"Places gather... [they] keep such unbodylike entities as thoughts and memories. When I revisit my hometown of Topeka, Kansas, I find this place more or less securely holding memories for me. In my presence, it releases these memories, which belong as much to the place as to my brain or body. This kind of keeping is especially pertinent to an intensely gathered landscape such as that of aboriginal Australia --- a landscape that holds ancestral memories of the Dreaming. Yet even when I recall people and things and circumstances in an ordinary place, I have the sense that these various recollecta have been kept securely in place, harbored there, as it were." - Edward Casey, in Senses of Place (Basso & Feld, eds, 1996).In the long, slow days and nights here, there is a lot of time to read. Reading theory "in the field" is wonderful. I read the above passage yesterday morning lying in a hammock atop my hotel, beneath the thatch roof, and it made sense. But it was not until later in the day, when the Peten Itza lake released a memory it had been holding for me, that the full force of the power of place hit me.
Of course, from the moment I arrived, the memories have come flooding in, but they had all been memories that I already remembered, as it were. Where places are, which restaurants are best for breakfast, the friendliness of a particular hotel worker, and, of course, my favorite people and stories from my first time around. Especially since I learned that my friends that worked in the Estacion Biologica were still there - despite the sale of the station to another organization - I had been replaying my favorite moments, the absolute pinnacle of which was one afternoon when I went swimming in the Río San Pedro with Don Raquel and Antonio.
That afternoon, we rowed out from the station to a nearby tree hanging out over the water, and began climbing up and jumping out of the tree, with Don Raquel announcing our performances as if we were competing in an olympic high dive competition. He had the persona down perfectly, building up the tension as each of us made our way up the trunk and out onto the branch over the deepest water, then rating our performances - including his own, of course - as if there were three international judges giving their professional opinions.
On his third dive, Antonio moved for a more ambitious performance, edging further and further out on the branch as it bent beneath his weight down towards the water. Further still he stepped, into the thinner part of the branch where leaves started to appear, with Don Raquel the whole time announcing the dive of the century from the comfort of the lancha, beside which I was treading water awaiting my next dive, when *CRACK* the tree snapped suddenly, sending a huge branch and Antonio tumbling down into the water. I shrieked and was so overcome with laughter that I couldn't swim, gulping a huge mouthful of the murky black-green water before grabbing hold of the side of the boat so as to keep myself from drowning... death by laughter.
Don Raquel recovered much quicker than me and jumped in to continue announcing that at this year's olympics, dear listeners, there had been a terrible accident! One of the athletes had fallen from the platform, never in the history of the sport had anything like this happened before! I clung to the boat, completely lost to the laughter that shook every fiber of my body.
Given that it was not just one of my favorite days in Guatemala, but in my life - I can only remember laughing that hard a few times in all my days - I thought that I remembered it perfectly. But yesterday, as I went for a late afternoon swim in the lake in which the island of Flores sits, as my body once again met the water of the Petén, the memory held in place was released to me. Not when I was treading water, or floating slowly in place, but only when I rolled over and began swimming in earnest did I suddenly remember that there was a whole second event to the days olympics: a series of races across the river, in which I first beat Don Raquel and then lost to Antonio, taking silver.
I had to stop swimming again, yesterday, to grin at the memory. It has been impossible to write about it right now, without a totally goofy look on my face. Last night I debated whether to allow the Petén to release more memories to me one at the time, or whether to go back and read the diary I kept two years ago, that I brought with me but hadn't opened yet. Eventually my curiosity won out and I opted for the latter, figuring that the Petén would still hold plenty of memories for me yet. As I read through the story of that day again in my old diary, in the context of all the days before and after it, I broke out into laughter again, feeling bien loca cracking up alone in my little hotel room.
It looks like I'll be heading back up for a visit to Paso Caballos and the Estacion this Wednesday for a day or two. I can't wait to see those guys again, to watch the river drift by from a lancha, to discover what memories, what feelings, the Petén still holds for me out in the jungle.
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