A grand adventure that I would have loved to complete - and I speak of it in the conditional perfect for reasons which will become clear - is to trace the path my ancestors took to get from the cradle of our species in East Africa, to my actual home today. Importantly, I would use the means they used to travel. This half-baked idea appeared in my brain during my first visit to Arizona, during a business trip when I was able to set aside time to go running in a canyon in the Catalina Mountains to the north. I had never been in a desert before, and reasoned that I might actually have been the first of my ancestral line to be in a desert since we left Africa.
Lucky you, you're coming with me, regardless of your ancestry - you want to do your own trip, fine, but we're going on mine first. Our trip would begin at Lake Turkana in the Rift Valley in East Africa, in northern Kenya. And already the trip is difficult, because now we would have to start walking north, like our ancestors did, into Ethiopia. Not only is this a searing parched desert (although not necessarily any hotter and drier than it was when great grandma left - she was tough), the rural areas of northern Kenya and the border with Ethiopia are also not at all a safe place. People doing normal trips for normal reasons, in groups, require armed military convoys to make the journey safely. And as I write this, the whole region seems poised to become a war zone; it's even less safe today than when I first thought of this. (We're not even out of the first country and I've already provided multiple good reasons not to do it.)
Above: the sort of fellows we don't want to meet, but probably will if we're just out walking around. Below: more fellows we don't want to meet, but probably will if we go swimming.
After we walk into Ethiopia, we cross the Blue Nile on a log (and get schistosomiasis, assuming the crocs don't get you, which they almost certainly would - great grandma had a set of cajones on her) and start walking along the river's eastern bank until we get to Egypt. We've walked well over 2,000 miles through the hottest deserts on Earth at this point.
We now enter Asia at the Sinai Peninsula. Congratulations, you've made it to 40,000 BC, when more humans started leaving Africa, following the example set by the ancestors of the Aboriginal Australians (who got to Australia already by at least 60,000 BC.) If my wife had also been along for the trip, at this point, we would part ways: she starts walking northwest to China across the deserts and mountains of Central Asia. It's worth noting that at that point, our great grandma (yes, for both her and me) still had dark, African-looking skin. The skin adaptation occurred amazingly late even in cloudy high latitude places - the friendly pre-Indo-European fellow you see below (Cheddar Man) was a resident of the British Isles a mere 10,000 years ago. (And if you think Britian is cloudy today, remember this was the end of the ice age.) Congratulations, it's now 20,000 BC and we're wandering through eastern Turkey, then around the eastern edge of the Black Sea, which at some point right around this point, actually became a sea.
Once we get to Ukraine we're Indo-Europeans, we can start riding horses. (You're not of Indo-European ancestry? Don't worry about that. For this blog post you are. Just promise to invite me on yours, and I'll put in a good word for you with the *pĆ³tis.) And congratulations, it's 3000 BC! Then we would ride through Russia, through Finland, to Sweden. (Back in the modern day, good luck getting the paperwork to bring an animal across national borders, even in good times; also good luck to us not getting blown up in the middle of a war.) As we ride northwest, the other Indo-Europeans point out there are glaciers that way, but now that we've further differentiated into Germanic-speakers, with characteristic stubbornness we wave them off and then find out they were right. In Sweden we can get on a simple sailboat and cross over to Denmark, and start riding south to Bavaria and Switzerland. It's now 100BC, and now we beat up some Celts, who were all up in mainland Europe until the late first millennium BC (symbolically this would take the form of looking for Irish tourists and buying them beers. You're paying.)
At some point we enter actual history when we encounter Julius Caesar's legions above the Rhine, but it's okay; we kick Varus's legion's ass in the Teutoborg Forest in AD 9 (i.e., now we find some Italian visitors and you can buy them beers too.) Maybe we get a nice AirBNB on an old farm east of Basel, where I'm now maybe a nice loyal farmer in the Roman province of Helvetia. (Note: I'm almost entirely of Swiss and German descent. Lucky for me. If you're a typical American mutt, you'd have to neglect some of your ancestors by deciding to follow just one ancestral line, or to retrace many lines for the last few centuries. From the 1500s on is a mess for most people.)
