I sit at the table in this big empty apartment, panoramic windows open to the misty grey afternoon. A surrealistic Oliver Deuerling song drifts from the speakers, as gently and smoothly as the black curtains undulating in the moisture laden breeze. As I sit here, writing to you and to myself, these sensations wash over me and I feel…perfectly alive in this amazing, peaceful moment.
I am seeing a side of Vallarta less familiar to me, a time when the foreigners have flown and stillness settles onto the land. The locals go about their business as usual but the human world seems somehow less formidable, more humble (and I’m not referring to the lack of Americans lol).
The temperature climbed and climbed as June wore on, creating a feeling of panic and oppression in my snow-loving Canadian brain. Then, the rains began. At first they came in the form of fearsome downpours in the night, followed by more (now sauna-like) heat during the day. But for the past two days, and especially today, the country seems shrouded in mist that periodically becomes so heavy that it turns into a beautiful, cleansing rain.
The most spectacular transformation is that of the land. The mountains around Vallarta, after months of lying dormant, brown and largely leafless suddenly spring to life, virtually overnight. During the first rains I experienced the peculiar sensation of actually feeling the plants drinking eagerly, which continues now as I sit here. Suddenly those brown mountains become shockingly, overwhelmingly green…and all forms of life charge forth like an army that has materialized from the mist itself. Moths the size of sparrows. Rhino beetles whose weight is so great, it can be felt in the hand. Millions of leaf-cutter ants whose “high-season” has just begun…
All of these things combine to create an entirely different place than I was sitting just a short time ago. I have discovered the pure joy of walking through the warm rain on empty streets, of exploring the dripping jungle in its full glory in search of some new, fascinating aspect of this beautiful miracle we call Earth…and I realize that maybe there is no low season in Mexico, or in life. One high season is simply traded for another.
