![](daniel_novel_photo_small.jpg")
chapter 7
When the morning mail arrived, there was a package for me from a former classmate. When I first arrived here, I had sent him a letter, asking for information on Mount Paricutín, the cornfield volcano which had erupted in the 1940's. I was surprised to be getting a response this soon.
On taking it to my room and opening it, I found it contained a 200-page report in the form of a bound volume, published by the U.S. Geological Survey. The author was Dr. Howel Williams, dean of American vulcanologists. This was exactly the sort of book I'd hoped for, and best of all, it included a study of this entire area, along with detailed maps: Volcanoes of the Paricutín Region Mexico : Geological Survey Bulletin 965-B. For me, it was a geological guidebook to everything around me, including Uruapan. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
It wasn't something you could find on the shelf of just any bookstore. I wondered where he'd gotten it. Then, as I paged through it, something caught my eye--the company logo of a geological firm which had been stamped in it. I hoped he hadn't lifted it from his employer's library.
This material was really useful because I intended to spend much of my spare time studying the geology of this region. By doing so I intended to hone my skills, and possibly even write a paper on the local geology. The first thing a geologist must do is read the available literature. I had brought a couple of volumes with me, but I couldn't have foreseen that I'd wind up in the Meseta Volcánica.
The package included a letter from my friend. "What a surprise to hear from you in México!" he wrote. "But I guess I shouldn't be too astonished. You were our desert-rat field geologist, and we considered you the most likely to head out for some remote corner of the earth. . ."
He told about a job he'd found, and also mentioned classmates he'd seen since our graduation, places they were working and news in general. It was a cheerful, uplifting letter--until, near the end, he said, "By the way, I was never sure whether you really graduated. Did you?"
The question disturbed me. I read on. There was a rumor about me, but the details weren't clear from this letter. Perhaps my friend was embarrassed to repeat exactly what he'd heard, or, more likely, he himself didn't quite understand what it was all about.
Well, I could easily guess what the talk was about--the fact that my professor had ghostwritten my thesis paper. He was supposed to advise me on my project, but he'd ended up completing it himself, and I became little more than the clerk-typist of my own thesis. It had been a humiliating experience, and I'd been so sickened by it that I hadn't bothered to attend the graduation ceremonies, or the class party.
Dr. Hans Knudsen was the professor's name. Like myself, he was a descendent of Norwegian immigrants. What a detestable irony, to have been betrayed by a fellow Norseman! I could just imagine that if he had lived in Nazi-occupied Norway, the bastard would've probably been a quisling. No doubt about that.
"You'll get over it," people always say of a thing like this, though nobody actually had said that to me because I hadn't told anybody about it. It had been just too upsetting to talk about. Nevertheless, I'd been hoping that it was one of those closet skeletons that would pass unnoticed and disappear with time. But now I'd found that my classmates were gossiping about it. Maybe one doesn't live down a thing like that.
The practical implications also disturbed me. I feared that my degree might be considered fraudulent. My credibility as a geologist, at least in my own estimation, was dubious.
I thought of Grandma, of how proud she would've been to see me graduate, had she lived. But, there are things which no grandmother could wish to see. Her untimely death had at least spared her the ignominy of seeing me get that dubious degree, and I also wondered what Chayo might think of me if she knew of my failure.
For a long while I sat there mulling it over as I had so many times since finishing my studies at the university, but as always, no positive thoughts came to mind, and I despaired that any would. It was depressing. I decided to go to the dining room and chat with whomever might be there. I needed to get out of my room, out of my misery. The dining room was the social center of this establishment.
I stepped out into the midday sun. Cuauhtémoc looked my way, but he kept his distance over on the far side of the courtyard as I walked from my room to the tin-roofed dining hall.
"Buenas tardes," Carlos greeted me as I entered. Huero Marco pulled out a chair for me in a welcoming gesture. "Have a seat."
Huero Marco was the blue-eyed fellow whom I'd believed to be a foreigner that first evening. Doña Josefina had later told me his parents were Germans who had immigrated here back in the 1930's to escape the Nazis. A good many European refugees had come to México in those years. Carlos, on the other hand, had brown skin and black hair, and could trace his ancestry back to pre-conquest times. The two of them worked together on an engineering project nearby. At this moment they were apparently on their noon break.
The thick game board I had seen before was on the table between them, this time almost completely covered with black and white stones. They appeared to be finished with whatever they were playing.
"So how's your day?" Carlos asked.
"Good," I lied, but I did feel better just to be talking to someone.
We chatted about the weather. I mentioned my astonishment at the intense summer rains and thunderstorms. Huero Marco told of seeing a tree struck by lightning. That had been the previous summer.
At one end of the table were an empty tequila bottle and two empty glasses. I grinned. "Palomo and Morito were here?"
Carlos nodded with a smile, and made a good-natured remark about the pair. Palomo and Morito were their nicknames; the bird honchos was my appellation for them, when I'd mentioned them in my journal. Like their avian protégé, they were macho types, but there was a cheerful, slightly humorous atmosphere about them that seemed to charm everyone.
As we spoke I'd been glancing at the game board, thinking of how on first seeing it I'd mistaken it for a meat-chopping block. Well, it did look like one, except for the ruled black lines on its smooth upper surface.
"Is that a game from Aztec times?" I said at last; it was something I'd been wondering about for some time now, ever since I'd first seen it, the day I'd moved in here.
"Oh, no." They both chuckled. "Es japones."
"¿De veras? And all this time I've been thinking it must be Aztec!"
We all laughed. The name of it was Go, they explained, and told me something of how the game was played. The reason the board was so thick was that Japanese players sat on the floor, and the thickness of the board brought it up to the height of a low table.
Marco got up for some more coffee, and refilled Carlos' cup as well. "You don't drink coffee?" he said to me.
"Oh yes, I do."
"The cups are in the kitchen. Help yourself."
I went to get myself a cup, and, while looking for one, I heard the sound of footsteps entering the room I had just left, then:
"¿Dónde está el amante de la bruja?" It was a voice I didn't recognize.
Bruja? Had I heard that right? Bruja meant witch. The newcomer had apparently asked about someone known as the witch's boyfriend. Me? Could it be me that he was referring to? Was Chayo known as la bruja around here? I was tempted to peek through the chicken-wire partition to see who the speaker was, but my eavesdropping might be discovered.
The unseen man talked a lot, but I couldn't catch what else he said. The others didn't seem to be responding. I still hadn't found where the cups were kept. Finally I took a dirty one from a tray, went out through the kitchen door to the pila and washed it.
When I returned to the dining room the owner of the voice was still holding forth, sitting slightly apart from Carlos and Marco, who looked slightly bored. I slowly and deliberately poured my coffee, studying the man from a slight distance. I'd seen him here before. He was apparently a fellow resident, though he didn't usually join us for dinner, but when he did, in contrast to the rest of us, he always wore a white shirt and tie, apparently implying that he had some position of importance.
