Snapshots of Mexico Mexican Ecology and Culture Field Trip 2006 by Elizabeth Thomas

Water rushed about me while I played in the surf, and as I felt the power and force of the sea in the ebb and flow, the realization came that life was filled with the power of change. As the surge pounded in my ears, the thought arose with the sound of the waves, “I have reached the end of my known world. But this is not the end; it is a beginning.” Then a huge wave crested high and broke over my feet in greeting.

It all began on March 11, 2006, when I started my Mexican Ecology and Culture field trip with Murray State College, a journey to a new world filled with new terrain and new ideas. Our itinerary consisted of traveling all Saturday night and Sunday until we camped in Bustamante Canyon, and then traveling through the desert and mountains to the sea on Tuesday morning when we reached Los Cocos near San Blas where we would camp five days for field study. Before leaving this area, we took a boat ride through a mangrove swamp/river to crystal clear springs. From there we traveled to Real de Catorce, arriving there in the wee hours of Monday morning. The only way to this former silver mining town situated 9,000 ft. above sea level was through a tunnel in the mountain. Upon leaving Real Catorce before noon Tuesday, we had HOME as our next major stop. Yet, what comes to mind as I think back on this experience is not just the schooling, but recollections of things I saw while in Mexico.

Spring Run in Bustamante Canyon

There are a host of impressions lingering in my mind. For one, I have never seen such plant diversity. There were elephant ears growing wild by the streams. In Bustamante Canyon the walls towered above us in folds of weathered limestone garnished with ocotillo, prickly pear, mesquite-like trees, agaves, and other plants. The Chihuahua Desert was crowded with various cacti and thorny shrubs. In the mountains where we went birding, I saw papaya trees, coffee shrubs, and banana groves with their strange blossoms. On the beach, the dune grasses gave way to towering coconut palms that rustled in a slight breeze. There were tropical plants everywhere, the plants that we grow as exotics. On our boat ride, we saw huge mangroves, and the birds and animals that shelter there; anhingas, boat-billed herons, egrets, hawks, tree crabs, a green iguana, crocodiles, and schools of fish in water so clear that twelve feet deep was as easy to see as an inch.

Another thing new to me was the Mexicans’ obvious love of color and beauty as evidenced by oranges dangling from trees peeking over walls in Nuevo Laredo, brightly painted buildings in the villages and towns, the brightly hued shirts that some men wore, the woven table coverings Elle used every day on the patio, the beautiful colors of the Huichol beadwork, flowers blooming in flower beds, cans, or climbing the walls, a flame tanager the color of a fading hot coal alighting on an aqua blue wall to snatch an insect. Color was everywhere.

Here is an incident of beauty that I experienced in San Blas. While I stood in the busy Saturday night plaza, the iron gates of a plain adobe church opened and a wedding couple entered as the bells began ringing. Gazing inside, I saw a beautiful ornate altar. The gates closed. The clear voice of the priest rose over the sounds of holiday people, and I stood, struck with the unexpected beauty.

Our five days in San Blas were filled with field studies in the areas of mammals, reptiles and amphibians, fish, and birds. Besides the usual lectures of how to set traps, cast for mammal tracks, how to net fish, and other practical details of finding, identifying, and recording what you find, I learned other valuable things, such as, packed beach sand is a wonderful blackboard, and you remember the stream ecology lecture better with the water flowing over your feet as you stand in the shade.

I experienced mañana there. The word means tomorrow, and I saw how the Mexicans unconsciously felt that the moment of now was too precious to waste in the worries and frets of daily living. The embodiment of mañana I saw in a dog sitting asleep by a house, smiling at the world in his dreams as we passed through the mountain village on our birding assignment.

Real de Catorce I found to be a very different place. The buildings were gray stone and most of the color came from the wares in the booths and the dress of the people. As I roamed the steep streets and shopped, the realization grew upon me that there was more to this city than its past as an imperial source of silver for coinage, and I left feeling that Real de Catorce was an unsolved mystery. Yet, I remember hearing the Ave Maria played at midnight, ending a long day. And I awoke to the triple ringing at seven; my first thought being that it was a holiday. Before we left, I saw the children parading to the main plaza, opening the festival of the first day of spring.

That night we crossed the border and by dawn we arrived in cold windy Oklahoma. As I began to unpack, I found wealth to share: memories of simple food that sustained on a long day, oranges hanging from the trees, the taste of fresh coconut in a turnover, pieces of raw obsidian (a lucky find in a rubble heap) the camaraderie, the abundance of color, mañana, and the great diversity of flora and fauna. Remembering the voices of the land from desert to mountains to the sea, I feel the power of change at work. This is what I brought from Mexico.

Written by Elizabeth Thomas April 20, 2006