La Montana

It was the first time I visited the store out on the edge of the small truck stop/town where I lived. All the stores in the boonies of Guatemala had a tin roof, a dirty concrete floor, and felt like an oven during the day. I had never been there before but I had heard rumors and I was on a mission. I walked in and the owner says, "Hola Pablo, why haven’t you come to see me sooner?" Being a head taller than everyone and butt white makes you kind of stick out, so everyone knows you and your business even if you have no idea who they are. I smiled, sweat trickling down my back, and tried to make out what he sold in the dark interior. There were a few old animal hides tacked up, odd car parts, insecticides, warm sodas and beer, machetes, aspirin, antibiotics, the necessities. I asked his name and apologized for not making his acquaintance sooner. He knew I was some kind of gringo "scientifico" who worked with the Ministry of Agriculture and the conversation slowly coalesced around wildlife in the area and the collection of wild things he had at his "rancho". He even showed me a stuffed sea turtle. It’s bad manners to bring up any relevant subject in the first half hour of conversation but I eventually managed to get to the point. (And you wonder why things take forever in the Third World). "So Don Humberto, do you know where I could buy any 22 caliber bullets?" He made a face of mock confusion and rattled on about how such things were against the law. It was true. In Guatemala it’s against the law to own firearms or posses ammo, however anyone with money (mostly the light-skinned elite) carried a pistol and owned a small arsenal. We danced around the subject and he said he might know where to get some. A minute later he reached under the counter and pulled out several boxes of nice shiny 22 rounds. I bought two boxes, thanked him profusely and made my escape.

Why would a semi-law-abiding gringo want bullets? It started a couple of weeks before in a remote Mayan village called El Bongo. I worked with the Quechis showing them how to dig big holes and fill them with water to raise minnows and snails. I would travel up the lake for a couple of hours by dugout canoe (with outboard motor thank god) then hike into the hills. El Bongo was quite a development showcase. The village was clean, organized and sported a church and school. They had a little house built for visitors like me with even a shower and flush toilet (in the yard of course). It was a tropical log cabin, up on posts with loud wood floors, everything rough mahogany planks and a perfect thatch roof. Good, clean water got piped in to all the houses from a spring up on the mountain. I used to carry a gallon out with me like it was holy water (tap water you could drink!). The village sat in the foothills below some nice rainforest. From the lake and the village the forested mountains hung in the distance like a mirage, a giant green backdrop to everything I did. You could see the forest but could you get there, know it, and find your way out? The thought gnawed at me.

The village took turns feeding me. Usually I found a little kid standing quietly in the front yard and without a word I would follow him to a hut with food waiting. I’d seat myself at a makeshift table and eat hot tortillas and black beans (no silverware and no conversation). Mayan women are the epitome of quiet servitude and shyness. They’d even run away and hide in the corn when I approached on a path. Rumors circulated that gringos were baby-stealing demons. I loved to sit in the cool, thatched huts and watch the chickens and pigeons peck at the clean swept dirt floors. Blinding sun broke through stick walls and with the drifting kitchen smoke the shafts of light hung solid yet molten in the darkness. Long silences where I existed only in that moment were punctuated by small sounds; tortillas patted out round and thick, fire crackling, dogs scratching.

The Mayans have two faces. One they wear in town. Subservient and quiet they stand in a store, in the background, until asked to step forward. Latinos walk in last but get served first. They fear the greater Latino culture and with good reason given the centuries of discrimination and abuse. In their village and especially in the forest they are transformed into confidant, humorous men in their element. They know the ways of animals and can follow a deer or peccary track for miles from an overturned leaf here and there or the slightest impression of a hoof, things invisible to me. They know which plants cure infections and which to snack on. They build their homes without nails or any man made materials. Mayans know special vines for lashing and harvest palm leaves for their roofs only during the dark of the moon to prevent rot. Saplings split and lashed make the walls. As long as there is enough forest to go around they live much better than their brethren in populated areas.