"Buenas tardes," I said to him, interrupting his monologue. It may have been a bit rude of me, but this guy didn't seem to deserve a lot of courtesy. He spoke in such a boastful and condescending manner.
He paused to look up at me, but, instead of returning my greeting, resumed his discourse, something about a gang of drug runners. It sounded like an intriguing story, and I sat down to listen, though I was the only one who showed any interest in what the guy was saying. One member of the gang he was telling about had been a hit man who'd made quite a name for himself, before recently getting himself killed.
"You ever meet the guy?" I asked.
"Did I ever meet him?" he snorted. "We used to drink together!" His chuckle of triumph came out like a slightly demented cackle.
He returned to his narrative. He represented himself as being personally acquainted with all the colorful characters in this region, and I wondered what his connection with them might be, as he certainly didn't look like a tough guy himself, but more likely a wannabe. I concluded that he was more likely an office clerk than a person of importance.
Carlos and Huero Marcos were unimpressed. I suspected they'd heard this sort of stuff from him before. They began a conversation between themselves, leaving him without an audience. A moment later Cuauhtémoc came strutting into the room, cocked his head to one side and listened for a bit. Then he crapped on the floor and left.
Eventually the man in the white shirt and tie got up to leave. "Hasta luego," he said.
"Hasta luego," I said. Nobody else responded to him.
Carlos looked up as the door shut, shaking his head and saying something I didn't catch. Huero Marco smiled at the remark, then got up and poured us each another coffee.
My curiosity got the better of me. "A bit ago, when I was in the kitchen, did that guy ask about a witch's boyfriend?"
Carlos nodded.
"Who was he talking about?" I said. "¿Quién es el amante de la bruja?"
Both Carlos and Marco looked at me rather strangely. Finally Carlos said, "Don't pay attention to anything Juan says."
Huero Marco nodded, affirming what Carlos had told me.
"Juan," I repeated. "Is that his name?"
"Juan Diosdado," said Carlos.
"Un culero," remarked the other, and they both laughed.
When I was back in my room, I took out my dictionary and looked for culero, but it wasn't listed.
* * *
Later that week Chayo took the day off, and together we set out to visit Paricutín, the cornfield volcano. It was only twenty air kilometers from Uruapan, but by road it was naturally much farther, an hour's bus ride through a region studded with dozens of ancient pine-forested volcanoes. It was as though someone had stood below the earth's crust and fired a shotgun.
The names of several volcanoes were on a map included with the volume my classmate had sent me. I tried to identify some of them as we rode along. We were passing one that I figured was Volcán Alberca.
"Let me see that map," Chayo said. I handed it to her, and she studied it for a moment. "It's Volcán Cutzato," she corrected me. "Alberca is behind us."
"You know this area well," I said, doing my best to suppress chagrin over having erred in my field of expertise.
"This is my homeland," she said, then took my hand in hers in a consoling manner. "It was an easy mistake to make. The road has been changed since the map was made."
There were moments like this when Chayo took great pains to show consideration of my feelings, and yet there were other times when she could be almost cruel--like the evening when she'd almost gleefully squeezed my sore hand, and asked me if it hurt.
We got off at the village of Angahuán and walked past a long-dormant cone on our way into the village. This was an Indian village; an enclave which still retained a vestige of the ancient, pre-Hispanic culture.
Here, inhabitants lived in windowless log houses with steep shingled roofs. Wooden houses of this type are called "troje," Chayo told me. She was explaining things as we walked along the village street. Women were dressed in full-length skirts of blue cloth, and men wore straw hats with a ridge down the center of the crown. I'd occasionally seen people dressed like this in the market place in Uruapan.
Unlike the nomadic Sioux, Comanchies and Apaches--the ones who generally come to mind when we Northamericans think of Indians--these people had been sedentary farmers since pre-Hispanic times. Basically, they'd lived pretty much like the soil-tilling peasants of any other ancient empire--Egyptian, Roman or Chinese, and their station in life and mode of existence hadn't changed much since the time of their remote ancestors. They raised mostly the same crops as their ancestors had, corn and beans.
As in any ancient civilization, there'd been a warrior class, a priesthood, and a small group of intellectuals. Some of their ancient traditions had been recorded by a Spanish friar who arrived in the 1530's. His work, known as Relación de Michoacán, had been lost in the depths of an archive where it had lain for three and a half centuries before it was finally rediscovered and published in 1903.
Chayo took an interest in the culture and traditions of this region known as the Meseta Volcánica, and she'd already told me much about it. Until my arrival in Michoacán, I hadn't even known that there had been a civilization in this region that rivaled the Aztecs.
As we passed by the plaza, an announcement blared from a loudspeaker mounted on a pole.
"Did you hear that?" Chayo said.
"It doesn't sound like Spanish. Is that in Tarascan?"
"Yes. It's the ancient language of Michoacán. My great grandfather spoke it." She paused to say something to a woman in an embroidered blue dress.
I didn't understand a single word. Even Chayo's tone of voice, accent and intonation were suddenly very different. The village woman responded in the same language.
"We're going to the horse corral," Chayo told me as we continued on down the narrow street. "It's not much farther."
Horse corral? I wondered why we were going there, but I didn't bother to ask about that. I said, "So you speak the Tarascan language."
"A little," she said. "Enough to ask directions."
"Does everyone in this region have a working knowledge of it?"
"No. Only those who live in the Indian villages. And a few of us who've made the effort."
"Then how did you come to learn it?"
"It was a part of my heritage, like Norwegian is for you. Does everyone in Minnesota speak Norwegian?"
"No. Most speak only English."
"That's how it is here too."
"It seems to be that way everywhere," I said.
"I think so," she said. "Mexicans who are born and raised in California generally speak English and forget their Spanish. It's sad."
"Tarascan must be very difficult," I said.
"It's not easy. But at least it's now written in the same alphabet we use, and that helps."
"There are books in Tarascan?"
"Of course there are. Even school textbooks. The early Spanish friars used the Latin script and applied it to Tarascan. They also compiled dictionaries," she explained.
"Interesting."
"And Norse? How did you come to learn it?"
"From my grandmother."
"She didn't speak English?"
"Oh yes. But she felt it important that I learn Norwegian. And long before I started school, when I was just four years old, she used to sit me on her knee and teach me to read from a book of Norwegian nursery rhymes."
"You still remember any?"
"Yes, I do."
"Let me hear one," she said.
I recited: "Ride, Ride Ranke, hesten heter Blanke."
"¡Que gracioso! What does it mean?"
"It's about a little boy riding a horse, presumably a wooden horse," I said.
We arrived at a corral, where village boys rented horses to tourists. There were quite a few tourists here, all of them apparently Mexican. As everywhere in this region, I seemed to be the only foreigner.
