Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
I am on the trail of John Muir, intending to walk into the wild high country, his “range of light,” inspired by the vision of Ansel Adams who once said: “Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.”
Maximón is a folk saint of the Maya of Guatemala, associated with pre-Columbian earth lords who provide money or economic opportunity to client-petitioners. He is an opener of the way, a bringer of rain and symbolizes male sexual power.
John Lloyd Stephens, who documented important Maya sites in Central America in 1839, described howler monkeys found at the ruins of Copán as “grave and solemn, almost emotionally wounded, as if officiating as the guardians of consecrated ground.” Today, in sites such as Tikal, they remain standing guard over the ruins, sharing space with hundreds of tourists.
In Guatemala, a procession through the cobblestone streets of the former capital, Antigua, marks the end of the Day of the Dead, All Saints and All Souls.
In the pre-Hispanic era, skulls were kept as trophies and displayed during the rituals to symbolize death and rebirth. These ancestors passed down the knowledge that souls exist after death, resting in Mictlan, the land of the dead, not for judgment or resurrection, but for the day each year when they could return home to visit their loved ones.
While bulldozers and diggers bashed a 50-foor-wide path for the Keystone XL pipeline, planned from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas, a group of tar sands blockaders have taken to the trees.
The Rail~Volution Conference rolled into Los Angeles to illustrate how transit projects energize neighborhoods, meeting a significant demand for multi-density housing walkable to restaurants, offices, and shops. They can transform the landscape and mindset, in this case, of auto-addicted Southern California. One stop at a time.