It was on one visit that Don Pedro asked if I’d ever been up in the forest. I explained that almost everyday, when the men were out in the fields, I’d wander the forest for hours. I would head out of the village then through the last fields and as I passed a small stream where the jungle began I’d make the sign of the cross because it felt like entering a cathedral; suddenly coolness and a dark interior, with a thousand smells of life and decay and the mystery of giant trees. He clicked his tongue at me unbelieving and said he thought I just slept all day. He glanced at me from a brown, careworn face, his dark almond eyes glinting with humor. I studied his calloused hands with the last joint in each finger permanently bent from countless hours gripping a machete. His small, impossibly wide feet were cracked like old leather. That’s what feet become after a lifetime working in cheap rubber boots without socks. I told him where the river passed and about the huge tree being sawed into boards and of other paths and where they led. His expression changed as the truth in my words struck home. "But Don Pablito aren’t you afraid all alone with the jaguars and the Duendes?" "No" I said, "the only real danger is the snake and for that you watch your step and the Duendes (forest spirits) won’t bother me unless I’m up to no good". He laughed and said, "Oh you’re right I was just trying to scare you". He grew serious as he motioned towards the mountains and said I should go with him to his other "farm". "However, if we go we will need bullets".

Maybe Don Pedro thought I’d be good for a few laughs stumbling around the forest or maybe he knew a gringo wouldn’t have trouble getting bullets and would probably pay for them. I didn’t care why I just wanted to go. I said "vamonos" and told him I’d be back in a couple of weeks with some 22 rounds.

I showed up at his door later that month. He greeted me as if he expected me just then. News of one’s arrival always travels faster than you, amazing "bush telegraph". I just handed him the boxes of bullets. His smile was so huge his eyes disappeared. He said he couldn’t make the trip up to his farm for several days and went on about work he needed to do. I knew that could mean we were leaving tomorrow or in a month. I guess time moves differently when you live by the cycle of the seasons. I sat down in the ever-present hammock, stifling a dread third-world feeling that we would never go. In the end I went home and back to El Bongo two times before we finally did leave.

The day came and we got an early start, the mist still rising in spirals from the forest canopy and a pink glow on the mountain. We forded the river and the trail started to climb through dripping, green jungle, intense dew-rain. Even with my fancy hiking boots I had trouble keeping up. I always felt soft and corrupted when I was with Mayans, guilt from always having so much shit to wear and eat.

I had a small daypack filled with; rain poncho, sheet, insect repellant, extra socks, TP, underwear, and a water bottle and I was massively overloaded compared to my Mayan friends. Don Pedro brought his brother and two nephews along and they had two rifles, half busted and held together with wire, some salt, dried chilies and a supply of "poches" (corn dumplings). (Unwrap them from the leaves they were cooked in and dry them by the fire so they don’t mold. When its time to eat you slice them, put them on a stick marshmallow style, and roast them over the fire.) They also brought along their "huntin dogs". I never paid much attention to the skeletal dogs that were as much a part of a Mayan village as chickens or children. Small and driven by two tortillas a day, they appeared good for nothing but barking at strangers. In the forest they turned into relentless hunting machines. I’d never understood the ferocity of a dog.

You can judge remoteness by animal sign. The big mammals disappear first. In the Sierra Santa Cruz tapir and white-lipped peccary were all but gone. Monkeys were decimated in the 70’s when a yellow fever epidemic spread from people in the region. Sometimes you’ll see an edible palm but only when you’re way out. (You cut down the thin, thirty foot tall palm to harvest a couple of feet of three inch diameter heart, so sad but so tasty!) Vines to build with were gone near the village. Just lots of trees with old vine death grip scars. Sometimes the wilderness dies piecemeal.

Animals in the rainforest move with stealth when they have to move and stay hidden otherwise. There are just to many things trying to eat you. Walk for hours and you’ll only break your life record for squito kills but then stumble across a mixed feeding flock of birds and for ten minuets you are overwhelmed trying to ID a few species. Then they are gone and you think you’re alone. Find a bird’s nest. Walk over and peak in. You just tipped off a predator and have almost certainly doomed the eggs and chicks. Something is always watching, spooky. Mammals and reptiles are even harder to see. If you’re alone walking quietly around dawn and dusk or at night with a spotlight you may see something, but why bother? We had dogs and that makes all the difference.

