Desecrated Tombs and Ancient Gardens
After several hours of trekking, we arrive at a campsite — one of Raul’s forest pit-stops. Here, he leaves pots, pans, and blankets. Resources for deeper forays into the mountains. A pair of donkeys have helped us thus far with the luggage, but they’ll stay the night while we trek further on foot.
The campsite is a make-shift construction of wooden poles and a piece of red canvas stretched between two trees. Surrounding the tent are four holes walled with stone. Deep, wide, empty pits.
Raul gestures to the holes, explaining that he and his friends dug them out. They heard whispers and tales of golden hoards hidden in the mountains. So they grabbed their shovels to look for a quick buck. But there was no gold. Just remnants of an old people: burnt bone, fragments of pottery that depict people, flora and fauna. The material of past cultures, which now lays trod and scattered in the mud.
However, while their houses, highways, and palaces have been lost to time and the rhythms of nature — their gardens remain.
Not far from the tombs are woods of avocado forests. Four-hundred-year-old trees. Thick trunks supporting fifty-metre-high canopies that bear large, bountiful, pitted fruits. When fully ripe, they fall in the summer to leave hearty meals on the floor. Further down, lay clusters of capomo trees, whose nut and bark provide separate medicinal drinks. And on our journey, we passed ancient orchards of limes and sweet lemons.
The same people that had dug the tombs, created future-proof, ecological architecture from the natural materials provided. The forest was a live-in grocery store. Bountiful harvests of fruits, and plenty of game in the green. (But care must have been taken with jaguars and mountain lions hidden in the undergrowth.)
Nowadays, the forest is heavily exploited. The assortment and stock of the ancient grocery store have become depleted. Overloading of cattle, logging and hunting trump simple preservation. Thirty years ago, it was common to see herds of deer drifting between the trees. Today, you’re lucky if you see one.
I listened to the quiet and imagined how a people lived here before. There would have been bustling activity amongst the trees. Farming, collecting, gathering, hunting, singing, dancing, life, death, sadness. Unique sets of stories and tales. Their own myths of hidden treasure.
Suddenly, the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark fashes into my mind. Clear as day, I see Indiana’s frightened Latino compadres dashing off with their donkeys in terror of ancient rocks.
I asked Raul if he thought of ghosts when he slept here.
‘No, why would I?’
His answer was unsatisfactory to my Hollywood ideals.
We had a short, silent break before loading our gear onto our backs, patting the donkeys farewell, and heading deeper into the forest — the ecological monument of a forgotten people.
