Sunday dawns cold and clear in the high country; the road
twists and turns on the summit ridgeline of the great range. Indian families
walking to mass in their Sunday best step off the road as I pass, the women in
colorful long dresses, the men in silk shirts and stiff ballcaps, mustaches
neatly trimmed. Towns are scarce in this forest, limited by lack of available
water. Suddenly, a sheer dropoff, revealing a westward vista of stunning
magnitude. A panorama of broken rock, innumerable ridges and canyons floating
like islands in a sea of fog. A dry east wind gently soughs through the pines
on the edge of the world. And down below, a strange and foreign world awaits my
cautious descent.
Down, down, down, down. The pines have given way to a denser
and thornier brush than I have ever seen. The heat and humidity builds rapidly,
a sickly hot yellow sun boiling away the veil of fog. Silence vanishes,
replaced by the shrieks and whines of tropical bugs, gnats seeking my blood. A
few homesteads dot the roadside, vending snacks and fruit, tin-roof shacks and the
occasional ancient jalopy. Finally, the road levels out, well over a mile below
the cool pines, in the canyon of the Río Huazamota. The steamy air closes in,
rich and fecund smells rising from riotous greenery. The river is rushing along
its rocky bed, shaded by thorn trees. Young children splash and play in the
water as cows graze the banks; my truck’s thermometer reads 95 degrees. An
Indian girl drives a corn-laden burro along the steep roadside, slapping it
with a switch. Young men with machetes return from their morning labors in the
fields. Many of them are located in clearings on north-facing slopes; the best
spots are able to funnel monsoon runoff from above. Few of the plots are
accessible by vehicle, and numerous burro-paths cut through the brush to access
remote side canyons. In sharp contrast to the primitive lifestyle of the
natives, the highway is modern, freshly paved, flawless.
A sign announces that I have entered the state of Nayarit.
More twists and turns as the road follows the river upstream to the village of
Jesús María. Cobblestone streets provide built-in speed control as I enter the
town, county seat of its mountainous municipality. The streets are dusty and
cramped with parked cars. Shops are open but little business is being done this
torrid Sunday afternoon. I take a wrong fork and end up dead-ended at some
hillside houses. The town is small, but traffic is light and all the crooked
streets look the same. After some inquiry, I am back on the road out of town,
climbing through ramshackle hillside developments. The heat is nigh unbearable,
and the river looks irresistibly inviting, here above the towns. I strip down
to shorts and sit in a deep and rocky pool. The water is mild and refreshing, a
perfect counterpart to the searing sunshine. Up on the highway, old pickups
wheeze on by, their beds crammed with market-bound families. Ridesharing is
nigh universal here in the mountains. The folks here are easy-going, lacking
the dour attitude of their highland neighbors. I keep an eye on my truck, but
none of the passing cars or motorcycle riders give it a second glance. The
mountains tower overhead, high cool mesas, lower hills, borro paths the only
sign of hidden settlements stubbornly occupying a hellishly hot and thorny
land. This is the western slope of the Sierra Madre Occidental, home to canyons
deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon, rocky fastnesses never “sanitized” of
natives and “developed” with parking lots and restaurants and visitor’s
centers. I have not spotted a fellow gringo since Chihuahua, a thousand
kilometers away.
Happily for me, the road rises half a mile to cross a high
ridge, and the extra elevation cools temperatures to a tolerable level as the
sun sets. Smoke from a mountainside homestead drifts out through the trees. A
mountain spring gushes cool, pure water over a waterfall, then under the
highway to tumble down into the bottomless canyon. Eastward, a serenely sere
vista of an impossibly crumbled landscape, a black snaky ribbon twisting and
winding up and down over humps and through dells into the hazy distance, back
the way I came. Moisture-laden breezes blow fitfully over the ridge from the
west, bearing a foretaste of real jungle, ocean, beach.
The next morning, preparing breakfast, I hear them before
they arrive. And here they come, round the corner, headed downhill toward me
and Jesús María. Tan Humvees bearing no insignia, no license plate, masked
gunners manning turret machine guns, locked and loaded. Next in the convoy, a
state police truck, the bed filled with more masked gunmen holding rifles at low
ready. Lastly, a Suburban with blacked out windows, state government insignia
on the side. Following up are more gunmen. I lift a hand; some of them nod,
others wave back. A few minutes later, I see them crawling along the highway
down-canyon.
Heading the other way, the road descends nearly a vertical
mile, dropping into an amazingly green valley through which a wide azure river
flows. This is the jungle. Wild viny growth crowds the road, hacked back by the
machetes of road crews. Clearings are a riot of grass nearly as tall as a man;
the air is fetid with growth and decay. Round and fertile hills rim the
horizon. Banana plants grow in the front yards of roadside homes; creeks of
sweet water pour through tunnels of greenery. Tall trees shade the road from
the baleful sun. It is time to stop, take it all in.