Well now it's the Dominate era of Rome, so we can either hang out at the farmhouse near Basel, or ride our horses back and forth around Germany, Switzerland, France, and down into northern Italy, and what do you know, no more Western Roman Empire! We're going to be hanging out for a while in Switzerland so let's get some hiking in. My ancestors would certainly think I'm a moron for wanting to exert myself walking up steep trails for no reason other than the experience of the thing; but I don't blame them because "just for the hell of it" was only invented in the fourteeth century. Maybe in a thousand years people will recreationally sit at desks or in fake meetings for reasons similarly unimaginable to us.
After a few more nights passing the medieval period, we ride to Basel (now I'm my great x~5 grandfather whose name I actually know), then take a boat from there to Rotterdam - and finally a bigger boat, to Philadelphia! We ride a horse up to old Berks County (like William Penn did along the Schuylkill River about 50-60 years before.) We hang around in Berks for close to three centuries, and finally, I'm myself! I can drive to California like I actually did at the tail end of the twentieth century. And I'm home.
After thirty years of thinking about this, I am choosing not to do it. I'd rather actively decide it won't happen, then wistfully pine for "someday". At a certain age you have to admit to yourself, a lot of somedays are turning to nevers, and I want to choose which ones. And I'm choosing this one not to do. The actual experience of this is not likely to balance out against the logistical nightmares, red tape of getting a horse across multiple national borders, the cost, as well as passing through places with severe threats to health and safety that show no sign of resolving.
Mt. Lassen National Park and volcanic far-northern California is a part of the country most people don't think about - even most people in the rest of California. California is big. It has a whole top half that people forget about. From the Golden Gate Bridge it's 340 miles to the Oregon border.
Lassen is in the Cascades, not the Sierras. The Sierras extend north to about Susanville (the border is the red line on the map - border zones of any kind are always interesting in their own right.) The Cascades begin there and go northward just barely into British Columbia, a product of the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate (red arrow pointing at the submarine ridge marking the southern plate boundary.) Our first stop on this trip (the middle circle on the map) was therefore the the southernmost Cascade. I used to argue that the often-overlooked Sutter Buttes in California's Central Valley (the southernmost circle) were the southernmost Cascade, but among geologists (see here for Hausback et al's article) this seems to be more of a settled matter today so I must defer to the experts.[1]
Recent eruptions aside, Mt. Lassen is a good volcano for families. I've literally lost count of the number of times I've been at the top, but it's also a hike, not a climb, and it's not a death march by mountain hiking standards. That said, it's 2.5 miles to the top of average 15% slope, starting at 8,500' ending in at 10,500', so it can be annoying.
As you can see above from my awesome mountaineering moves (I call this the reverse glissade) the top is cool and all (there's usually a lot of snow algae) and there are steam vents but the best part of the park is Bumpass Hell, a steaming, boiling, sulfurous, Io-like bubbling volcanic waste in the middle of the park, down the slope of the mountain.
(More here.) They close the trail to it for much of the year because of snow and ice hazards, because they don't want MORE people falling into the boiling acidic mud and cooking their leg (seriously. That's what happened to the eponymous Mr. Bumpass. If you thought "Bumpass Hell" wasn't family friendly, would you prefer "Cooked Human Leg Thermal Area"?) And the rangers REALLY get sick of people asking when the trail will open, so to prevent this they put the data from past years right on the website. I knew we would be going the first weekend of August. Through July, the trail remained closed. I was getting nervous. So I did what any family man would do, which is plug the opening-date data into a linear regression:
The black circle is where the regression predicted the trail would open this year, with a snow depth of 217 inches on April 1st.[2] The red circle is when we would be attempting the hike. I recognized that the rangers were probably not going there every day to stare at the snow, and it's probably at most once a week that they inspected and announced the trail opening (or not), introducing some noise into the data. So the graph did little to address my nerves. Thus, imagine my joy when I checked the National Park website the day before the trip, and it was open! The regression did its job, and it was only off by 4 days, within the noise introduced by weekly checks! Needless to say, I claim credit for not only predicting the future, but controlling both weather, and volcanoes. It's only fair.
