legs have the suppleness of the wind.

 

Como ves, el paraiso no invita a tirarse en la Playa,

In order to see, Paradise does not invite you to stand on the beach, throwing things away,

Ni a olvidarse del mundo,

Nor to forget the world,

Ni a perderse las madrugadas.

Nor to give up the break of day.

 

As bad as my translation is, this poem gives me shivers every time I see it.

 

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 16

 

First conch is at sunrise. I gather they want us up early! Alejandra was doing a slide show last night until 10, but I crashed. Claudio uses three small solar panels to power his office, where he has a radio telephone and two laptops.

 

In the world of international information almost the only thing that is known of Colombia is its social problems, framed as a great catastrophe, with two million DP refugees. But beyond the death, the hopelessness and the uneasiness, there is the beauty and botanical wealth of this great country.

 

Colombia, with a territory as large as 2 Spains or 4  Italys, contains 10% of all the world's different creatures. It has 1,700  species of birds and 540 species of frogs. Indigenous groups are so varied and numerous that it is difficult to name them - 84 different ethnic groups and around 60 languages,  the majority of which have intact ancestral territories, political organizations and economic systems.

 

One of the most singular regions is the Colombian Darién, which is pantry to the world for new medicines; makes a substantial contribution to oxygen production and climate regulation; provides fine woods and fresh water (the Atrato river one of the most mighty); and  mainly  serves as refuge to a unique tropical megabiodiversity because it is at the locus of interchange for flora and the fauna of both American continents – a biological concentrator that recharges during Ice Ages and releases only very slowly as Earth warms. It is one of the last tropical humid forests in contact with the sea, with plant species and animals that science still has not plumbed and largely ignores.

 

There are three geostrategic macroprojects that most threaten this area:

 

1. The proposed Pan-American highway;

 

2. An interoceanic channel to augment the overwhelmed Panama Canal;

 

3. An international port at Turbo.

 

Moreover, indiscriminate lumbering, conversion into pastures for extensive cattle ranches, and of course, the war, are all playing a dangerous game with one of the greatest sources of natural capital on the planet.

 

The response proposed by Fundacion Darien is simple: ecovillages. They propose to encourage ecovillage development in all the settlements of the region, with a view of alleviating poverty, bettering education (65% illiteracy currently) and instilling both a rich conservation ethic and the political empowerment and skills to defend that.

 

And that is why we are here, war or no war.

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 17

 

So what can you say about a place with 540 species of frogs? As we swam under the waterfall in the deep pool today, two white eyed parakeets (Aratinga leucophtalmus), 14-inches long, woodpeckered bugs off a 300' Erychrina by the river. A butterfly with a 6-inch wingspan and coloring like an inverted SAC bomber – electric blue on top, black and brown camo underneath – wafted the understory, changing the weather back in Bugtussle. From the cocina at breakfast we watched a family of 6-8 squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus), with foot-long straight tails, white throat and forearms, and black muzzle. Alberto romanced them with a harmonica rendition of Alouette, but they became frightened by Claudio's dog's off-key harmony and sent alarm squeaks like white-clone-soldiers' laser guns. This small a group is abnormal, I suggest to Hugo. The usual size should be 20-30, suggesting to me that they are being poached. Hugo is a Sasardi naturalist. No, he says, years ago the local people used to hunt monkeys, but not any more. Now it is probably destruction of habitat – the cutting of the trees – that reduces the group size. The Reserva is only 280 acres, 1/6 the size of The Farm, so the area these monkeys range for food is a much larger part of still unprotected Darien.

 

I've had to stall for time because more than half the Village Design course participants and an instructor were still clearing away mudslides by shovel on the roads leading to Turbo. So I began giving some basics of Permaculture to the handful who managed to arrive (or were already here), starting with sheet mulch gardens. We plant cucumbers shaded by banana leaves and construct bamboo tipees for them to climb. Upslope we plant Candia, which the woman I'll call Mary, their main garden person (she ran away to this jungle when she was 15) says is a bush that grows shoulder high and won't be shaded by the cukes. She says that the fruit of this bush can be boiled for vegetables or pressed for oil, and that the oil is better than olive oil. I look up the Latin name and discover it is Hibiscus esculentus, which is the same plant Mexicans call chumbombo and Louisianans call filetgumbo and we Tennesseans call okra. The book says it came from Ethiopia, spread to Egypt and Asia, then back to Europe and thence with the gumbo-happy colonists to this Hemisphere in the 17^th Century.