"Would you like to ride?" Chayo asked me.
One of the horses was giving me a sour look.
"Couldn't we just walk?" I said.
"I haven't ridden horseback recently," she said firmly.
I knew that Chayo had grown up on a ranch near Uruapan. It suddenly hit me that being a rancher's daughter, she'd perhaps grown up in a tradition where every real man was expected to show some competence in horsemanship. But I'd never ridden a horse before in my life, and I knew I'd look ridiculous. What if I fell off?
"I've never done this before," I said.
"You haven't? Maybe it's time for you to learn."
All of the horses were now eyeing me. Every single one of them was giving me a dubious look, and I hadn't the least desire to ride any of them. On the other hand, I could see that Chayo would be disappointed with me if I didn't make the attempt.
"Well?" she said, a bit impatiently, letting me know for certain that she intended to put me to the test. The tougher side of her had come to the fore again. Only moments before, she'd been so kind and understanding.
It hadn't crossed my mind when we set out that morning that I might be faced with anything like this. I tried to think of an honorable way out, but there clearly wasn't any. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"But how can I study the rocks from horseback? I want to see them up close."
"We'll only ride the horses down to the lava flow," she said. "From there we'll go on foot."
I eyed the horses timidly and I wanted to say no. It was one of those moments when I wished I'd never left Minnesota. "I'll try it," I said, with great trepidation.
Chayo turned to negotiate the rental of the horses, and I took a final look at the sky above and the pine trees around me. I said a mental good-by to her, feeling a sense of impending doom.
"No te preocupas," Chayo said softly and with one hand gave my arm a gentle squeeze. In her other hand she now held the reins of two horses. "You'll do well. Yo sé."
Her words were like a benediction, and I felt somewhat encouraged. I put my foot in the stirrup, just as I had seen so many cowboys in Westerns do, and somehow I ended up in the saddle without any mishap. I was even pointed in the right direction. My horse began to move, to trot or whatever it is that horses do. For a moment I closed my eyes and held my breath in fear that awful things were going to happen. But I hung on and stayed on top as the horse meandered down the trail.
Finally I opened my eyes. I was still alive. The sunlight was as beautiful as ever and Chayo was on another horse, off to one side of me.
"You're doing fine," she called out to me.
A couple of the boys were running along ahead of us down the trail, holding onto the reins to guide the horses.
Despite my fears, I didn't fall off, and as we rode down the trail through the forest, I almost began to enjoy the experience.
It turned out to be a short ride, and we emerged from the forest onto a wide stretch of black sand. Above it rose the lava flow, like the front of a huge, incoming ocean wave. A petrified wave.
Rising above this sea of hardened rock stood the twin towers of a large old church, now in ruins. The rest of the structure had been inundated by liquid rock. The towers looked like the superstructure of a partially submerged ship.
"The village of San Juan?" The name came to me. I'd seen this place in drawings and photos, even on postcards.
"Sí, las ruinas," she said.
We dismounted and left the horses to the boys. They promptly rented them to a couple of tourists who were ready to return, and we set out to explore.
A narrow path among the jagged boulders took us up to the ruins of the old church, and from there we could look out over the lava flow. It was a stormy sea of frozen crests and waves of broken rock which extended off into the distance, bounded on all sides by inactive volcanoes, all except one of which were covered with pine trees. That was Paricutín, some five or six kilometers away, at the head of the flow. It loomed up like a large pile of gravel against the green forested background.
Paricutín had been named after one of the villages it had destroyed. Standing a couple hundred meters above the surrounding lava and measuring half a kilometer across its base, it was of about average size for this region. These small volcanoes, Paricutín as well as the older, tree-covered ones, were called cinder cones. They were formed from the ash and cinders that were tossed up in the air during eruptions and then fell back to earth, piling up around the vent. The ash and cinders were pulverized pieces of igneous rock.
A dozen of these cinder cones could be seen from where we stood. Each marked a separate volcanic event, indicating that each new eruption had occurred in a new and different place. Why that was, I didn't know, but as a geologist the question intrigued me.
Almost everywhere else in the world, except for here on this particular plateau, the Meseta Volcánica, successive eruptions normally occurred in the same volcanic edifice, eventually building huge mountains such as Fuji, Shasta and Vesuvius, as well as Popocatépetl and the other famous volcanoes of central México. In contrast, this region with its myriad of small cinder cones was extremely unique--but it hadn't always been this way here either.
From reading the geological report, I knew there had once been a single towering volcano--its inactive remains still dominated this landscape, though it had eroded so much that it no longer looked like a volcano. That was Mount Tancítaro, which rose up behind Paricutín to an elevation of 3,845 meters, still the tallest peak in Michoacán, though at one time in the geological past it must've been much higher than it is today. For some bizarre reason, around 100,000 years ago it ceased to erupt, and smaller cones like Paricutín had been springing up to take over the volcanic function of this region. By some counts there were 1,400 volcanic vents in this part of México. A good many of those were concentrated here around Mount Tancítaro.
We were on the north side of Mount Tancítaro now; I was used to seeing it from Uruapan, where I'd had to look westward. At don Pablo's hotel, I'd sometimes climbed the ladder to the water tank on the roof, where on clear days I got a good view of the mountain. Carlos and Huero Marco had told me that in winter it was sometimes covered with snow. At first I'd thought they were kidding me, but Chayo had assured me otherwise. "Es cierto," she'd affirmed.
The ground where Paricutín now stood had been a cornfield until February 7th, 1943, when it burst into life. It was active for nine violent years, showering the entire plateau as far east as Uruapan with ash, and producing this lava flow. The lava had poured out like thick molasses, often advancing only a meter or so a day, taking months to reach this church and the village of San Juan. People had time to get out of the way, and there were no fatalities.
I remarked to Chayo on the irony of the lava coming all this distance, just far enough to engulf this magnificent church, and then halting a few meters beyond.
"God laughs at us," Chayo replied. "We are but toys to her--that's what the ancient Aztecs used to say, and I think it's often true. She does laugh at us, and she laughs hardest when we make her into a masculine deity and desperately try to please her with adulation and pretentious churches."
"It would seem that way," I said.
"It is that way. That's what the Aztecs said of their god. And, in my view, the Spanish god has been no different."
We stepped from the lava into an upper story of one of the bell towers, and from there we looked down into the interior of the inundated church. Getting this far had been fairly easy. But as I looked up and studied the surrounding lava flow, I could see that walking out across it would be extremely difficult, and that was something of a surprise to me.
Despite my studies in geology, I'd never actually seen a fresh lava flow till now. I'd only seen ancient flows that were millions of years old and exposed in outcroppings, and those had all been smoothed by the action of erosion. It had somehow never occurred to me that the surface of a recent flow might be as rough as this. To cross this one would require climbing and jumping from one jagged boulder to another.
