Mexican Wanders

There were miracles everywhere. The trees looked autumnal, flanked not with falling leaves, but beating wings, the flames of Monarch butterflies, in their hundreds of thousands, giving rise to something closer to awe I could not name. How do the Monarch’s make the 3000km journey from Canada to arrive, four generations on, to the same Oyamel forests in Michochan, Mexico from which their great-grandparents took flight on their own epic journey north? It was raining wing and mystery in those hills. My heart is pulsing differently now.

Then there was the flight of a flock of pink flamingos overhead, traveling in a perfect V, their necks elongated in elegance, traveling down the Rio Celestun on which our little kayak prevailed, just, in the deceptively strong current, granting us the privilege of witness. We paddled until we met a flock of about 60 of these long-legged wonders feeding on crustaceans from which their colour derives.

Then were was the sea waters, azul, clear, and the waters of the caves- crystalline. A terrain of limestone, much like the Burren of the West of Ireland, which, given its propensity for porosity and erosion creates the conditions for over 6000 cenotes, or sink holes, sacred watering grounds, seven of which my body felt like it pilgrimed into. Submerging, there was a sinking in, held by mother and nature, and the ever renewing force of water. Surfacing my world and understanding of magic was rebirthed.

It was a month of travels populated with such explosive beauty but not without witnessing explosive tragedy too. The Maya Train, a project of the current president, designed to bring more tourists, and therefore pesos/ dollars/ euros/ yuan to the Yucatan peninsula, a land so rich in biodiversity, and so primed for migratory species, that to do anything but preserve and restore is a devastation. But, sadly, shockingly, the railway project is ploughing through virgin forest, its wildlife scattering for cover, its people’s voice going unheard, and countless trees being felled in the name of ‘progress’. It is a scar on the landscape, not just of the region, but in our own collective efforts to preserve and reserve. I’m still reeling, and so angry, and aware of my own complicity- my presence there counted as another tick in the tourist numbers. Justification. But the wrong kind of just.

And it was in this month I encountered protest, as thousands of women took to the streets against the waves of femicide and violence against women in Mexico. There was an anger, at times rage, being lashed in graffiti against walls and monuments; a visceral aggravation to attest to the larger social fabric which at times feels like at war with the feminine. To be in that power, and that anger, felt daring and electric, which still simmers in my veins wondering where next to move.

I think the best kind of travel is as much an inward journey as an outward one, taking us to new aspects of ourselves, questions perhaps, or capacities and even challenges. Here, in meeting the wider world we encounter ourselves so we can return altered in some way, and renewed. And so, as my month of travels still churn, with colour, taste, smells, learning, I am still trying to unpack it all, giving space and shape for the words and experience to land. My hope is that it continues to shake, with wonder and repulsion, spurring me onwards, onwards, onwards, in words and in story and in action.

Trusting in a Return

Burren Winter School: A Story in Layers

Clare Mulvany