A Nasty Week; Happy to Be Here

I haven't posted for awhile. It's just been one of those months. Topped of by a week that I'd gracefully describe as one of the most stressful I've had in some time.

Details aren't important, but it's been sort of like this...

I have been waiting for Immigration (Instituto Nacional de Migración) to approve and deliver my new permanent resident visa, which I must possess in order to leave and return to Mexico. In January and February I have met with the same friendly and helpful personnel in Migración who've annually processed my paperwork. I have had no problems with the process. It's just that this year they are working under brand new federal laws, and the system has slowed down somewhat while they implement new procedures.

Since the new visa was in process, I've been putting off a planned February visit to the States to see my elderly father. Finally a week ago when I found I would not have my new resident visa ID card for a couple more weeks, I decided to apply for a special letter of permission that will allow me to leave and return in lieu of my regular visa. This involved going in at 7:00AM a couple of mornings this week to be near the front of line when Migración opens its doors at 9:00AM.

At the same time I've had some business dealings go awry. A check I received and deposited was returned due to a spelling error, causing me technically to default on a payment I'd promised to make the following day. Resolving this problem necessitated consultations with my lawyer, careful diplomacy with the person to whom I'd promised the money, various visits, calls and emails to banks, and jumps through a few other hoops. It's all working out, but it has been time-consuming, tiring and stressful, because of the need to resolve all the problems by Friday or end up paying out quite a bit in losses and fees.

And I have a ticket to go see Dad on Monday. He's been expecting me for a month.

To slather sour icing on this already-rotten cake, I ate something that disagreed with me Sunday night, and have slogged all this week through a dense haze of fever, lethargy and nausea. Being stubborn and thinking I'd deal with it on my own (not to mention being really busy), I waited a couple of days to see the doctor. I could not sleep and became dehydrated; instead of feeling better, as all this transpired I felt steadily worse.

There was a lot more, but that's the basic outline. It's been a pretty nasty week, truthfully. But it looks as if I've made it.

The good news is that when finally I called my doctor he saw me within the hour, and two hours after my call I was back home, medicated, and on the road to recovery.

And this morning after my last meeting, knowing now that everything is on the right track, I went home for a break. I threw off the shoes and business costume and stepped into the garden. The sky was bright blue and the morning breeze was warm but not yet hot. Heliconias are in full bloom as are some orchids. I thought gratefully about several Mérida people who stepped in this week to help me feel better, smooth over problems and make it all work out.

And I felt very happy to be here.

Contentment: You Get What You Need

No matter how you plan and try, life never works out the way you thought it would. And that's what makes it so fascinating.

Some time ago I was talking with my friend Hammockman on the topic of planning for security later in life. What he observed is that it doesn't pay to plan excessively because things will never work out the way we think. Security is all an illusion, he said. And I agree with him.

I don't make new year resolutions any longer, but I do find that the beginning of a new year is a good time to think about what I can focus on that will be meaningful to me in the year ahead. I have found that if I keep moving toward what gives a sense of purpose to my life and eliminate all that is unnecessary and distracting, although I may not get what I want (in the words of the Rolling Stones song), I get what I need.

For example, for decades I thought I would live out my life in Juneau, Alaska, living in the old wood-frame gold miner's house I owned on Starr Hill. I couldn't imagine spending my days anywhere else. However I pursued my interests, and eventually landed in Yucatán, a region that in important ways resembles the Alaska of my childhood, an Alaska that barely exists any more. I maintain strong ties with my roots, but am happy in this new place.

I never imagined that career ambition and "accomplishment" would seem so unimportant. In fact, I've come to view much of what I once would have considered constructive or successful as precisely the opposite.

I would not have guessed that I'd be interested in agriculture, but now find myself fascinated by planting and growing things (not to mention eating what I produce).

I find meaning in dealing well with the most difficult problems. I never imagined I would have the capacity to be so patient.

I love people and love life in ways and with an intensity I had never expected would be possible.

I believe my best years are ahead of me. That is because I accept that we can't know what to expect, and therefore I feel prepared for whatever happens. I feel a steady force pulling me towards a future that is satisfying and meaningful.

You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want

You can't always get what you want

But if you try sometimes you just might find

You just might find

You get what you need



If this topic interests you, I recommend this thought-provoking book.