BURNEY FALLS
I don't know how I missed these after 25 years living in this state. First, maybe not a necessary point for anyone else besides me: they are NOT McCloud Falls, with which I often confused them in days past. You can swim and wade in McCloud Falls if you can tolerate cold water, but Burney Falls is colder still, remaining at a toasty 42 to 48 degrees Fahrenheit. As we descended into the valley the temperature dropped by at least 20F in 0.3 miles. I was trying to figure out on the map what stream or river the falls were on, and the answer is - they are the beginning of a river. If you look at the top of the falls, you can see the water is coming directly out of the ground. Definitely the most unique and I think most esthetically pleasing falls I've ever seen.
Below: it's good to see that visitors to the park are so considerate that they risk a fine for vandalism by carving an underline into the sign, emphasizing the strength of the waterfall, so as to warn would-be swimmers of the danger.
THE LAVA BEDS
Lava Beds National Park is the greatest national park you've never heard of. Great for families, full of "actionable" geology, native history, and two of the less-proud chapters of American history. The Lava Beds and neighboring Tulelake really are smack up against the Oregon border. It's inland high desert, so it doesn't look much like what people expect the area would. (You want redwood trees? Go to the coast. Redwood National Park is a mere jaunt of 286 miles to the west.)
The Lava Tubes, Cinder Cones, and Ice Caves
There are hundreds of lava tubes in the park, caves formed by the movement of lava underground. Some of them are big - you could drive a truck through them. Others are small and you spend most of your time inside crouching. There are some developed for tourism, many of them within 1/4-1/2 mile of the park. By "developed" I mean, one of them has lights, and others just have a ladder leading down into the darkness. The undeveloped ones are holes in the ground you crawl into. I thought this would be a tough sell for a young kid, but after initial hesitation, this was by far the favorite part of the trip. Sentinel Cave in particular was pretty cool. There are lava flows and cinder cones throughout the park as well. You don't have to be a geologist to see them and understand what formed them.
Above: the interior of a cave without light (Duh. Although, it really is an actual photo.) Below: with light (Sentinel Cave.)
(Above: a collapsed cave.) We also visited a cave outside the park that has year-round ice in it (the aptly named Jot Dean Ice Cave) but it wasn't quite as nifty as I remembered - no River Alf, no floating hair, and not a flashing eye to be found. Maybe because I forgot to bring any milk of paradise, or honeydew to dine on. You can see a couple tubes just peeking above the surface in the pictures. I've read that just in the Lava Beds park proper they discover on average six new caves per year, and there are doubtless many more to be discovered in the surrounding national forest.
Above image inside the cave from Steven Johnson's Flickr page. Below, landscape around the cave, and below that, a very ominous sign. "Other occupants"?
Any trip that doesn't have a (positive) surprise is suboptimal, and for this one, it was the fantastic dark-sky talk given by a ranger at the Lava Beds. I really can't recommend it enough. Learning about the stories behind the constellations (not just the Greek ones), and seeing shooting stars and Milky Way so thick against the sky you imagine you can reach up and feel its texture.
The History - A Stolen Home, and an Unwanted Home
There are petroglyphs carved into the sandstone of a cliff face, dating from when there was a lake there. Of course we don't know what they all mean; you can imagine people fishing a thousand years ago, sitting on tule mats and making some of the dots to count up their catch, others to tell a story or protect against disease or snakes. Some of them are definitely snakes. Amazing to think of how different we are from the people who made these signs, and wonder whether in the distant future someone will try to understand what we write today.
Credit above to Sierra Nevada Geotourism, and below to Wiki.
And we are different from the people who made these symbols, because the Modoc people were removed from their land at gunpoint. Their first encounter with white people was with Fremont's men, marching south, who mistook them for their traditional enemies, the Klamath, who they'd split off from six hundred years prior. (Imagine aliens landed on Earth in Russia, the Russian army shot at them, the aliens took off and landed again in the U.S. and attacked us to get revenge. That's what it was like.) Twenty-five years later the army came to remove the Modoc, the Modoc realized the land they had been marched off to was terrible, escaped and went back to the Lava Beds - where they used collapsed, un-roofed caves as a place for trench warfare. Two hundred men, women and children held off two thousand Union troops for six months, at one point making the mistake of thinking if they killed the Union chief (General Canby) that the Union would withdraw. The Modoc War only ended when the Union cut off their water supply, beginning the process of draining most of the lake that their answers fished on and made petroglyphs next to. (First photo below of one of the trenches in Captain Jack's Stronghold credit tripadvisor.)
