Above the Rocks, Beneath the Stars 2

I recommend that you read the first section, "Above the Rocks and Beneath the Stars," for background before reading this one, so that you can fully understand what follows



So much for my resolution to stay in the here and now.  I don’t suppose that such fancies occur to most of the people of the Copper Canyon region, people who are of necessity of a practical bent of mind and who don’t find it difficult to live in the moment, people like Ramona.  She was the wife of Reyes’ cousin, the one who met us on the trail and traded his burro for Reyes’ horse.  They lived at the edge of Tejeban, a dusty village near the beginning of the descent into the canyon. 
         
We approached the back of their house in the early afternoon while negotiating a steep rocky slope down to the village.  As we neared, Reyes tossed a stone onto a metal roof below, bringing out a couple of barking dogs, followed by Ramona, a stocky young woman in a loose-flowing housedress.  She smiled, revealing severely receding gums, and chatted cheerfully with Reyes as we made the final descent to the grounds outside her house.
         
We came around to the front of the house, overlooking the village below.  The house and village were located on a rocky, sparsely vegetated slope that baked in the hot June sun.  In addition to the dogs, we found chickens, a sow, and a young pig on the grounds of Ramona’s home.  Dylan was amused to see the sow wallow in a small puddle of water, then chase away the pestersome pig, who squealed loudly in panic. 
         
After the burro was unpacked, Dylan and I were sent down to the village to buy tortillas and coffee.  The descent was steep, perhaps the most challenging section we were to encounter on our trip.  Dylan, in the lead as always, reached the settlement first.  I arrived to find him waving his arms, baseball cap in hand, at a pack of barking dogs as he worked his way through them. 
         
While each of us was dealing with the dogs in his own way, children were leaving a nearby building.  It was part of a residential school complex of orange prefab structures that covered most of the tiny hamlet.  Seeing the broad smiles on the children’s faces, I wanted to think that they were happy to see us.  However, it seemed just as likely that we, with our pale complexions and norteamericano clothing, were the silliest things they had seen in a long time.  Hounded by the dogs and watched by the children, we entered a house that allotted one of its two small rooms to the sale of goods.  Dylan, as always, did the required talking, and I stuffed the goods into the thigh pockets of my cargo pants. 

Reluctant to run the mongrel gauntlet again, we looked for a different way out.  Dylan located a series of notches that had been chiseled into a nearby twenty-foot cliff.  We agreed to try it and, after a challenging ascent, returned to Ramona’s house.  Much later, we would learn that Reyes and Ramona had neglected to tell us about a less direct but much gentler route than the ones we had taken.
         
We approached the house with Ramona and Reyes repeating, “No muerde, no muerde (Don’t bite, don’t bite),” to her now balefully silent dogs, who followed us to the kitchen door with their noses at our legs.  We crossed the concrete floor to a small table, covered by a plastic tablecloth, near the window.  Dylan and Reyes sat on a pair of crude wooden benches while I made use of a huge air filter from some kind of large engine.  Facing the window, I observed on its broad sill an incongruous juxtaposition:  a kerosene lamp and a boom box with a wire running from its antennae out the window.  A plastic five-gallon bucket by the door held beans or corn soaking in water.
         
Conversing easily with Reyes and Dylan in Spanish, Ramona set about heating the tortillas on a small wood-burning stove in a corner of the kitchen.  We opened up some of our canned food to be spooned onto the tortillas, eliminating the need for individual silverware and dishes.  Meanwhile, Ramona began tossing the heated tortillas onto a folded dishcloth on the table and we washed down our simple meal with coffee. 
         
In spite of the primitiveness of Ramona’s home, I didn’t find it to be squalid and depressing, like much of what Dylan and I saw in the cities of Juarez and Chihuahua.  I admit to a tendency to romanticize the lives of rural people like those of the Copper Canyon region.  Perhaps they would give it up, if they could, to escape its drudgery and poverty.  Still, I was impressed with the way that Ramona and Reyes appeared to take pleasure in what life was offering them that day.
         



We left Ramona’s house in the hot mid-afternoon sun, heading back to the top of the ridge, but this time westward and upward toward the trailhead that would lead us into the canyon.  As we climbed a sloping lava field we caught up with an old man, walking stick in hand, moving at a slow, steady pace.  Beneath a straw Stetson, his head hung low on his shrunken neck and shoulders. 

Dylan and I learned that this was Reyes’ “tío,” or uncle, and that he was 97 years old.  Reyes and he engaged in a brief conversation, and then we turned south to obtain water from a nearby resort.  The old man continued westward, and I assumed that we had seen the last of him.
         
As we approached the Hotel Tejaban, as it was apparently called, two Rottweilers ran out to express their indignation at our approach.  A man and woman in the kitchen yelled at these large and ill-tempered beasts, seemingly alarmed at what they might do.  The owner, a stout bald white haired man, seemed displeased when we informed him that we didn’t want to order a beer or some other profitable drink, but only wished to replenish our water supply at one of his faucets.

The resort was located at the edge of the canyon ridge, and it afforded us our first look, a magnificent view of the huge crack in the earth that is the canyon.  It went so deep that, although we could see a narrow fissure at the bottom, we couldn’t make out the river that it contained.

A row of stucco cabins and a main building lined the ridge. On entering the main building, we encountered a large open area with marble floors, an open fireplace in the center, and dining tables that lined walls amply supplied with windows looking out over the edge of the canyon  It was impressively modern and elegant, and utterly out of place in this primitive and isolated locale.

The resort was deserted except for the owner, staff, and Rottweiler’s.  This was the off-season for tourism, being the hottest, driest time of year, but Reyes informed us that few people ever came.  He asserted that the dirt road leading up to it was a good one but, judging from the incredibly rugged examples that Dylan and I encountered in the area, I suspect that someone from a more cosmopolitan setting probably would not agree.