Wanderings: Finding "Old Tulum"

It had been ten years since I'd stayed in Tulum. When my visiting friend Paul suggested we drive over and spend a couple of nights there before he headed to Cancun to fly north, I wasn't sure what to expect. Tulum has changed a great deal over the years, and I was not sure I'd like it.

I am not terribly interested in fancy vacation hotels, and my budget does not allow for frequent expenditures of this sort. I enjoy myself, better appreciate a place and find I meet more interesting people when the accommodations are simple. I was afraid that this would be hard to find in modern-day Tulum.

I needn't have feared. Although fancy and expensive resorts have spread like a fungus down the Tulum beach, pockets of "Old Tulum" still exist.

By "Old Tulum" I mean what I remember Tulum to be when I first visited years ago. Of course "Old Tulum" means something very different to local residents who remember the place before tourism became the basis of the local economy. But my memories of Tulum are of a quiet, casual place, where most visitors carried backpacks and slept in hammocks strung between palm trees or in rustic Mayan-style cabañas. The cabaña we rented years ago had no electricity and a "path to the bath." When we checked in we paid about twenty dollars, if I am not mistaken, and were handed matches and candles. It was an idyllic spot.



It can be idyllic still. Using the internet, Paul found a rustic rental identical to my memories of the "hippie-in-a-hammock" days. We were right on the beach, used candles at night, and the bathhouse was twenty steps down a palm-lined, white sand pathway. It was just about perfect.

The most noticeable difference now was that to both sides of us, naked Europeans were paying hundreds of dollars per night to lounge on queen-sized platform beds placed on the sand, and to have their umbrellas adjusted, pillows fluffed and drinks served by armies of attendants while they languidly ignored everyone around them. These tourists were entertaining. What I found even more delightful was the fact that we were paying a small fraction of the cost to enjoy the same world-class beach, warm, crystalline water and beautiful weather.



Certainly we lived differently from the package tourists; our accommodations (picture above) were just a notch or two above camping. We kept our drinks and snacks in an ice chest. There was no maid service and showers were cool. But we had a fantastic time and I would not have traded our place for one of the others.

One thing that time has improved in Tulum is the choice of restaurants. Some are very expensive, but good, reasonably priced meals are still to be found in the area. The thin-crust pizzas at OM, on the beach, are delicious. Back on the highway, El Camello, located on the east side of the road on the southern outskirts of Tulum, provides generous servings of economically-priced, delicious seafood. The mixed ceviche at El Camello is hard to beat for price and portion size.

And there were other nice details, like the young man where we stayed who would climb like a monkey up a nearby palm, knock down some coconuts, whack off the ends with a machete, and present them, straw inserted and ready to enjoy, for a few pesos.

But the best thing about Tulum is the beach. Miles of fabulous, pristine, uncrowded beach. No large hotel developments have been constructed along the beach south of the archaeological zone, and I hope the situation stays that way. It would be a great loss if Tulum ever develops in the way of Cancun...and if the last of the rustic old-style beach accommodations is some day closed down.

Lila Downs Visits Mérida

I was introduced to the music of Lila Downs, the Oaxaca-born Mexican-American singer and actress, in 2003 when she sang in the high school auditorium in Juneau, Alaska. That very month I closed on the purchase of my new home in Mérida, Yucatán. In my first blog post, I wrote about how my fascination with Lila and her powerful music intertwined with my transition from Alaska to a new culture and way of living in Mexico.

Ten years after singing in my Alaska hometown, as if to affirm my Mexican life this week Lila performed in my adopted home town of Mérida.

One difference when I see her these days is that due to circumstances, now I have a personal connection. Several years ago I met Lila's godmother Victoria at a concert in Lila's hometown of Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. Since that time I have been privileged to make many visits to Oaxaca to attend concerts, the baptism of Lila and husband Paul Cohen's son Benito, and to hang out in the city of Oaxaca, explore pueblos, and to visit Lila's home in Oaxaca and Victoria's home in Juchitán. It has been a fascinating opportunity to make new friends, and to get an insider's view of the region's fascinating culture.

It was a wonderful concert. The energy and flexibility of the singer's performance and the virtuosity of the entire company is of international caliber. I tend to like the old Mexican standards, and there were plenty of those this time, songs like La Martiniana, Naila and La Cucaracha, but also rock-, jazz- and rap- inspired contemporary themes.

