Saturday, March 13, 2010
I found myself sitting in a small motorized canoe-like boat heading to the ancient ruins of Yaxchilan in Chiapas, Mexico. Wind blowing in my hair we passed families fishing and cleaning their clothes in the rivers tide. I felt as though from where I was sitting I was in the middle of past, present and future.
With Mexico’s border to my left and Guatemala’s to my right, I thought about the lives that were lost right here in this river as refugee’s tried to swim or struggle from one border to the other in hopes of something more. One side of this river was the past representing struggle and shadow, the other the future representing light, hope and accomplishment.
Sitting between these two worlds separated by a body of water and guarded by soldiers with guns, I was sitting in a dugout fiberglass canoe in the present, looking at the imaginary line that determined the fates of so many people.
It’s difficult for me to believe that circumstances can be so different for families living on either sides of this river, the distance so close but their worlds so far apart. People risking their lives to get from one side to the other without knowing what the outcome might be. I felt blessed to be born in such a great country as Canada, where I am free to come and go as I please. I do not wake up in fear and am not at risk of being harmed by those who are supposed to protect me.
I looked again from one side of this river to the other; the people on both sides and me in the middle -- past, present and future -- we all really do live completely different lives.
* * * * *
Our boat ride came to an end and we jumped on shore and headed up the massive set of stairs to the mouth of the jungle where we would begin our hike through the ruins. To avoid the clutter of tourists we decided to do the hike backwards as it was one giant loop and we would still end up leaving from where we began.
As we headed through luscious greenery under the beaming hot sun we explored what would have been the city of ancient Mayans as far back as 600 A.D. Remains of their beautiful city that had been hidden for thousands of years underground were right in front of our eyes. we could see them and touch them and could only imagine the lives of the people who would have lived inside these ancient homes.
In relevance to other ruins in Palenque these were rather small but are said to still be some of the most fascinating. We saw old temples and places of worship with faded art carved into the walls and ceiling telling stories and writing history. We walked up the steps leading to the homes of royalty and walked through the jungle paths covering what were once streets of the city. We sat on a path and listened to the sounds of the surrounding animals, woodpeckers, squirrels, birds, and there it is: the howling monkeys! This sound was incredible!! Intimidating and strong we could hear them marking their territory to their unknown visitors, us.
As more tourists approached the sounds slowly died and we continued on our way. We ended our hike at what was meant to be the beginning or the entrance to the city where we used the flashing lights of our cameras to guide our way through to dead ends and pitch black passageways. With the flicker of our lights we could see bats, tons of bats hanging from the ceilings and bunched up in groups. We saw spiders the size of our hands and couldn’t help but let out a few girly shrieks here and there. We felt as though we were back in time, wandering through the corridors the ancient Mayan people had made to distort and confuse unwanted guests trying to enter their city. We sat and admired the architecture and brilliant detail that went into every inch of these ancient structures.
Again, yet another brilliant day.
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Sounds amazing.. Spiders don't sound so intriguing, I probably would not have slept for days lol but it sounds so rich.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine the ruins built up so many years ago, the art so vividly carved into the walls, the walls painted in bright rich colours, the decorations to be natural and handmade all hanging around the rooms, and through the corridors. the window coverings blowing in the wind, and the trees growing right form the floor through to the outside world. All natural, all able to eb taken back into the earth and recycled by earth itself.
Then I think of sky scrapers, thick cold, shiny steel, glass from roof to ground. Plastic siding fading into ugly colours drippping poisoning chemicals back into our earth, glass shattering from old age and slicing childrens feet for the next million years, steel rusting and causing drastic incidences of tetanus and infection. Houses not standing but falling into a heap after bugs eat away the drywall and two by four structure. Leaving behind the plastic, steel, glass, and the many other nonbiodegradable products we have man made in the past few years.
We find it absolutely magnificent to walk through these mayn ruins, through pyramids through stone hedge vilages etc, and see how people used to live and see the structure they made and exactly what they looked like with some slight erosion.
Wheat will the Quest students be looking at in 10000 years? Our heaping pile of steel, plastic, and slicing their feet on broken glass? That sounds magnicent doesn't it. Our buildings will collapse with age, and if the strongest still stand, the outside will fall and the insides and everything within the building will fall to the ground when the floors collapse.
We have not left history. In 10000 years, our world will be junk sitting in piles. The ruins we have today will probably be covered over in vegetations or so eroded from the natural components of Earth that they won't be magnificent to see only magificent to hear about.
So what will the students look at? what will hey visit for interesting sites? Who will they talk about? I don't even want to think about how disgusted they will possibly be, because that is just too much to think about.
But we haven't created a structure that will last, we have created structures that will eventually fall, and will sit there forever because Earth cannot erode them.
Mel