Just outside the park is the monument to Tulelake internment camp, where almost 30,000 Japanese-Americans - those considered "troublemakers" among interned citizens - were sent during World War II. George Takei was here as a boy. I'm torn about this. It should be recognized and we should remember it and teach our kids about it so we don't make the same mistakes in the future. But somehow, once something like this is cleaned up and formally recognized, there's an artifical safety and sterility to the place, like it's behind glass (e.g., see the better-known Manzanar internment camp in the eastern Sierra.) The first time I saw it, I only knew where to look by looking it up ahead of time, and it was just piles of cinder blocks and rusting barbed wire, with no interpretive plaques to filter and protect us from reality. Image credit to discovernikkei.org.
MCCLOUD FALLS
They were cold this year. There was a bit of wading. Definitely no swimming. You want to see people being happy swimming, check out the video. (Narrator: they were not happy.)
MOUNT SHASTA
Well there it is man! Looming over most of the proceedings, and especially impressive when approached from the east via Route 89 (image credit newsfromnativecalifornia.com.) Please also enjoy this historical image of of this dashing and, dare I say, rougueish fellow conquering the mountain ca. 2003.
Footnotes
[1] You might understand the attraction to the idea of the Sutter Buttes as the southernmost Cascade - if you look back up at the map, there's a smaller ridge parallel to the southern boundary of the modern JDF plate, south of it, that comes ashore at Point Arenas and would pass immediately underneath the Buttes on the way to the northwest corner of Lake Tahoe. The Sutter Buttes are about 1.5 MA old, newer than the Cascades, but about the same age as the coastal volcanoes like Mt. Konocti at Clearlake, and the volcanics NW of Tahoe like Granite Chief and Red Star Ridge along the Western States Trail.)
[2] It's actually kind of amazing there were only 217" there on April 1, given California's historic rain and snow year - although the further north you went, the less remarkable it got. People in Washington State we visited were surprised to hear how wet it had been.
I was always interested in this mountain as a volcano. Years ago I was quite interested in the idea that the Sutter Buttes were in fact the southernmost Cascade - either way they're anomalous in their own right, but part of my argument was that they were close to, or not far south from, the Mendocino Triple Junction where the North American Plate, the Pacific Plate, and the Juan de Fuca (or at its southern extent, Gorda) Plate, the latter of which is a subducting rather than transverse plate associated with Cascade volcanism. These are the remnants of the Farallon Plate which once subducted under North America all the way to the Rockies.
Plates are physical objects, less abstract than you might think; the JDF for example can be measured as bending 60-80 degrees downward as it melts into the mantle about 200 miles inland (DiPietro, 2018.) The map above comes from a 1997 USGS report, "Tectonic Controls on Magmatism and Geothermal Resources in the Geysters-Clear Lake Region, California: Integration of New Geological, Earthquake Tomography, Seismicity, Gravity, and Magnetotelluric Data", and you can see the Triple Junction is actually about a hundred miles north of Konocti, and the Buttes are about 15 miles north of Konocti, over in the Central Valley. Some Tahoe-worthy views there, consistent with the elevation difference of 3,000' from lake to summit.
Of course, there are several volcanoes around here (St. Helena, Hood, Geyser Peak) and a) it's never that simple, plus b) what does it mean to talk about something being a "Cascade" or not? Case in point, there are flat fields of lava from just the last few thousand years around southern Oregon directly between Cascades - no one would argue that these flows resulted from the same process that created e.g. the Sisters, but is it a "Cascade"? This region has to do with more recent volcanism (~2 million years ago) resulting from a gap created by the San Andreas meeting the Triple Junction. The prominent dark colored rock you see in one of the photos below is actually sedimentary rock uplifted during the volcano's formation, not basalt.
