March 12th, 1995 Palenque, Mexico.
I find myself staring in awe at the Mayan Ruins of Palenque, in the Chiapanecan Jungle. Wondering who were their inhabitants the Mayans? where did they go and why did they leave? I want to know, I need to see what lies beyond the thick wall of tall ceiba trees, giants surrounding this meadow. Then I realize I no longer have a choice. I take a deep breath and walk through this massively dense portal, not knowing what lied beyond, waiting for me.
Paths have been made from walking, and so I strolled through this autobahn of my roots, my blood.
There’s a hum and a thousand rattles, then silence.
The sun begins to go down, I suddenly find myself alone, and darkness all around me. I sit, and listen, and wait and eventually fall asleep.
Footsteps approach quickly, men, two of them, traveling extremely light and fast, maybe barefoot. I open my eyes, dawn is almost here. As I see their shadows, moving through the woods, I must be at least 12 miles from the nearest town; there’s nobody else here but me, or so I thought. I was wrong, dead wrong.
Suddenly I found myself completely lost, as if floating in the middle of a dark, deep ocean. I had walked into the unknown, opened the closet door, and peeked under the bed.
I was outside of my element in the most absolute way. Safety became primordial; staying alive was the only thing in my mind. I can hear them talking, whispering.
I can identify over 10 different languages and I can understand more than five, and I know this one; it is a dialect, a tongue, the language of the Lacandons.
Swiftly they start running again, only this time faster, much faster. Their steps resonate like spears in the jungle, and they are coming straight towards me.
I take a deep breath, clench my knife in a fist, and assume a well practiced defense position, using a tree behind me to cover my back. And then, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Ten minutes later my muscles begin to relax, I drop my defense. I can’t see them or hear them, but I know they are there, watching me. The jungle becomes incredibly small, and turns into a 20 feet perimeter that surrounds me, a perimeter of life and death.
Silence falls and breaks like a vase on linoleum when one of them whistles like an eagle. It echoes, rips like fine linen, like a flashlight in the night. Then, footsteps, this time slower, stronger, thumping the wet dirt, announcing their approach. Again, they are coming towards me.
And suddenly, a friendly “Hola” chases the fear away like a dog chases the mailman. They are two young Lacandon men, clearly younger than me. They appear surprised at my being there. one climbs up on a tree and descends with a coconut like fruit, cuts the top of it with his machete and offers it to me as a symbol of peace and friendship. I drink its content, sweet, similar to coconut milk. After a short exchange of words they told me to follow them. They were just a couple of young kids, probably in their early twenties. It is amazing to find out that people still live in those places, deep in the jungle, as distant from a hotspot or the mediocrities of our corrupt societies. They did not appear to be hunting, they seemed more to be just hanging out.
I guess, perhaps their parents make those incredibly colorful handcrafts, those we shamelessly bargain for. And while only one of them spoke little Spanish, they eventually showed me the way out, back to my campsite, two miles south of the ruins.
I can’t remember their names, but I remember their faces, their long straight black hair, the pronounced noses and slanted forehead. They where indeed what I was looking for; direct descendants of the Mayan, of Kukulcan and Sacbe.
It isn't without fear that I remember the sounds, the haunting, and the darkness.
But more than that, I remember the freedom that came from walking into the unknown.
From opening that door, from slipping through the keyhole, from swimming in the deep, from jumping off the highest springboard, from getting close to 40, from moving to a different country, from ending something that had already ended a long time ago, and from not losing the hope of living and of falling in love again, I learned that the rage of living, is the only way to live.
Courage was nothing but the chariot.