"How do we get there?" I said. "The rest of the way, I mean." I was gazing at Paricutín, and wondering how we were going to cover the remaining half dozen kilometers.
Chayo bit her lip as she too gazed out over the flow. Finally she shook her head and said, "We'll have to ask someone."
On the black sand just below the lava flow was a small kiosk where village people sold soft drinks to tourists. We climbed down from the lava and purchased a couple of sodas from a middle-aged Tarascan lady who looked knowledgeable. She told us that yes, there was a trail to Paricutín, but it was difficult and would require a hike of three or four hours.
That would have to wait for another day, we decided, and we set about to explore the edge of the flow.
Chayo picked up a rock. "This looks like a sponge," she remarked.
"That's where escaping gas formed bubbles," I said.
"Gas? Where did that come from?"
"Molten rock contains a huge amount of gas, mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor. It comes from deep within the earth, and on reaching the surface it expands, often violently. It's like when you uncork a bottle of Champagne. The pressure's released, and bang!"
The surfaces of these rocks had weathered slightly, some to a reddish tint where the iron had oxidized. I broke several to find a pristine black surface with tiny glinting bits that sparkled in the sunlight, none larger than a pinhead. These were plagioclase crystals which had barely begun to form before the rock hardened. I explained that the rock was andesitic basalt, the same material I'd seen in the Stone Gardens. It was almost universal in this region.
"Basalt," Chayo repeated the word as she studied a piece of the rock. "Do all volcanoes produce basalt and andesite?"
"All the ones I've seen around here do," I said. "But in California there are deposits of pure white volcanic ash called rhyolite."
Eventually we took a lunch break. We found a suitable place to sit down, on the edge of a boulder with our legs dangling over the side, where we could view the turbulent sea of jagged rock while eating the burritos and oranges that we'd brought with.
"Olaf," she said. "Tu sabes mucho. You've shown me things that I didn't know about my own homeland."
This was the first time Chayo had given me credit for knowing anything, and perhaps for good reason. After all, I must have come off like a real novice to people in this country, not knowing much of the language or the customs or the traditions.
As those thoughts were going through my mind, she said, "You're doing well. Your Spanish has also improved tremendously."
"You think so?"
"When you first arrived in Uruapan you wouldn't have been able to handle this conversation. You have a gift for languages. Do you speak any others, besides English and Norwegian?"
"Not really. A small amount of German, but not much. A semester of Japanese. I put most of my effort into Spanish. I studied it in junior high and high school and also worked at it on my own. For a long time I was thinking of majoring in foreign languages."
"What made you change your mind?" she asked.
"Well, I also liked geology, especially the field work in deserts and mountainous areas," I said. "I knew there was a lot of interesting geology here in México which had hardly been looked at, and I was intrigued with the possibility of investigating it. For that, I figured a knowledge of Spanish would be useful."
"Have you thought of working here in México?"
"Yes, I thought of it, nothing very specific. A future possibility."
"If somebody offered you a job, would you consider taking it?"
"Sure, I guess. I certainly wouldn't turn it down without thinking about it." I paused to collect my thoughts. A lot of what I did might depend on how much I fit in, whether I could relate to people here. "It's really kind of up in the air at this point," I finally told her. "After all, I just got here."
Chayo nodded. "So it's possible that you might actually consider staying," she said. "Well, to work here you need to know the language, and you've made a good start. I'm impressed at how you were able to tell me the Spanish names for these rocks."
"When I was in school," I said, "I got hold of a Spanish geology text, mainly to learn the scientific nomenclature in Spanish, but it helped me with my geology too, because I studied it far more intensively than any of my English texts. I read it so many times I practically memorized whole sections of it."
"Do you still have it?"
"I couldn't imagine not bringing it with," I said. "Geología estructural por Gabriel García Cardoso. I keep it next to my bed."
Chayo gave me an admiring look. I hoped it might make up for my poor showing as a horseman.
"There's something I'd like to discuss with you," I said. "I'm thinking of looking for a tutor. Could you help me find one?"
"A tutor? I'll teach you Spanish."
"You've taught me a lot, and I appreciate it," I said. "And you'll continue to teach me things. But if I had an outside tutor as well, I'd learn twice as fast. Besides that, you're busy most of the day, and it would be nice if, when we see each other, we can just relax and enjoy out time together."
"So you'd like to study with a tutor each day?" she said.
"Yes. For a couple hours or so."
Chayo thought for a bit, asked a couple of questions to make sure she understood me right, and finally said, "I'll look for one."
"That would help a lot," I said. "It's hard for me to judge whether someone's qualified or not."
"Now we have to go back." she said suddenly.
"Already? We just got here. I'd like to do some more exploring."
"The rain is coming, and we'll get caught in it if we don't hurry," she said.
I looked up and saw nothing but fluffy white clouds. "But the sun is shining beautifully," I protested.
"Olaf," she said, grasping my wrist firmly, "By the time we reach the village it'll be pouring down."
We paused to take one last look out across the lava field which in some places appeared to be still smoldering in places, emitting steam even after all these years.
At this moment no horses were available. We walked back the way we'd come, following the trail through the forest. As we set out, we encountered a group of villagers who were going in the same direction we were. Chayo began a conversation with them; it turned out that several of them spoke Spanish in addition to their native Tarascan.
"Es cientifico," Chayo said of me after we'd been speaking for a bit. "He's here in Michoacán to look at the volcanoes."
They glanced at me respectfully, and I looked at Chayo in surprise. Me--a scientist? I wasn't used to being mentioned in such flattering terms, and it felt slightly unreal. Well, I was a geologist, wasn't I? That made me a scientist. Why did it seem strange to me? Maybe I just needed to get used to it.
While I was turning this over in my mind, Chayo was talking with the villagers about the eruption of Paricutín. One of the older inhabitants told of how surprised he and everyone in the village had been. There had never been such an event before in the memory of the village, he told us in Spanish, "Not in my father's life time, or his father's. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing happening before."
"What about those?" I asked, referring to the numerous volcanic cinder cones surrounding this village.
The old man shook his head and said, "We thought they were something else. We didn't realize they were volcanoes."
The nearby cinder cones could have been thousands of years old. And this reminded me once again how short a human life is in comparison to the volcanic cycle. Here in the Meseta Volcánica these eruptions were happening all the time. Geologically speaking, they'd been popping off like a string of fire crackers, maybe once every two centuries or so.
But, for humans, two centuries is eight generations, and, in a world where records were poorly kept until recently, a lot could be forgotten as it was passed from father to son over decades and centuries. So there I began to understand that to the inhabitants of this region each eruption had been a new, unique and totally unexpected event, something that had never happened before, not to them or to their fathers or even to their grandfathers.
The Tarascan language didn't even have a word for volcano, Chayo told me.