Other notes: the oldest site of human habitation is at adjacent Borax Lake, one of several smallers lakes now separated by volcanic deposits. Clovis points dating from 12,000 years ago have been found there, with their age initially doubted but later confirmed by other means. Unless you have DNA, it is always both highly speculative and politically charged to try to determine if the people then make up a large part of the ancestry of the people who lived there at the time of contact with Europeans - case in point, Pomo people speak a language in the Hokan family and can be found as far south as San Diego County, and probably preceded Ohlone speakers (in the Penutian language family; at nearby Olompali, there was a turnover in the archaeological record about 4,000 years ago possibly corresponding to the arrival of proto-Miwoks who occupied it when they were trading with Russians and Mexicans.) The fire tower is from 1889, which surprised me (I would've placed it in the WPA era), and was being actively used by a lookout the day I was up there - and he was quite busy. It's been a bad fire seeason, and you can see the smoke layer in some of the pictures of the Glass Fire to the south, still not fully contained. The mountain was a healing place for the Pomo and boy did I need that yesterday. If you're interested in this stuff, there's a California State Parks report here, and another USGS report on the geological history of the Clear Lakes region.
So what was my excuse? A good friend from high school was getting married in Guatemala. So I went there to be in his wedding. And, to get more points, I also went to El Salvador.
EL SALVADOR
The most densely populated Central American country, it's one of the few on only one ocean (the Pacific), and has some cool parks, good seafood, and an interesting history - set aside as a colony just to grow indigo (which collapsed when aniline dye was invented in the 1870s) and with a smaller native cultural and genetic component than most if not all Central American countries. One day I did walk across a large fraction of the city and had a lot of interesting conversations with shop-owners along the way. People were extremely friendly and approachable and everyone seemed to have a relative either in Washington D.C., or the oddly-specific San Francisco suburb of Daly City. It seemed very much like NAFTA had benefited them, judging by the many small new-looking factories with foreign flags all over the place, and by the informal Tom Friedman standard, i.e the many taxi drivers, shop owners, etc. who said NAFTA was a good thing. I like to buy national soccer jerseys where I travel and I got what remains my favorite running shirt, an awesome blue jersey you can see in the photo of your handsome blogger at the top right of this very blog. (More than once people have called out "¡Salvador!" as I ran by them.)
Outdoors: it was nice for this Californian to learn that the Pacific does get warm once you go far enough south, but I finally got to a black beach, which turned out not be all they're cracked up to be. From the mountains in the interior I was tortured by the distant mirage of an absolutely beautiful white sand beach on the blue green ocean. Just as I complained in Morocco, trail-running was not really a possibility, despite the awesome-looking volcanoes ringing the town, as everyone assured me I would be robbed or worse. There was a possibility of taking a guided tour with people who had actually fought in the Salvadorean Civil War on the trails they used as guerillas. I'm already a little uncomfortable with American Civil War re-enactments, where everything is far in the past. And it seems even stranger that a few times, Japanese and American soldiers have met on the actual soil where they were trying to kill each other. But tourism? On the site of a very recent civil war with many unresolved questions? No thanks.
For some reason I strongly associate this trip with two books I read, Infidel, by the amazing Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Chung Kuo by David Wingrove, neither of which are about Central America. I tried to read something in Spanish by a Guatemalan Nobel prize winner, El SeƱor Presidente by Miguel Asturias, but had to confront that while my spoken Spanish isn't bad, it isn't up to reading a major novel.
Above: a fire tree. Below: typical views of the Salvadorean countryside.
The next few are from El Bosque Imposible (the Impossible Forest), a national reserve. It earned its name from the ruggedness and how difficult it is to cross. I joked with my driver that it should be called the Impossible Road given the way in. It's also infamous for both jaguars and mountain lions - it seems like this used to be El Salvador's answer to the Sundarbans' tiger buffet. The guide said during mating season you can listen for the cougars screaming their come-ons back and forth across these canyons. She also said she's had to turn around on hikes because of large boas and other snakes coiled in the trees at face-level right next to the trail, though fortunately we never had such problems. We did have a random cloud of wasps pass over us when we were at the highest point; when the guide saw this she froze and said "Don't move until they're all gone," then once they passed said "When the guide is nervous, you should be nervous too." Of course there were lots of dangerous-looking tropical plants and vines to complete the picture. I felt a bit like I was on a hostile alien planet at this point. To top it off, this is where I was taunted with a view of a far off white-stand beach. Still, on the drive back down, there was so much tropical fruit basically falling into our mouths through the open windows that the driver offered to stop a few times and when I got back to the hotel I was still full.