We filled our water bottles and returned to the trail where we had left the old man.  Continuing westward, we eventually turned south onto a path leading sharply down into the canyon. The descent was a hot, jarring two-hour affair over steep, narrow switchbacks that had my runner’s knee aching after the first hour.  As we went down, the flora gradually changed from mountain trees and bushes to plants associated with desert settings.  These included various kinds of cacti and yucca, including the century plant, with its tall flowering stalks that extended well above our heads.

To my surprise, we again came across Reyes’ tío, accompanied by a burro and two dogs, about halfway down.  The old man, who had continued on the trail while we replenished our water supply, lived near the bottom of the canyon, on the other side of the river, and was on his way home.  We rested together inside a narrow line of shade provided by a turn in the canyon wall.  Reyes and his uncle sat on a couple of rocks and conversed.

As I surveyed my weary muscles and aching knee, I observed the old man with respect.  We were negotiating this rocky and treacherous terrain in expensive hiking boots that supported our feet and protected them from the sharp rocks, while Reyes’ tío had only his sandals and walking stick.  Yet he seemed no more tired than the rest of us.
         
Again parting company with the old man, we reached the bottom late in the afternoon, and found ourselves in a narrow canyon, about a hundred feet wide, with the brown, turbid Urique River running through the center.  We gazed up between steep slopes, thousands of feet high, and saw a band of clear sky.  Making our way upstream over a field of boulders, we came to a beach, bound on one side by the boulders and on the other by a projection of rock wall.  Here we set up camp, using a small cave for shelter from the sun and for storage of our gear.  That night, we slept on the soft sands of the beach.
         


The next morning, Dylan and I forded the river.  We jumped from boulder to boulder as far as we could go, and then waded thigh deep, the water rushing hard against our legs.  On reaching the other side, we climbed up to a rugged trail that ran along the south edge of the canyon.  We were on a mission to obtain drinking water from one of the springs that gushed from the canyon wall. 
         
Ruins of stone structures were scattered along the trail.  They date back to the days when this was a busy mining center and men like Reyes worked for the company, hacking ore out of the mines and driving burros loaded with gold up the switchbacks to the top of the canyon.
         
We found the spring behind one of the ruins.  After we filtered and collected all the water we could, Dylan went to the other side to watch for passers-by as I rinsed off under the spring and changed my filthy clothes. 
         
When I emerged, I found Dylan in a small stand of fruit trees, talking to Reyes’ tío, who was dressed in the same dirty clothing that he wore on the previous day.  The old man sat with one pant leg rolled up and proudly shared with us the contents of two buckets filled with small apricots, each about the size of a large cherry tomato, and what may have been figs.  Cheerfully describing the area to Dylan in Spanish, he seemed none the worse for wear from the previous day’s journey.
         
In the afternoon, Dylan and I again forded the river in order to further explore the side opposite our camp.  We saw more ruins, including “la casa blanca,” a white adobe house on a narrow ledge overlooking the canyon bottom.  I presume that the now roofless structure housed the owner or manager of the mines in the past.  With its six rooms, balcony, patio, and beautiful views out the beveled window openings in its thick walls, it must have inspired awe in the people of the canyon in its day.
         
Among the most striking aspects of the canyon bottom were a number of horizontal water wheels, each about four feet in diameter.  The mills were constructed by men who worked the old mines for the small quantities of gold that still could be extracted from them.  The miners made these mills using only wood, except for a metal rod which attached the axle of the wheel to a yoke above, and two iron chains that dragged stones over the ore as the wheel turned.  Spring water bursting from the canyon walls was directed to the wheels by sluices made of hollowed logs.
         
We encountered a miner, a handsome young Omar Sharif look-alike with a calm, friendly manner, at work at one of these ore mills.  I later learned that the young man was Reyes’ nephew.  Was anyone between the canyon and Cusárare not related to Reyes?

His work clothes were uniformly stained a deep reddish brown that matched the color of the water flowing out of the mill.  As we watched, he used a hard hat to pan some of the sediment into a silver ball containing gold and mercury, a day’s worth of work that he sold to Dylan for about fifteen dollars.  Later, Reyes would burn off the mercury, using hot coals from the campfire, to produce a gold pellet about twice the size of a pea.
         
The young man allowed us to follow him into the mine through a slit-like opening which led us up, rather than down, over loose rock.  We climbed a rickety wooden ladder into a vaulted cavern with another slit that opened to sky.  For a few moments we watched the young man work.  He projected a serene dignity as he squatted on the floor and chipped at a rock with a small pick.
         
Later in the day, back at the camp, I briefly saw a short man in his thirties or forties, a Tarahumara Indian, standing on a ledge above us and bantering shyly with Reyes.  His name was Candelario and he was the only person who lived at the bottom of the canyon.  Candelario’s home was a cave on a ledge directly across the river.  Most of his right arm was missing below the elbow, but he had enough of a stump to support a bucket handle.  Each day he made many trips, carrying a bucket on each side, to fetch water from the river for his garden located on the ledge above. 
         
He and Reyes seemed to know each other well.  Upon first spying him across the river, Reyes had shouted, “Candelariohhhhh!  Ven por acá para un cafecitohhhhh!”  (Come over here for a little coffee!).  They jovially shouted back and forth on this and other occasions. 
         
That evening, we lay on the beach beneath a clear night sky that ran the length of the canyon ceiling.  The stars, their true immensity and violence belied by their remoteness, appeared as brilliant pinheads in that black band above.  Across the river, the reflection from Candelario’s fire flickered on the rock wall.  I wondered what had happened to his arm, and why he chose to live in his lonely cave. 



The next section, "Above the Rocks, Beneath the Stars 3," completes this article