As we approached the village, thunder began to rumble in the distance, and, by the time we found shelter, the rain was pouring down--just as Chayo had said it would.
continued in Chapter 8
On taking it to my room and opening it, I found it contained a 200-page report in the form of a bound volume, published by the U.S. Geological Survey. The author was Dr. Howel Williams, dean of American vulcanologists. This was exactly the sort of book I'd hoped for, and best of all, it included a study of this entire area, along with detailed maps: Volcanoes of the Paricutín Region Mexico : Geological Survey Bulletin 965-B. For me, it was a geological guidebook to everything around me, including Uruapan. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
It wasn't something you could find on the shelf of just any bookstore. I wondered where he'd gotten it. Then, as I paged through it, something caught my eye--the company logo of a geological firm which had been stamped in it. I hoped he hadn't lifted it from his employer's library.
This material was really useful because I intended to spend much of my spare time studying the geology of this region. By doing so I intended to hone my skills, and possibly even write a paper on the local geology. The first thing a geologist must do is read the available literature. I had brought a couple of volumes with me, but I couldn't have foreseen that I'd wind up in the Meseta Volcánica.
The package included a letter from my friend. "What a surprise to hear from you in México!" he wrote. "But I guess I shouldn't be too astonished. You were our desert-rat field geologist, and we considered you the most likely to head out for some remote corner of the earth. . ."
He told about a job he'd found, and also mentioned classmates he'd seen since our graduation, places they were working and news in general. It was a cheerful, uplifting letter--until, near the end, he said, "By the way, I was never sure whether you really graduated. Did you?"
The question disturbed me. I read on. There was a rumor about me, but the details weren't clear from this letter. Perhaps my friend was embarrassed to repeat exactly what he'd heard, or, more likely, he himself didn't quite understand what it was all about.
Well, I could easily guess what the talk was about--the fact that my professor had ghostwritten my thesis paper. He was supposed to advise me on my project, but he'd ended up completing it himself, and I became little more than the clerk-typist of my own thesis. It had been a humiliating experience, and I'd been so sickened by it that I hadn't bothered to attend the graduation ceremonies, or the class party.
Dr. Hans Knudsen was the professor's name. Like myself, he was a descendent of Norwegian immigrants. What a detestable irony, to have been betrayed by a fellow Norseman! I could just imagine that if he had lived in Nazi-occupied Norway, the bastard would've probably been a quisling. No doubt about that.
"You'll get over it," people always say of a thing like this, though nobody actually had said that to me because I hadn't told anybody about it. It had been just too upsetting to talk about. Nevertheless, I'd been hoping that it was one of those closet skeletons that would pass unnoticed and disappear with time. But now I'd found that my classmates were gossiping about it. Maybe one doesn't live down a thing like that.
The practical implications also disturbed me. I feared that my degree might be considered fraudulent. My credibility as a geologist, at least in my own estimation, was dubious.
I thought of Grandma, of how proud she would've been to see me graduate, had she lived. But, there are things which no grandmother could wish to see. Her untimely death had at least spared her the ignominy of seeing me get that dubious degree, and I also wondered what Chayo might think of me if she knew of my failure.
For a long while I sat there mulling it over as I had so many times since finishing my studies at the university, but as always, no positive thoughts came to mind, and I despaired that any would. It was depressing. I decided to go to the dining room and chat with whomever might be there. I needed to get out of my room, out of my misery. The dining room was the social center of this establishment.
I stepped out into the midday sun. Cuauhtémoc looked my way, but he kept his distance over on the far side of the courtyard as I walked from my room to the tin-roofed dining hall.
"Buenas tardes," Carlos greeted me as I entered. Huero Marco pulled out a chair for me in a welcoming gesture. "Have a seat."
Huero Marco was the blue-eyed fellow whom I'd believed to be a foreigner that first evening. Doña Josefina had later told me his parents were Germans who had immigrated here back in the 1930's to escape the Nazis. A good many European refugees had come to México in those years. Carlos, on the other hand, had brown skin and black hair, and could trace his ancestry back to pre-conquest times. The two of them worked together on an engineering project nearby. At this moment they were apparently on their noon break.
The thick game board I had seen before was on the table between them, this time almost completely covered with black and white stones. They appeared to be finished with whatever they were playing.
"So how's your day?" Carlos asked.
"Good," I lied, but I did feel better just to be talking to someone.
We chatted about the weather. I mentioned my astonishment at the intense summer rains and thunderstorms. Huero Marco told of seeing a tree struck by lightning. That had been the previous summer.
At one end of the table were an empty tequila bottle and two empty glasses. I grinned. "Palomo and Morito were here?"
Carlos nodded with a smile, and made a good-natured remark about the pair. Palomo and Morito were their nicknames; the bird honchos was my appellation for them, when I'd mentioned them in my journal. Like their avian protégé, they were macho types, but there was a cheerful, slightly humorous atmosphere about them that seemed to charm everyone.
As we spoke I'd been glancing at the game board, thinking of how on first seeing it I'd mistaken it for a meat-chopping block. Well, it did look like one, except for the ruled black lines on its smooth upper surface.
"Is that a game from Aztec times?" I said at last; it was something I'd been wondering about for some time now, ever since I'd first seen it, the day I'd moved in here.
"Oh, no." They both chuckled. "Es japones."
"¿De veras? And all this time I've been thinking it must be Aztec!"
We all laughed. The name of it was Go, they explained, and told me something of how the game was played. The reason the board was so thick was that Japanese players sat on the floor, and the thickness of the board brought it up to the height of a low table.
Marco got up for some more coffee, and refilled Carlos' cup as well. "You don't drink coffee?" he said to me.
"Oh yes, I do."
"The cups are in the kitchen. Help yourself."
I went to get myself a cup, and, while looking for one, I heard the sound of footsteps entering the room I had just left, then:
"¿Dónde está el amante de la bruja?" It was a voice I didn't recognize.
Bruja? Had I heard that right? Bruja meant witch. The newcomer had apparently asked about someone known as the witch's boyfriend. Me? Could it be me that he was referring to? Was Chayo known as la bruja around here? I was tempted to peek through the chicken-wire partition to see who the speaker was, but my eavesdropping might be discovered.
The unseen man talked a lot, but I couldn't catch what else he said. The others didn't seem to be responding. I still hadn't found where the cups were kept. Finally I took a dirty one from a tray, went out through the kitchen door to the pila and washed it.
When I returned to the dining room the owner of the voice was still holding forth, sitting slightly apart from Carlos and Marco, who looked slightly bored. I slowly and deliberately poured my coffee, studying the man from a slight distance. I'd seen him here before. He was apparently a fellow resident, though he didn't usually join us for dinner, but when he did, in contrast to the rest of us, he always wore a white shirt and tie, apparently implying that he had some position of importance.