 

Mary shows me a low bush called Lulo de Castilla (Solanum quitoense) also called Toronja or Navanjolla. The bigger the fuzzy, lemon-yellow fruit, which hang like racked billard balls, the sweeter. They use this to make sweet drinks. They have a tree that makes a fat seed that is squeezed for oil, so they call it the butter tree, Mantequilla. This one is not in the book. Neither is borocho, said to cure anything: cancer, skin lesions, infections. It is slow decomposing (months) and can be eaten safely even when it rancidifies, which is how many Colombians like it.

 

Sasardi ecovillage works like an Appalachian Hut system. Everything is packed in from Bahia Trigana so the largest manufactured items are no larger than a man or mule can carry up the long steep trail, on which 4 mules have fallen to their deaths in recent years. Most stuff they need is made on site.

 

Late in the day the panga brought the rest of the students. The road which they had cleared of mudslides has now been temporarily closed for use as a battlefield. So we began the Village Design curriculum and went until 10 pm, by which time a third of them were asleep in their chairs. Tomorrow I will finish my part of the course and turn it over to the other instructors so I can prepare the next course for Unguia. We will spend tomorrow night in Trigana and take the morning panga back to Turbo. The cost of the beachfront cabana (flush toilet, shower, outdoor kitchen, mattress and cover) is 15000 pesos, $7.50/night. It is on a cliff of pahoahoa lava overhanging a point in the Bay.

 

The class is now up to full strength – 30 – and the amount of eager questions they ask slows us down in our efforts to cover the curriculum. This is another good group and I can tell that many outstanding projects will likely result. Lucy and some of the others are people who work with the displaced populations, trying to make gardens, water systems, and composting toilets in squatter camps.

 

The approach of sunset brings a sense of greater caution to the jungle. The chickens are moving up into the thorny lime tree for the night. While Alberto works with the class, I drop down to the creek for a quick skinny dip to take off the day's sweat and cool myself down. Last night I neglected to do this and ended up with sticky sheets, waiting for the nightly rain to come drop temperatures in my loft. But I have to be careful as the shadows grow. Such natural pools are hunting grounds, as the darting bat demonstrates, and I don't want to be anyone's dinner.

 

Still, observing the big red tree that was felled by floods this year and is being scavenged for lumber by the Sasardians, I swim to the other shore to count the rings. They are too fine to easily read in the dim light, but the ones I can see appear to be about 1/16" apart. The tree is 4 feet wide at that part, so the 2-foot radius would contain 384 such rings, more or less. Judging by the swath it cut, this tree was around 100 feet tall. Nearby there are trees more than 200 feet tall and easily 8 feet in diameter. They are different types, and likely grow at different rates, but 800-year-old giants, even 1000-year-old giants, are entirely plausible here. This is very old growth.

 

En que lugar reposa la firma del misterio?

Where can we look for the signature of mystery?

Tal vez en el fondo del oceano,

Perhaps at the bottom of the ocean,

Tal vez en el subfondo del cosmos,

Perhaps below the bottom of the cosmos,

Quizas en la indescrifrable hondura del corozon humano,

Maybe in the depths of the human heart,

De pronto este en el enves de una hoja.

Maybe on the back side of the leaf.

 

En todo caso solo puede ser hallada por una maga:

In any case it could only be written by a magician:

La poesia…

The poetry…

Esa princesa esplendorosa que ha resistido

The splendid princess that has resisted

La verez del tiempo,

The old age of time,

El delirio de las hecatombes,

The delirium of the times,

La persecucion de los tiranos,

The persecution of tyrants,

Y el rigor de la belleza,

And the rigors of such beauty,

 

He aquí la poesia que es milagro

Here it is, the poetry which is miracle

… "Y milagro es lo que hace falta

… "And the miracle which is missing

Para que no no devoremos en esta comilona agria."

In order for us to not devour each other in our anxious hunger."

 

- Jorge David

 

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 18

 

Claudio took us to visit his papa tree before we left. It was an 8-foot-wide Macondo, also called Volao. I can't tell how high it goes, because the canopy above is impenetrable at 50 feet. This one resists cutting, Claudio says, by being spongy. It eats chain saws for lunch. Climbing down we unsettle a pair of 3-inch scorpions. There are also ant scorpions here – tiny as the tip of my pen, but with curled tails. Claudio says the ones to really watch for are called "despues manana" ants because their bites still hurt after tomorrow. I also saw an ant out hunting that is as long as my thumbnail and has a black-and-white striped hind section. It climbed a waist-high stalk and, finding nothing of interest, jumped to the ground from there and resumed its search. Claudio says the papa tree is not their largest. The largest is the mama tree, a Seba amarilla, whose root structure comes into the trunk at 30 feet off the ground.