GUATEMALA
A side note: when I went on this trip, I was at a point in my life where, for whatever reason, I started being less interested in tolerating the discomfort necessary for a true "adventure". Because I no longer felt I needed to prove anything? Or recognized how useless that is? I had the money? I focused more on what I was there to see and do? Who knows. I knew while I was in San Salvador I would have to go down to the bus terminal and buy my one-way ticket to Guatemala City. When I did, I talked to the person at the window and learned there were two ways to get there. For $20, the "chicken bus", which most people who've traveled outside the OECD countries will understand; and for $36, a double-decker with air conditioning, a computer screen at every seat with free movies, cocktail service, and attractive attendants. Would I have had amazing, unique conversations with the people I met on the chicken bus? No doubt. But did I want A/C and martinis? Even less doubt.
I found myself wondering why I was even hesitating, and forked over the extra $16.
Guatemala City
Guatemala City is small, and the nice parts of it are really small. It's alright, but not that historic or pleasant (or safe) as a walking city - that would be Antigua, which unfortunately I didn't have time for. Some of the realities of life in Latin American cities are quite clear here. Asking people for directions outside of their few square blocks - I mean educated people who have been around - often met with blank stares, even when I could point to my desired destination on a map. Also, it became clear when we went out with my friend's in-laws-to-be that there were about two blocks in the center of the city that served as night life for the upper class. Everyone there seemed to know each other, and many of them were family members of industrial magnates or ambassadors. (Relevant: my friend's fiancee and her family are fairly light-complected; most Guatemalans are not.) A couple days after the wedding I went along on a trip to the "good" mall with her, and I asked her pointedly who all the white people on the fashion billboards were. "There are light-complected people in Guatemala!" she objected indignantly. "Yeah, and all two hundred of them were at your wedding," I said. That was a quiet ride back. I should shut up sometimes.
Pacaya Volcano
An active volcano just west of the city. Locals hike up it all the time, I guess because it's less active than Volcan de Fuego (which will definitely kill you, as opposed to possibly.) My friend's father-in-law had actually camped on it with his mother at one point! When I got there and realized how active it was - with booms and lava flows - I went part way up, and then had a rare moment of common sense which you can see in the videos below. Forgot actual volcanic activity - lightning is an even bigger problem on volcanoes in the tropics than elsewhere. Interesting experience. Wouldn't do it again.
The following three are (I believe) from the national museum in Guatemala City. Of course it's a Latin American Museum so it's loaded with more pre-Columbian treasures than you could imagine. I don't think stone carving realism achieved these heights anywhere else in the New World.
Above and below, some critters from Tikal. Howler monkeys would be terrifying to hear during their dawn chorus if you didn't know what lazy goofy guys they are. They're also scary because they urinate from the trees, tourists look up to see what's dripping, and then they finish. I swear they do it intentionally. The turkeys are amazingly colorful as you can see. I actually got a trail run in here, which despite the miserable humidity wasn't so bad; I guess I was expecting to be hot and sweaty. I realized as I was running back that there were all manner of nasty snakes (that I couldn't identify) to step on or fall on me from a tree. I also noticed the "Danger Crocodiles" sign at the little ponds I ran by. Bad times.
Above and below: tropical trees are strange. Below, a ceiba with classic tropical buttress roots, which Wallace recorded on his travels.
Below for many pictures: Tikal, which mostly speaks for itself.
The steps are every bit as steep as they look. The large headstone-looking objects are stelae with inscriptions about kings and military victories. They are not fully translated, but we understand their dating system, which is why we can say things like "On July second A.D. 748, Two-Grass vanquished his enemy Eight-Rabbit from the next city-state" because that's what the stelae tell us. (Of course, can we trust the stela-carvers? Prehistory is based on physical objects and can't lie to you in the same way.) Below, that's where sacrifices (human and otherwise) took place, with a gutter system for the resulting blood.