"Buenas tardes," I said to him, interrupting his monologue. It may have been a bit rude of me, but this guy didn't seem to deserve a lot of courtesy. He spoke in such a boastful and condescending manner.
He paused to look up at me, but, instead of returning my greeting, resumed his discourse, something about a gang of drug runners. It sounded like an intriguing story, and I sat down to listen, though I was the only one who showed any interest in what the guy was saying. One member of the gang he was telling about had been a hit man who'd made quite a name for himself, before recently getting himself killed.
"You ever meet the guy?" I asked.
"Did I ever meet him?" he snorted. "We used to drink together!" His chuckle of triumph came out like a slightly demented cackle.
He returned to his narrative. He represented himself as being personally acquainted with all the colorful characters in this region, and I wondered what his connection with them might be, as he certainly didn't look like a tough guy himself, but more likely a wannabe. I concluded that he was more likely an office clerk than a person of importance.
Carlos and Huero Marcos were unimpressed. I suspected they'd heard this sort of stuff from him before. They began a conversation between themselves, leaving him without an audience. A moment later Cuauhtémoc came strutting into the room, cocked his head to one side and listened for a bit. Then he crapped on the floor and left.
Eventually the man in the white shirt and tie got up to leave. "Hasta luego," he said.
"Hasta luego," I said. Nobody else responded to him.
Carlos looked up as the door shut, shaking his head and saying something I didn't catch. Huero Marco smiled at the remark, then got up and poured us each another coffee.
My curiosity got the better of me. "A bit ago, when I was in the kitchen, did that guy ask about a witch's boyfriend?"
Carlos nodded.
"Who was he talking about?" I said. "¿Quién es el amante de la bruja?"
Both Carlos and Marco looked at me rather strangely. Finally Carlos said, "Don't pay attention to anything Juan says."
Huero Marco nodded, affirming what Carlos had told me.
"Juan," I repeated. "Is that his name?"
"Juan Diosdado," said Carlos.
"Un culero," remarked the other, and they both laughed.
When I was back in my room, I took out my dictionary and looked for culero, but it wasn't listed.
* * *
Later that week Chayo took the day off, and together we set out to visit Paricutín, the cornfield volcano. It was only twenty air kilometers from Uruapan, but by road it was naturally much farther, an hour's bus ride through a region studded with dozens of ancient pine-forested volcanoes. It was as though someone had stood below the earth's crust and fired a shotgun.
The names of several volcanoes were on a map included with the volume my classmate had sent me. I tried to identify some of them as we rode along. We were passing one that I figured was Volcán Alberca.
"Let me see that map," Chayo said. I handed it to her, and she studied it for a moment. "It's Volcán Cutzato," she corrected me. "Alberca is behind us."
"You know this area well," I said, doing my best to suppress chagrin over having erred in my field of expertise.
"This is my homeland," she said, then took my hand in hers in a consoling manner. "It was an easy mistake to make. The road has been changed since the map was made."
There were moments like this when Chayo took great pains to show consideration of my feelings, and yet there were other times when she could be almost cruel--like the evening when she'd almost gleefully squeezed my sore hand, and asked me if it hurt.
We got off at the village of Angahuán and walked past a long-dormant cone on our way into the village. This was an Indian village; an enclave which still retained a vestige of the ancient, pre-Hispanic culture.
Here, inhabitants lived in windowless log houses with steep shingled roofs. Wooden houses of this type are called "troje," Chayo told me. She was explaining things as we walked along the village street. Women were dressed in full-length skirts of blue cloth, and men wore straw hats with a ridge down the center of the crown. I'd occasionally seen people dressed like this in the market place in Uruapan.
Unlike the nomadic Sioux, Comanchies and Apaches--the ones who generally come to mind when we Northamericans think of Indians--these people had been sedentary farmers since pre-Hispanic times. Basically, they'd lived pretty much like the soil-tilling peasants of any other ancient empire--Egyptian, Roman or Chinese, and their station in life and mode of existence hadn't changed much since the time of their remote ancestors. They raised mostly the same crops as their ancestors had, corn and beans.
As in any ancient civilization, there'd been a warrior class, a priesthood, and a small group of intellectuals. Some of their ancient traditions had been recorded by a Spanish friar who arrived in the 1530's. His work, known as Relación de Michoacán, had been lost in the depths of an archive where it had lain for three and a half centuries before it was finally rediscovered and published in 1903.
Chayo took an interest in the culture and traditions of this region known as the Meseta Volcánica, and she'd already told me much about it. Until my arrival in Michoacán, I hadn't even known that there had been a civilization in this region that rivaled the Aztecs.
As we passed by the plaza, an announcement blared from a loudspeaker mounted on a pole.
"Did you hear that?" Chayo said.
"It doesn't sound like Spanish. Is that in Tarascan?"
"Yes. It's the ancient language of Michoacán. My great grandfather spoke it." She paused to say something to a woman in an embroidered blue dress.
I didn't understand a single word. Even Chayo's tone of voice, accent and intonation were suddenly very different. The village woman responded in the same language.
"We're going to the horse corral," Chayo told me as we continued on down the narrow street. "It's not much farther."
Horse corral? I wondered why we were going there, but I didn't bother to ask about that. I said, "So you speak the Tarascan language."
"A little," she said. "Enough to ask directions."
"Does everyone in this region have a working knowledge of it?"
"No. Only those who live in the Indian villages. And a few of us who've made the effort."
"Then how did you come to learn it?"
"It was a part of my heritage, like Norwegian is for you. Does everyone in Minnesota speak Norwegian?"
"No. Most speak only English."
"That's how it is here too."
"It seems to be that way everywhere," I said.
"I think so," she said. "Mexicans who are born and raised in California generally speak English and forget their Spanish. It's sad."
"Tarascan must be very difficult," I said.
"It's not easy. But at least it's now written in the same alphabet we use, and that helps."
"There are books in Tarascan?"
"Of course there are. Even school textbooks. The early Spanish friars used the Latin script and applied it to Tarascan. They also compiled dictionaries," she explained.
"Interesting."
"And Norse? How did you come to learn it?"
"From my grandmother."
"She didn't speak English?"
"Oh yes. But she felt it important that I learn Norwegian. And long before I started school, when I was just four years old, she used to sit me on her knee and teach me to read from a book of Norwegian nursery rhymes."
"You still remember any?"
"Yes, I do."
"Let me hear one," she said.
I recited: "Ride, Ride Ranke, hesten heter Blanke."
"¡Que gracioso! What does it mean?"
"It's about a little boy riding a horse, presumably a wooden horse," I said.
We arrived at a corral, where village boys rented horses to tourists. There were quite a few tourists here, all of them apparently Mexican. As everywhere in this region, I seemed to be the only foreigner.
"Would you like to ride?" Chayo asked me.
One of the horses was giving me a sour look.
"Couldn't we just walk?" I said.
"I haven't ridden horseback recently," she said firmly.