 

Fresh off the waterfall route down to Trigana, Alberto and I stop to visit with a campesino who has just finished building a pair of aquaculture lagoons where the Rio Sardi comes off the mountain and enters the coastal plain. He has spent $500 to build two 10' x 30' x 3' deep ponds and stock them with 1000 shrimp fry and 3 colors of Mohara fish. He expects the Mohara to mature to 5 kg average size in 20 days on a diet of forest fruits and leaves. The shrimp and fish will be sold in the Playa and then he will start over again.

 

At the beach we gather the class and I dictate a design assignment that will take them all day to complete. Then I don a mask and snorkel and hit the water. First the fish are small, 3 or 4 kinds, hiding in the grass 3 meters down, but I see I am followed by a school of yellow tails, big ones. I join the school for as long as I can keep up. As I venture further out, I catch a glimpse of a truly exotic dinosaur, part ray, part shark, part horny toad, gliding along the bottom. He is a meter long and very shy. I dive within speargun range before he guns the throttle for deep water. Heading back towards shore I cross paths with a school of foot-long barracuda, circling just below the surface, more interested in me than I am in them. After what seems like hours, I've had enough and come ashore. In the last 3 months, I've swum in the Northern Mediterranean, the Eastern Atlantic, and the Southern Caribbean. This ecovillage stuff is a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

 

The quarter mile stretch of black and brown sandy beach is a neat crescent, flanked by two points of pahoahoa lava and massive agragate. This would have been ground zero when the Pleistecine/Cretaceous comet hit, killing all the dinosaurs, but it has been repopulated in every Ice Age since the last pole shift, and standing over the points are tall Macandos, vines drooping towards the sea like hula skirts, welcoming the next wave of immigrants with orchid leis.

 

Every mom and pop beachfront owner here builds a few cabanas and hangs out a shingle with words like "Hostal" and "Diskoteque," hoping to attract Club Med. Only the biggest and wealthiest of them, the one called Trigana, actually has any guests. The war scares away foreigners and the bad economy stops local city people from taking vacations here. You can get a room for $7/night, an undeveloped lot back of the beach for $4000.

 

I climbed the seawall and seated myself on the covered concrete patio of Trigana to write my journal and sketch this strange fish that was still fresh in my memory. Juan Guiermo – they call him Juangee, is the caretaker of this place, an ecological architect and landscape designer whose simple little house next door has already suckered me for half a roll of my scarce slide film. Juangee opens the bar as the sun begins to drop into the ocean and the clink of glasses is lost to my retelling of my good fortune to these pages.

 

Is it not always that when it is so least expected, danger arrives unbidden, to steel the soft-hearted? One, two, three, four, five shadows below the seawall. A dozen of my class are in the water, but their frolicking has become suddenly silent. The silhouettes move without a sound, holding to 20-foot intervals, the tube-stocks on their rifles outlined against the bay. The fifth, I can see by her hair under the canvas cowboy hat, is a woman. Do they have women in the Colombian Army? I don't think so. So this is not the Army.

 

Two stay on the beach. Three execute a column right turn and advance towards me, across the lawn. The local people call these the Martians. They are tall, well-built, well-fed, superbly conditioned, and their combat gear is top of the line. Each has a collar radio, khaki green and black camo, black Kevlar vests, and paratroop boots. They sport a circular blue shoulder patch a little like the Pepsi logo.

 

The three Martians advance towards me in line, keeping their separation. Over to my left an Iowa cornfield opens in the dim light and haze and three more Martians emerge like the World Series Black Sox, also advancing in flank, 20' intervals. Two of the beach Martians pass to my left and check out the ponds and willow trees over that way. The third peels off to look into the bathrooms and the kitchen behind the bar, then returns to hover like an efficient waiter with a wine list. I realize that this is just exactly like a Secret Service sweep and as I look around I see that all the Martians now have their backs to me, except the waiter, who hovers 12 feet to my left, the muzzle of his rifle aimed at my knees.

 

In the pit of my stomach all is calm. These are not the THP, I say to myself, shut up and sit. These are the guys that take out whole villages for breakfast, and do it with relish.

 

This area has been secured, and now from the jungle comes El Subcommandante. If there are any doubts that the Martians are neither regular army nor guerrillas, that's now laid to rest. This man, whose back is watched out to all the points on the compass, wears the local peasant dress – white t-shirt, baggy pants, Wellington boots, cowboy hat – but with a difference, a black shoulder holster. My greatest urge is to get up and greet him, to take the initiative, to ask him, in my weak Spanish, in his view what would peace in this country require?

 

We have the blessings of the army to be here. We have the blessings of the guerrillas. These guys are the spoilers. A few months ago a group like this came into a town in Choco and assembled all the men in the plaza. They read from a list and as the men whose names they read stepped forward, they shot them in the head. When one man's name was read his mother rushed forward and shouted "No! Take me instead!" So the Subcommandante showed mercy and shot them both. Maybe this is the same platoon. Maybe this is the same pistolero. My heart beats not a half step faster. I am strangely calm, unperturbed.

