Back-Catalog Dispatches #8: Traverse

It’s 5:30AM. I wake to the scrape of a match as Andrew searches for light in the cabin. My eyes open slightly , I slide out of the mosquito net and stumble out the door to greet a morning colder than I had thought possible, stars high and bold in the predawn. Andrew is already brewing ginger tea.

We sip mostly in silence before lacing shoes, rolling packs, and bidding our hostess goodbye. Then down the path and up the road towards the black-to-gold of the mountain morning, vapor upon our breaths.

The sun hasn’t crested the ridge as we plod to Beckett’s crossroads and weigh our chances of a hitchhike. A silence hangs over the breaking chill. Godot doesn’t show as we sit on our packs and await the hints of fate: the far-off whir of a motorcycle engine. A machine bound from country to town, with space for a traveler just behind the driver.

Here the day’s journey begins on someone else’s whim – the shopkeeper who sold me a fifth of cheap whiskey last night pulls into view on his cycle, and Andrew clambers on with a directive to meet me in the city. My own ride is not long in coming; a loaded pickup looms upon the junction in minutes, and I hop on the tailgate.

Movement begins in earnest. We are bound for Christmas in the mountains – Andrew and I – some hundred miles distant.

*

The early morning sun glints off of DR highway 1, upon my tired eyes and cramped body in the overloaded minibus between La Vega and Santiago. But we arrive, monuments overhead and people all around, with our packs burdening our shoulders yet not quite fitting the appearance of tourists.

Sequestered in a call center, I am ripped off for an hour’s conversation about mostly nothing with my parents. Then I pay fifty cents to leave a message on an answering machine in the south island of New Zealand. Communications completed, I listen to music while sitting on the stoop outside, watching the masses on street and sidewalk.

“A million footsteps, as left foot drags behind my right, but I keep walkin’ from daybreak ‘til the fallen light.”
Sting

“. . .And miles to go before I sleep.”
Robert Frost

“They are that that talks of going, but never gets away.”
Robert Frost

Then the wassail is prepared, gifts loaded into already-fat packs, to bring to the lord of the mountains at his lodge in the high forest. Good wine and liquor, chocolate and peanut butter, and even a softporn magazine in English, because he does read the articles. The supermarket seethes with us late-shopping masses, and we fight to bring our haul to the front, staying connected in the same building via cell phones.

The bus pulls slowly from the stop as I entreat the driver to wait just ten seconds more. Andrew frantically makes up his mind between red and green fleece hats at the market stand close by, then pays and jumps to the door as we pass, a green one clutched in his hands as the prize of the day. We have heard rumors of true cold in those mountains, and my companion is taking no chances. The last bus pulls away from Santiago. I have elbowed a woman in the face in order to secure my cramped seat thereupon.

The last city on the line and it is five PM. The sun recedes behind a now-thick sheet of low clouds. Sabaneta is in the same landscape as my other home in the valley: not quite in the shadow of the mountains, but not far from their reach either. One last futile check for Santa hats in the town and we flag down motorcycle taxis for the ride up. The view expands as we fly along on shockingly-well-maintained, winding roads, and the glades of pine begin to appear on the hillsides. An hour of wind in our hair and we pull to a stop at the lodge, pay our overcharging drivers and slump heavily down on the porch. No one’s home, but our host is soon in coming. Through smiles and hugs, we greet the Christmas season.

I pull my jacket on in the new night and hope for a frost.

Back-Catalog Dispatches #7: Year's End

Saturday began early. Yeury was up at five, harnessing the mule for the trip to town. At eight years old, he is the youngest of Ramon’s - my host’s - grandchildren, and has thus earned the privilege of being sent on the long journeys for vegetables and rice, neither of which grow very well in the valley. My dog Zeke (unpronounceable to my neighbors, so they just call him “The German” as the result of an unfortunate taxonomic misunderstanding) was up at that hour as well, yipping his head off at the activity. The family began stirring soon thereafter, so I rolled out from under my mosquito net, slid on my sandals and stumbled outside to behold the complete lack of anything resembling morning. No birds were singing. The waning moon shone through a thickening bank of clouds but no other light was evident; in this land without daylight savings time, the winter sun rises at about 7:30.

*

It's cooler now. The rain continues falling consistently. I am reminded of the cusp of autumn in Vermont, just before the plunge into the actual cold of late September. But it is not really cold here in this village, tucked in a folded corner of a large island in the Caribbean. I would say only that it is no longer ungodly hot. The locals – now mostly clad in flannel shirts, heavy pants and the occasional wool hat – would argue otherwise. Anything under seventy-five degrees is COLD, no matter what the gringo says.

*

The coming of light found me climbing yet another slope planted with cocoa trees; the angle was such that I would have wanted a belay if it had been rock. But with plenty of branches to grab, it posed few problems to Ramon, Chepi or myself. We were back on the harvest, taking advantage of a forecasted break in the rain. The work of cocoa is something I’ve gotten better at; the depths of my initial inexperience have been surpassed, such that I can now consider myself equal to one-half of a Dominican harvester. I hope to work my way up to two-thirds by the time I leave here. Ramon and his son-in-law were talking about the imminent arrival of the holiday visitors, and where they could be housed. They didn’t mention it, but my bed is occupying prime space in the house’s annex shed, and they could otherwise put a family of five in the 9'x12' room. As such, I hope to be elsewhere by the time that truly turns into a dilemma. Say, spending the 24th-25th surfing on the North shore or hanging out with Peace Corps volunteers who have their own houses.

*

And so Christmas comes. This season looms large on the heavily-Catholic Dominican radar as a time when relatives return – a time when sons, daughters and grandchildren make the trek back from the cities where they had moved in search of work, the sort of migration that can be found the world over. Its a time when the constant sound of explosions can be heard in the remoteness of the jungle (gunshots of rebel insurgents to my excitable perception), as the children set off physics-experiment-looking contraptions involving peanut cans full of some combustible minerals, sealed with pieces of inner tube - A good substitute for holiday fireworks. It is also a time when rum sales skyrocket.

*

Having slung squishy sacks full of cocoa beans to the valley floor and tied them to the waiting horse, we slogged back to the village proper just as a hint of midafternoon sun lit the world. The morning’s product was quickly laid out on tarps to dry - perhaps even to toast a bit for better flavor - and we sat down to our respective two pounds of rice and beans. It may be the only real meal of the day, but there is no danger of starving. Lounging in the comfortably warm evening, I let my mind wander to Decembers gone by, and of course this led into the ongoing speculation as to the whereabouts and activities of friends and family. Eligio - another of Ramon’s sons - was listening to a horribly-garbled holiday merengue tune on his dying radio, and I was tempted to ask him to turn it off and let the peace return. Then I thought better of it – since I’m the same way with a recognized song; no amount of static ultimately matters when memory can fill in the blanks. So I countered with my portable shortwave and came up with a scratchy BBC broadcast of Sinatra singing Winter Wonderland. Not quite the holidays as I used to know them, but close enough for the current circumstances.