I knew that Chayo had grown up on a ranch near Uruapan. It suddenly hit me that being a rancher's daughter, she'd perhaps grown up in a tradition where every real man was expected to show some competence in horsemanship. But I'd never ridden a horse before in my life, and I knew I'd look ridiculous. What if I fell off?
"I've never done this before," I said.
"You haven't? Maybe it's time for you to learn."
All of the horses were now eyeing me. Every single one of them was giving me a dubious look, and I hadn't the least desire to ride any of them. On the other hand, I could see that Chayo would be disappointed with me if I didn't make the attempt.
"Well?" she said, a bit impatiently, letting me know for certain that she intended to put me to the test. The tougher side of her had come to the fore again. Only moments before, she'd been so kind and understanding.
It hadn't crossed my mind when we set out that morning that I might be faced with anything like this. I tried to think of an honorable way out, but there clearly wasn't any. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.
"But how can I study the rocks from horseback? I want to see them up close."
"We'll only ride the horses down to the lava flow," she said. "From there we'll go on foot."
I eyed the horses timidly and I wanted to say no. It was one of those moments when I wished I'd never left Minnesota. "I'll try it," I said, with great trepidation.
Chayo turned to negotiate the rental of the horses, and I took a final look at the sky above and the pine trees around me. I said a mental good-by to her, feeling a sense of impending doom.
"No te preocupas," Chayo said softly and with one hand gave my arm a gentle squeeze. In her other hand she now held the reins of two horses. "You'll do well. Yo sé."
Her words were like a benediction, and I felt somewhat encouraged. I put my foot in the stirrup, just as I had seen so many cowboys in Westerns do, and somehow I ended up in the saddle without any mishap. I was even pointed in the right direction. My horse began to move, to trot or whatever it is that horses do. For a moment I closed my eyes and held my breath in fear that awful things were going to happen. But I hung on and stayed on top as the horse meandered down the trail.
Finally I opened my eyes. I was still alive. The sunlight was as beautiful as ever and Chayo was on another horse, off to one side of me.
"You're doing fine," she called out to me.
A couple of the boys were running along ahead of us down the trail, holding onto the reins to guide the horses.
Despite my fears, I didn't fall off, and as we rode down the trail through the forest, I almost began to enjoy the experience.
It turned out to be a short ride, and we emerged from the forest onto a wide stretch of black sand. Above it rose the lava flow, like the front of a huge, incoming ocean wave. A petrified wave.
Rising above this sea of hardened rock stood the twin towers of a large old church, now in ruins. The rest of the structure had been inundated by liquid rock. The towers looked like the superstructure of a partially submerged ship.
"The village of San Juan?" The name came to me. I'd seen this place in drawings and photos, even on postcards.
"Sí, las ruinas," she said.
We dismounted and left the horses to the boys. They promptly rented them to a couple of tourists who were ready to return, and we set out to explore.
A narrow path among the jagged boulders took us up to the ruins of the old church, and from there we could look out over the lava flow. It was a stormy sea of frozen crests and waves of broken rock which extended off into the distance, bounded on all sides by inactive volcanoes, all except one of which were covered with pine trees. That was Paricutín, some five or six kilometers away, at the head of the flow. It loomed up like a large pile of gravel against the green forested background.
Paricutín had been named after one of the villages it had destroyed. Standing a couple hundred meters above the surrounding lava and measuring half a kilometer across its base, it was of about average size for this region. These small volcanoes, Paricutín as well as the older, tree-covered ones, were called cinder cones. They were formed from the ash and cinders that were tossed up in the air during eruptions and then fell back to earth, piling up around the vent. The ash and cinders were pulverized pieces of igneous rock.
A dozen of these cinder cones could be seen from where we stood. Each marked a separate volcanic event, indicating that each new eruption had occurred in a new and different place. Why that was, I didn't know, but as a geologist the question intrigued me.
Almost everywhere else in the world, except for here on this particular plateau, the Meseta Volcánica, successive eruptions normally occurred in the same volcanic edifice, eventually building huge mountains such as Fuji, Shasta and Vesuvius, as well as Popocatépetl and the other famous volcanoes of central México. In contrast, this region with its myriad of small cinder cones was extremely unique--but it hadn't always been this way here either.
From reading the geological report, I knew there had once been a single towering volcano--its inactive remains still dominated this landscape, though it had eroded so much that it no longer looked like a volcano. That was Mount Tancítaro, which rose up behind Paricutín to an elevation of 3,845 meters, still the tallest peak in Michoacán, though at one time in the geological past it must've been much higher than it is today. For some bizarre reason, around 100,000 years ago it ceased to erupt, and smaller cones like Paricutín had been springing up to take over the volcanic function of this region. By some counts there were 1,400 volcanic vents in this part of México. A good many of those were concentrated here around Mount Tancítaro.
We were on the north side of Mount Tancítaro now; I was used to seeing it from Uruapan, where I'd had to look westward. At don Pablo's hotel, I'd sometimes climbed the ladder to the water tank on the roof, where on clear days I got a good view of the mountain. Carlos and Huero Marco had told me that in winter it was sometimes covered with snow. At first I'd thought they were kidding me, but Chayo had assured me otherwise. "Es cierto," she'd affirmed.
The ground where Paricutín now stood had been a cornfield until February 7th, 1943, when it burst into life. It was active for nine violent years, showering the entire plateau as far east as Uruapan with ash, and producing this lava flow. The lava had poured out like thick molasses, often advancing only a meter or so a day, taking months to reach this church and the village of San Juan. People had time to get out of the way, and there were no fatalities.
I remarked to Chayo on the irony of the lava coming all this distance, just far enough to engulf this magnificent church, and then halting a few meters beyond.
"God laughs at us," Chayo replied. "We are but toys to her--that's what the ancient Aztecs used to say, and I think it's often true. She does laugh at us, and she laughs hardest when we make her into a masculine deity and desperately try to please her with adulation and pretentious churches."
"It would seem that way," I said.
"It is that way. That's what the Aztecs said of their god. And, in my view, the Spanish god has been no different."
We stepped from the lava into an upper story of one of the bell towers, and from there we looked down into the interior of the inundated church. Getting this far had been fairly easy. But as I looked up and studied the surrounding lava flow, I could see that walking out across it would be extremely difficult, and that was something of a surprise to me.
Despite my studies in geology, I'd never actually seen a fresh lava flow till now. I'd only seen ancient flows that were millions of years old and exposed in outcroppings, and those had all been smoothed by the action of erosion. It had somehow never occurred to me that the surface of a recent flow might be as rough as this. To cross this one would require climbing and jumping from one jagged boulder to another.
"How do we get there?" I said. "The rest of the way, I mean." I was gazing at Paricutín, and wondering how we were going to cover the remaining half dozen kilometers.