 

These ink lines may be obliterated in blood and brain in mere moments. Even this sentence may be my last. And yet I keep writing, watching my inner self, watching this scene unfold. Am I so prepared to meet my end that it can come in this way, my lifeless form falling to the grass lawn of this destitute beachfront hotel, 1000 miles from home? Would it matter that logical arguments could be adduced to spare me; that there are some who would grieve my loss; that I have friends and admirers in high places; that I have accomplished much with what I have been given; or that I am a pacifist and no threat to anyone?

 

Am I so reconciled to my death that I care not for the loss of 50 years of still great deeds: books written, lectures given, 1000 workshops in 100 languages, inventions, poems, paintings, films, interviews, advice to children yearning for sweet mysteries?

 

Or am I merely secure in the faith that I have done already as much as can be expected of one man? That to die is but to return once more to the fold of rapture, which incompasses no less than all the rest that common human sense would have me cling to at this moment. Such reveries are interrupted by the noisy trumpeting of heaven opening and the parachutes of angels, two of them landing at my table.

 

The first is Alejandra, who freezes me with a Medusa's glare that says "Do not engage them." With the waiter hovering so close, so photogenic, my camera hand quivers in the direction of my camera bag, screaming at me to cut the leash, reach for the EOS, burn some Elite II in the bright light of Juangee's neon beer signs. The second angel drops into a chair to Alejandra's right. It is the Abuela, an old Colombian caravanista who plays the role of Mama Turtle in the street theatre Claudio stages in all the playas where Leatherbacks nest – pantomiming to children why the turtles need their protection – she and Alejandra drawing a psychic curtain and Mordrid's puny powers are no match for this pair of Dr. Strange's best apprentices. They chatter about the choppy panga ride to Unguia, the parade the village had at Carnival, the rain that might come tomorrow, and in their chatter they spread a cloak of invisibility over me, an energy field that hides the gringo in the Hawaiian shirt, the one that looks like C.I.A. or D.E.A., sitting at the table scribbling on a soggy notepad, into another dimension.

 

The top Martian engages Juangee and examines his guest register, doing a mental tally, then turns and leaves, without even a glance in my direction. The whole platoon now advances to positions around Christina's stand while this man has a cold Pilsen and an arepa con queso. That done, the Black Sox fade as silently as they came, back into the cornfield. Night has come to the playa. In the distance, lightning.

 

Dispatches from the Front

Colombia, Day 19

 

The sea is a little more choppy, our boat smaller, and more open, and we overload it with 18 passengers and all our luggage. We are off the Trigana beach by 7 and across the 53 km of open water to Turbo (8-5 N, 76-43 W) before 10.

 

Waiting to step onto the Army barge for the customary frisking I count a second oil tanker now moored in the Bay, hull high in the water. It is a gathering of carrion beside the corpse of Colombia's rotting pipelines. Amory Lovins predicted this kind of vulnerability in _Brittle Power_ some 20 years ago. It is only amazing it took the FARC this long to test the theory.

 

Quayside in Turbo is the same chaotic scene as before, but this time DirectTV has a demo going, trying to sell dish systems to people in the boondocks and backwaters. The Big Screen has 2 dozen teamsters, panga drivers, hustlers and other kids glued to a US shoot-em-up, hanging on every gunshot. The TV is not a source of La Violencia. It is instead a welcome escape. But the dish can't hold the attention once the action subsides. The Spanish subtitles are incomprehensible to a population that was 67% illiterate before we narrowed it down to dockworkers.

 

With a several hour wait for the Unguia panga, we go to a restaurant called El Submarino Amarillo where I ask for the Tipico Antioqueño (being that we are in the Antiqueño Department), sin carne. This causes the waiter difficulty. A long pause. "Sin carne?" "Si, sin carne. Tipico sin carne." I want the local assortment, but without the meat. "Perdon, senor. No es tipico sin carne. Carne es tipico de Antioqueño." "A ver. Entonces, quiero nontipico Antioqueño, sin carne, por favor." He furrows his brow so Alejandra weighs in. "Platos tipicos sin carne; frijoles, arroz, huevos, ensalada, papas – el es vegitariano." The plate that comes is so huge I can't handle it with a stomach shriveled by a tight ration of arepas in the morning and a bowl of green oatmeal soup at sunset.

 

Back on the quayside our group begins to grow with people going to the course in Unguia, up a different river. What had been just Alejandra and I  grows to 16 by the time the panga shoves off toward the 5th check of a 6 military check day.

 

Next: Dodge City in the Caribbean.

 

 

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