Lila talked during the performance and to the press about how this visit to Yucatán may inspire a new project. She wants to come back to Mérida to study Yucatecan traditional trova with the goal of interpreting it in future recordings. She indicated, to the roaring approval of the crowd, that she will be back, and she confirmed that to me as we chatted briefly after the concert. That's exciting news.

I love the music and it was wonderful to see Lila, Paul, Benito, Lila's wonderful assistant Eddaliz and the band in Mérida at long last, but for me there was more to this event.

As I sat with the audience along side of Mérida's Plaza Grande, as always I was mesmerized by the spectacle, passion and intensity of this music. The entire crowd, which numbered in the thousands, swayed and pulsed with the beat. The cheers, clapping and chorus of voices rose and fell with the music. There seemed to be nothing but the moment and we were one soul together in it.

The moment was yet another indication, accompanying the many quieter and less flamboyant ones that I experience daily, of why I love living here.

Read all posts on Lila here.

Hammockman wrote about the concert.

Joanna at Writing From Mérida wrote about the concert.

Hacienda Dreams (revisited)

This is a favorite piece from 2009. Three years ago An Alaskan in Yucatán was new and had few readers. I recently realized that this post has had very few hits, so I've decided to share it again.

Sometimes I go on the road with a purpose. On other occasions I go just to see where the highway leads me. I rarely fail, in wandering around Yucatán, to return home with an interesting experience or having seen something thought provoking, mysterious, or beautiful. Recently I went, purportedly out of curiosity, but in reality just on an impulse to go, to spend a couple of hours tramping around a parcel of land that's for sale a bit more than an hour's drive from the house in Mérida. On the return trip, I took an old two-lane highway that meanders quietly, and with more bicycle and pedestrian than motor traffic, through hennequen plantations, ranches, and groves containing native trees like cedro, ramón, ceiba and chacá. Along the way it threads through several small pueblos and old haciendas. The road then abruptly melds into a more modern, divided four-lane highway, quicker and more efficient but far less satisfying, that leads back to the city.

I had passed through here before, but until this day had not noticed a gate and big old house, mostly hidden by very large trees, set back a bit from the road. The casona is situated on a straight stretch at the approach to a community; on past trips I must have been slowing down and watching more for animals, bicycles and topes, or speed bumps, than looking at the scenery. 

I squinted. This was a hacienda. Large tracts, thousands of mecates of spiky blue-green hennequen plants grew here. When they were harvested, the pencas, or leaves, were bundled and heaped on horse-drawn trucks which ran on a narrow-gauge railroad from the far reaches of the property to the factory buildings. There the leaves were processed into sisal fiber, the basis of all variety of ropes and lines for the world's navies and merchant fleets, and baling twine for American Harvester machines. There probably was a huge chimney here, taller than the nearby church belltower back when enormous, belching smokestacks meant progress, prosperity and wealth for Yucatán's landowning elite. 

It was a Golden Age. Mérida became fabulously rich on this trade. Due to the vast quantity of ships coming into nearby Sisal and Progreso harbors, it was easier to travel to ports in the U.S. or across the Atlantic than to go overland to Mexico City, and Yucatecans looked abroad. European-style mansions mushroomed on Mérida's boulevards. Women wore the latest in French styles and directed vast housholds of servants while ensconced in salas furnished with the finest, imported furniture and carpets; men smoked Cuban cigars and drank the finest whiskies, wines and liqueurs from across the ocean. Not only did hacendados send their privilieged offspsring to the Old World for schooling; the wealthiest are rumored as well to have sent their clothes for laundering there to avoid having the fine fabrics damaged by Yucatán's hard water. Haciendas like this one made it all possible...for awhile.

As the sun prompted trickles of perspiration to tickle my neck, I came out of my waking dream. The house is not terribly well-kept, but neither has it been abandoned to nature and fallen into ruin, as rapidly happens in this climate. Someone, probably a caretaker or watchman -- an older señor living in more modest quarters nearby -- keeps the weeds trimmed back near the house, most likely by putting a few animals out to graze on the place, and maintains gates, doors and windows in repair and locked. Nevertheless several other visible structures, farther back in the trees, are nothing but shells, their roofs long gone, columns vine-encased green cylinders, arches intact but no longer supporting the load they were designed for, and with mature trees dropping an ever-thickening compost of leaves onto floors where once people lived and worked and mopped away the dust.

