thirty-nine memories (25)

Memory #25: Zapallo Grande

Allow me to continue the story from my previous post.

Our transportation from Borbon to Zapallo Grande was this long canoe thing with an outboard motor that rattled your teeth and tickled your nose. The woman and child beside me were hitchikers; we simply gave them a ride from one village to the next. Our ride was in the neighborhood of four hours long, mostly in the hot sun, and then four hours back, only a small part of it in the rain.

Can you see how narrow that board is that I'm sitting on? I don't have a lot of cushion down there, so to say the least, my bum was sore after this trip.

Jim Stump took this picture (and the picture in the previous post). Not pictured, then, is his everpresent Boston Red Sox hat. When we got to the jungle village we were showered by a chorus of "Boston sucks! Boston Sucks!"

Apparantly, even in the remotest equatorial jungle, they know.

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Memory #24: The Best Literature Class Ever

It was all about context. I'm the one in the orange jacket, looking professorial. This is the first class meeting of the course--Multicultural Literature for students in the Ecuador semester abroad program. We're sitting in an open courtyard of our hotel in the mountain town of Otavalo, Ecuador.

What did we do? Simple. We read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings," a story you should read right now if you never have, and maybe even if you have. Click here for the story: http://www.geocities.com/cyber_explorer99/garciamarquezoldman.html

After we read the story, someone said, "Tomorrow, when we get to Borbon and then when we go up river into the jungle to Zapallo Grande, WE will be the 'very old man with enormous wings.'"

I liked that.

Other people said many insightful things. I said, "Sometimes stories signify; sometimes they are also self-reflexive. This is a story about the way we interpret stories. This story itself is 'a very old man with enormous wings,' and this story has dropped into our little western village, and here we sit trying to make sense of what to do with it in the only way we know how."

The next morning we went out into the marketplace in Otavalo and bought alpaca wool sweaters and blankets. Later we drove to Borbon.

I love my job.

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Memory #23: Warm Christmas

On December 24, 1982, the high temperature was 60 degrees in Wakarusa. A day later it was 65. I remember this. I played basketball outdoors in shorts. On December 25, 1998, it was 87 degrees in Kingston, Jamaica. I remember this as well; I played basketball outdoors. On December 25, 1981, it was 86 degrees in Campinas, Brazil. I played basketball outdoors.

I'm sure I played basketball outdoors on many other colder, snowier Christmas days, but those are much more forgettable.

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Memory #22: Blue Mountain Peak

One of the best parts about waking up every morning in Kingston was looking out the window toward the hills of upper St. Andrew, and in the deep distance, the peaks of the Blue Mountain range.

Eleven years ago today, Jeanie and I hiked Blue Mountain Peak in Jamaica, and that is where we squat, smiling, in the picture above. On a clear day, you can see Cuba from this spot. I must tell you, a breezy 50 degrees felt like heaven, after months of relentless, hellish heat in the dusty asphalt jungle that is the city.

The peak is a seven mile hike (an ascent of 3000 feet through a stunningly fertile and dense forest) from where we stayed the night before--a quaint cottage among giant eucalyptus trees called Whitfield Hall with our friends the Allens and their three children.

The walking was easy compared to the drive from Mavis Bank to Whitfield Hall--another seven miles of one-lane dirt, carved into the side of a mountain.

Trying to turn around on that road I nearly drove the pick-up off a sheer cliff to an inglorious end. For some reason, my heart still races and I twitch nervously when I think about how close a call that was. But I have not the words to describe it well.

When people ask me what is one thing not to be missed on their Jamaican vacation I always say Blue Mountain Peak. I don't think anyone I've ever said that to has bothered to make this trek.

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Memory #21: "I'm a Rebel"

It was July and I was driving home from mowing the lawn at Church on a Saturday evening a couple summers ago. "Prairie Home Companion" was on the radio. Garrison Kiellor introduced a group I'd never heard of--no big surprise there. He called them the Old Crow Medicine Show.

Have I mentioned that sometimes I really miss Jamaica?

The guy said, "We're gonna take you on back to the Caribbean for this next number." And then they played this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUU6jbBmJ6U

In some mysterious and secretly unique way, I was taken on back to the Caribbean with that little number.

I love that song; I love reggae music. And now I love bluegrassed reggae.

Have I mentioned yet that I love bluegrass music, also? I love it all the more because a lot of it is the best happy-feet before bedtime dance music any two and half year old blondie of a little girl ever heard. One of my best memories from this past summer is the early evening Jeanie, Syd, and I spent at the Osceola Bluegrass festival. We ate rib tips. We bought a one dollar piece of junk toy for Sydney--a fuzzy wire spider attached to stick with elastic like string that helped you to make the spider dance.

And we all danced--Sydney and the spider the least self-consciously--as the sun set in Fern Hunsburger Park.

What can I say. "I'm a soul adventurer."

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Memory #20: Blizzard

On the television today I saw the words "Blizzard Warning." A closer inspection of the fine print revealed that the Blizzard Warning was not for us, but for our neighbors to the northwest, across the state line. But that word, Blizzard, always makes me think of the winter when I was eight. The snow drifts were enormous, and I don't remember the facts, but it must have taken my dad hours to shovel the four feet of snow off our driveway, only to have the end of the drive buried in another six feet of snow when the snow plows finally got around to clearing C.R. 1. It seemed like school was cancelled for a week. So we went sledding and made tunnels in the drifts and never once worried that anyone would make us make up lost school days in June.