Above, what the main pyramid looks like from the back. Below, howler monkeys were often hard to spot, but if you look they're there.
The view out over the canopy. To Mayans, an open view of the sky unobstructed by trees must have been a revelation. Supposedly some of the Mayan city-states were so small that from the tops of their pyramids, the rulers could actually see the other city-states. I dozed off sitting up there and when I woke up a toucan had landed on the stone just in front of me.
Below, Yaxha. Another city a couple hours from Flores. Only 40% excavated. At the time, the rest of the known cities were only about that much or less. Frustrating that this hasn't occurred yet, but on the other hand it's pretty exciting to think about the discoveries that are surely yet to be made.
One of the mysteries of Mayan cities is that they don't seem to have been used for living - not by many people anyway, only by royalty and the priesthood. They do have some dwellings reconstructed but they're not impressive next to the ceremonial buildings. This is interesting for a few reasons, one of which is that there's an ongoing archaeological debate for cities in the Americas (including ones in the modern United States like Cahokia) - did the cities grow and then the religious monuments were built, or did the ceremonial and religious function of cities come first? Since the Americas are thought to reflect the developments that occurred in the ancient Near East (except delayed by about 4,000 years) the answer to this may have far-reaching implications for our understanding of ancient history. The recent discovery of many more buried structures spreading out around the core Mayan cities with the great pyramids may give the answer to this. And it makes sense - imagine if Martians landed on the Mall in Washington, D.C. a thousand years from now. They might like the monuments, but they'd wonder where everybody lived.
The leafcutter ants had quite a thriving civilization going in the shadow of the fallen Yaxha, leaving noticeable trails on the ground where they move back and forth. It struck me that they cannot understand that impossibly long ago from their perspective, a species far more intelligent and longer-lived than they built their own hive - but the ants outlasted them, oblivious that there was even anything to collapse, much less that it had. This leads quickly to all kinds of thoughts about finding alien life, the Fermi paradox, and the sober reflection that even ant civilizations have their own terminal failure modes.
Lake Atitlan - the Lake Tahoe of Guatemala, high enough in the mountains that it remains cool. My friend's in-laws had a cottage up there Cerro Del Oro with its own beach and not only let us stay there, but loaned me his kayak. There are locals who set traps in the lake to catch fish and although they work the waters for years, they never learn how to swim and sometimes fall from their boats and drown. The lake is surrounded by three separate Mayan languages still in vigorous use. (Cakchiquel is one of them. I recorded three videos walking through Cerro del Oro (herehere and here, video is kind of annoying, mostly so I could unobtrusively record people speaking Mayan.) In fact one kid about 10 years old came up and started talking to us in good English (refreshingly, out of curiosity, not asking for money) and when I asked him how he learned English, he said "By listening to tourists like you." Turned out he only spoke English and Cakchiquel, and not Spanish. The homeowner had also scared us with stories of alacranes (scorpions), saying his brother picked his shirt up off the floor one morning and put it on with a scorpion inside (= a bad time.) On the way up my friend's mother-in-law rode with her daughter, my friend and me, and we took a brief detour to the local gravity hill, which she insisted (as everyone does) was unique in the world. The flowers up there were amazing. At one point we stopped for everyone to taste the sweetness of coffee beans still growing on the plant and for some reason I was in a hurry to get there; one of my biggest regrets from the trip actually!
Above: our hosts noticed my fascination with this blanket, as I had become convinced that the symbols were a code (some of them repeated, seemingly non-randomly but not in a low-information pattern either.) My friend's father-in-law told me it was made by the wife of the groundskeeper and that he would be stopping by later. I asked him if they meant anything and he said no, which somehow only deepened my suspicion. I took this picture in case I wanted to tackle the problem later but you're welcome to it if you have free time!
Below: typical roads away from the lake, using lava rock to build, and finally the start of the road back to Guatemala City.
Solvitur ambulando! Note the thick brow-ridge and the death-grip on the beverage. You can email this handsome devil at mdcblogs@gmail.com. "[If you are depressed] go for a long walk...and if still depressed, then walk again." -Hippocrates ca. 410 BCE
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