Chayo bit her lip as she too gazed out over the flow. Finally she shook her head and said, "We'll have to ask someone."
On the black sand just below the lava flow was a small kiosk where village people sold soft drinks to tourists. We climbed down from the lava and purchased a couple of sodas from a middle-aged Tarascan lady who looked knowledgeable. She told us that yes, there was a trail to Paricutín, but it was difficult and would require a hike of three or four hours.
That would have to wait for another day, we decided, and we set about to explore the edge of the flow.
Chayo picked up a rock. "This looks like a sponge," she remarked.
"That's where escaping gas formed bubbles," I said.
"Gas? Where did that come from?"
"Molten rock contains a huge amount of gas, mostly carbon dioxide and water vapor. It comes from deep within the earth, and on reaching the surface it expands, often violently. It's like when you uncork a bottle of Champagne. The pressure's released, and bang!"
The surfaces of these rocks had weathered slightly, some to a reddish tint where the iron had oxidized. I broke several to find a pristine black surface with tiny glinting bits that sparkled in the sunlight, none larger than a pinhead. These were plagioclase crystals which had barely begun to form before the rock hardened. I explained that the rock was andesitic basalt, the same material I'd seen in the Stone Gardens. It was almost universal in this region.
"Basalt," Chayo repeated the word as she studied a piece of the rock. "Do all volcanoes produce basalt and andesite?"
"All the ones I've seen around here do," I said. "But in California there are deposits of pure white volcanic ash called rhyolite."
Eventually we took a lunch break. We found a suitable place to sit down, on the edge of a boulder with our legs dangling over the side, where we could view the turbulent sea of jagged rock while eating the burritos and oranges that we'd brought with.
"Olaf," she said. "Tu sabes mucho. You've shown me things that I didn't know about my own homeland."
This was the first time Chayo had given me credit for knowing anything, and perhaps for good reason. After all, I must have come off like a real novice to people in this country, not knowing much of the language or the customs or the traditions.
As those thoughts were going through my mind, she said, "You're doing well. Your Spanish has also improved tremendously."
"You think so?"
"When you first arrived in Uruapan you wouldn't have been able to handle this conversation. You have a gift for languages. Do you speak any others, besides English and Norwegian?"
"Not really. A small amount of German, but not much. A semester of Japanese. I put most of my effort into Spanish. I studied it in junior high and high school and also worked at it on my own. For a long time I was thinking of majoring in foreign languages."
"What made you change your mind?" she asked.
"Well, I also liked geology, especially the field work in deserts and mountainous areas," I said. "I knew there was a lot of interesting geology here in México which had hardly been looked at, and I was intrigued with the possibility of investigating it. For that, I figured a knowledge of Spanish would be useful."
"Have you thought of working here in México?"
"Yes, I thought of it, nothing very specific. A future possibility."
"If somebody offered you a job, would you consider taking it?"
"Sure, I guess. I certainly wouldn't turn it down without thinking about it." I paused to collect my thoughts. A lot of what I did might depend on how much I fit in, whether I could relate to people here. "It's really kind of up in the air at this point," I finally told her. "After all, I just got here."
Chayo nodded. "So it's possible that you might actually consider staying," she said. "Well, to work here you need to know the language, and you've made a good start. I'm impressed at how you were able to tell me the Spanish names for these rocks."
"When I was in school," I said, "I got hold of a Spanish geology text, mainly to learn the scientific nomenclature in Spanish, but it helped me with my geology too, because I studied it far more intensively than any of my English texts. I read it so many times I practically memorized whole sections of it."
"Do you still have it?"
"I couldn't imagine not bringing it with," I said. "Geología estructural por Gabriel García Cardoso. I keep it next to my bed."
Chayo gave me an admiring look. I hoped it might make up for my poor showing as a horseman.
"There's something I'd like to discuss with you," I said. "I'm thinking of looking for a tutor. Could you help me find one?"
"A tutor? I'll teach you Spanish."
"You've taught me a lot, and I appreciate it," I said. "And you'll continue to teach me things. But if I had an outside tutor as well, I'd learn twice as fast. Besides that, you're busy most of the day, and it would be nice if, when we see each other, we can just relax and enjoy out time together."
"So you'd like to study with a tutor each day?" she said.
"Yes. For a couple hours or so."
Chayo thought for a bit, asked a couple of questions to make sure she understood me right, and finally said, "I'll look for one."
"That would help a lot," I said. "It's hard for me to judge whether someone's qualified or not."
"Now we have to go back." she said suddenly.
"Already? We just got here. I'd like to do some more exploring."
"The rain is coming, and we'll get caught in it if we don't hurry," she said.
I looked up and saw nothing but fluffy white clouds. "But the sun is shining beautifully," I protested.
"Olaf," she said, grasping my wrist firmly, "By the time we reach the village it'll be pouring down."
We paused to take one last look out across the lava field which in some places appeared to be still smoldering in places, emitting steam even after all these years.
At this moment no horses were available. We walked back the way we'd come, following the trail through the forest. As we set out, we encountered a group of villagers who were going in the same direction we were. Chayo began a conversation with them; it turned out that several of them spoke Spanish in addition to their native Tarascan.
"Es cientifico," Chayo said of me after we'd been speaking for a bit. "He's here in Michoacán to look at the volcanoes."
They glanced at me respectfully, and I looked at Chayo in surprise. Me--a scientist? I wasn't used to being mentioned in such flattering terms, and it felt slightly unreal. Well, I was a geologist, wasn't I? That made me a scientist. Why did it seem strange to me? Maybe I just needed to get used to it.
While I was turning this over in my mind, Chayo was talking with the villagers about the eruption of Paricutín. One of the older inhabitants told of how surprised he and everyone in the village had been. There had never been such an event before in the memory of the village, he told us in Spanish, "Not in my father's life time, or his father's. Nobody had ever heard of such a thing happening before."
"What about those?" I asked, referring to the numerous volcanic cinder cones surrounding this village.
The old man shook his head and said, "We thought they were something else. We didn't realize they were volcanoes."
The nearby cinder cones could have been thousands of years old. And this reminded me once again how short a human life is in comparison to the volcanic cycle. Here in the Meseta Volcánica these eruptions were happening all the time. Geologically speaking, they'd been popping off like a string of fire crackers, maybe once every two centuries or so.
But, for humans, two centuries is eight generations, and, in a world where records were poorly kept until recently, a lot could be forgotten as it was passed from father to son over decades and centuries. So there I began to understand that to the inhabitants of this region each eruption had been a new, unique and totally unexpected event, something that had never happened before, not to them or to their fathers or even to their grandfathers.
The Tarascan language didn't even have a word for volcano, Chayo told me.
As we approached the village, thunder began to rumble in the distance, and, by the time we found shelter, the rain was pouring down--just as Chayo had said it would.
continued in Chapter 8
<< Home