A berserk melee of dog pile and barking let us know where an animal had its burrow. Alejandro, Don Pedro’s nephew grabbed a machete and; WHACK, WHACK, a sapling becomes a pole, WHACK-WHACK, the end cut flat for shovel effect. Alejandro had on a ripped t-shirt and an old red baseball cap without a brim, the appearance of a Catholic Cardinal perhaps the day after Armageddon. He began to dig. A minute later he knelt, the dogs barking wildly, and stuck his whole arm down the enlarged entrance. He pulled out an armadillo and it was already going through a death tremor as he stood up. He had wrung the critter’s neck with one hand while pulling it out of its’ hole, amazing. I saw him do it five times that day.

The next few hours were an agonizing blur, climbing. I fell on some thorny branches someone in front had cut and left in the trail. It was on a steep slope going down to a spring and I bitched while I pulled thorns out of my crotch. It was funny in retrospect. At some point they were collecting some shitty bark or something or maybe digging out another god damn armadillo (my mental state had deteriorated) and I sat down, put my head on my knees and would have dozed off except for the mosquitoes nailing me. Don Pedro took pity on me and told Alejandro and Juan to take me to the farm. A half hour later we entered a rough clearing while Don Pedro and his brother Miguel went on hunting.

He called this small clearing so far out in the mountains a "farm"? I didn’t understand. Five acres of charred trunks lying at crazy angles, damn obstacle course. You then planted corn where you could in the spaces. In a corner of the field near a spring, we found a tiny hut with a fire pit and some "bunks" made of saplings. He later told me that by clearing this spot and planting some corn he would have a claim on the land. This place would mean land thus a life for his other sons. Plus it was a damn nice huntin set up. The Mayans had been doing this since the Gods made them out of corn.

When we reached the hut Alejandro and Juan prepared the armadillos. First they scorched the leathery shell with fire and knocked off the scales with a rock. They were meticulous in their work and soon had the critters in sections and boiling in a large pot. Before dark Pedro and Miguel returned. They had shot five coatis (jungle raccoon). I missed all the action, damn it! The organs of the coatis went in the pot with the armadillo. The fur was scorched off and their bodies hung up to smoke. Real meat goes back to the village to be sold or eaten.

Coatis travel in big groups, almost baboon like. When the alarm "barks" go off they scatter, run up trees, chaos. Then they all freeze and it’s silent. I was sitting in the jungle years later and I heard the soft whisper of what I thought was rain. It grew louder, coming closer, no clouds in sight. I was getting nervous and crouched down when I saw it was close to a hundred coatis, all nosing the leaf litter. I was in the middle of a coati wave 50 yards long. Finally a baby the size of a kitten walks onto the path and sniffs the toe of my boot. He bolts and barks and all hell broke loose. They eventually melted away with hardly a sound.

I got the play by play on the coati massacre. The dogs chased seven up a tree. They got five with six shots. Two jumped and escaped. We lit a smoky kerosene wick and sat on the floor, with an insane drone of insects for entertainment. We didn’t talk much so what I remember best was the smell of the wick, wet dogs and damp clay, the taste of smoked chilies and the sound of short rain bursts on the thatch. We ate armadillo, the shell sections shaped like a watermelon rind with white meat stuck on the inside. I declined to slurp out the contents of the coati’s small intestine. My culinary curiosity has limits. Coatis are the ultimate omnivores and the half digested fruits, grubs and God knows what is probably tasty stuff.

We spent the next day tending crops, mostly machete work for weed control. They would plant corn on the next visit. I mostly sat and daydreamed, looking at the only patch of sky from the clearing. Sometimes after a day in the forest you walk out in a clearing and it feels like you can breath deeper, like you just surfaced from the bottom of a fish tank. Miguel and Pedro did some hunting in the afternoon but no luck. They were all disappointed with the hunting and endless rounds of explanations followed; the animals just knew we were there, it had been raining too much, we offended the Duendes, etc..

On the third day it started to piss down rain. They call it "chippy- chippy", an endless mist/rain that hits during the "winter". An early retreat seemed inevitable. We gathered up our stuff and started hiking. It was better walking down in the rain than up in the heat. I just zoned out and put one foot in front of the other. My pack got heavier with the rain and when we stopped to rest (for me), I was cold after a minuet. In my mind’s eye the hut in El Bongo was paradise. I was sopping wet and muddy from several falls when I finally clomped up the wood steps. I even had mud on my hat. Now that’s falling. I didn’t have a stash of dry clothes so I stripped down and hit the sack just as it got dark.

That was the end of the beginning cause like any sucker for punishment I have been out in la montana ever since.