Circular inspiration

Yesterday we went on our final excursion, an hour and a half drive to the delightfully circular Guachimontones Pyramids in Teuchitlan, Jalisco. The picture here shows the main pyramid, but the area includes several other, smaller ones. They date back to 200 B.C. and 400 A.D.

Excavations have uncovered objects ranging from sculptures depicting religious ceremonies to human skulls left over from sacrificial rituals. After browsing through the site's small museum we got to spend two hours exploring this surreal indigenous sanctuary in the scorching heat of a January afternoon in Mexico. I passed some of my time sitting in the shade under a tree, writing in my handy little notebook:

I'm sitting solitary in a spot of shade at los piramides. The same wind that brushes through my hair carries the pure scent of dry nature alive, and buoys small birds as they flitter unpredicatbly through the static blue sky. Wispy, thin strands of mummified foliage hang draped over and through the leafless branches of the tree ahead of me. I wonder if there's any life in that tree.

Below the hill spreads a small town, a pueblo with two Mexican steeples poking out from the mire, and a lake whose horizon brushes with the imagination.

Every now and then, an electronic voice echoes artificially across the land from somewhere in the village: ''veinte! veinte! veinte pesos!'' What human has the right to singlehandedly fracture the tranquility of nature? Give me only the cooing, the vibrating staccato chirps of the birds above. The sounds of wind gently playing in leaves. The uneven ground crunching beneath my feet. Render me an animal in nature.