There are rocking chairs on the front terrace of the old main house, but they are weathered silver, warped and beyond reclaiming, woven bottoms long rotted and the shreds carried away by the wind or nesting birds. The walls, once painted a rich "hacienda red," are streaked by many years' accumulation of black mold and at the same time bleached pink by neglect. A section of the delicate French tiles on the porch roof, molded and fired in Marseilles and imported to Yucatán more than a century ago as ballast on a returning hennequen ship, have fallen and shattered. It is easy to imagine that decades ago, one morning after breakfast, the doors had been locked when the owners left on a trip, and because of some incident lost to history they never again returned to live here. Thereafter, for a long time the house was perfectly maintained like a time capsule, ready for the owner's imminent return, only to very, very slowly edge into decrepitude as hope eventually faded and the household staff aged or dwindled.

I have dreamed from time to time of finding an old place such as this, fixing it up just enough, bringing in furniture and my books, hanging pictures and putting in a garden. Perhaps I would get a dog and keep a few other animals. I would eat my own wonderful fresh fruit, gather eggs hidden by the hens in far reaches of the garden, escape the heat by swimming daily in the ancient cistern's invigoratingly cold well water, and live a long, healthy life of genteel rusticity. Then I begin to wonder if I, too, perhaps out loneliness, isolation, illness, wanderlust -- for economic or some other reasons -- might one morning finish my coffee, casually lock up and drop the keys in my pocket, walk away, and never manage to make it back home again.

Blogging: Favorite Posts of 2012

I enjoy reviewing a year's worth of posts and selecting a few to share once again with readers.

It was hard to choose my favorite posts this year in part because the blog's focus has evolved. I started writing here several years ago to share my experiences and observations about the life of an Alaskan living in the Mexican state of Yucatán. The emphasis was heavy on travel, nature, culture, and life in a foreign country.

This year was a challenging one personally and in my family, but surprisingly I found myself content -- not one hundred percent happy, of course, but optimistic and centered in my place in the world -- despite a lot of changes and stress around me. That's what I wrote about. An Alaskan in Yucatán became more personal and introspective in 2012.

One of my January posts amounted to a resolution for the new year which still looks good to me eleven months later. It was titled, Contentment: If I Had a Million Dollars.



A few months later, reflecting on many things that had quickly and irrevocably changed in my life, I found myself considering how much I'd learned about maintaining a perspective and finding meaning, even in times of change and stress. The result was a post called The Splendor of Each Day.

You can read more posts on the theme of contentment here.

In keeping with the theme of staying positive and feeling good, early in the year I posted about the fine art of napping, Mexican style (photo at top). The Art of the Siesta summarizes what I have learned about the techniques and benefits of taking an afternoon rest.



In 2012 I didn't abandon entirely the sorts of things I wrote about when I first started blogging. I continued writing occasionally on animals and our natural surroundings. My favorite on the topic this year was about the pair of tortoises I adopted several years ago and which live in my back yard.

I also continued writing the series of posts called Living Here, which focuses on everyday life and adapting to the culture of Mexico. Earlier this year I tried to help a Yucatecan friend resolve a difficult legal and personal situation, so I plugged into my network of friends and contacts in Mérida. I was gratified and humbled by the way Mexicans can come to the aid of a friend in need. I told about this experience in a post entitled The Power of Relationships.

Two thousand twelve was not among my best years, but nevertheless it was a year of great learning, and I had many things to be thankful for.

Best wishes for 2013.

The House and Garden Tour, From the Inside

Brent Marsh (center) leads a House and Garden Tour

I've never been the type who wanted to live in an Architectural Digest sort of house. So when my friend and real estate agent Jennifer Lytle approached me recently about putting my place on the Mérida English Language Library House and Garden Tour, I was a bit reluctant.

This tour affords the curious an opportunity to peek inside interesting homes within walking distance of the English Library in Mérida centro. The fee charged goes to support library programs. Most of the tour-goers are foreigners visiting the area, and many are considering living here at least part of the time.

My problem with throwing open the doors was that my house, even after nine years, remains unfinished. There are windows without glass, cabinets without doors, and the whole second story is only half-completed. The facade has not been repaired in decades and occasionally little chunks of it rain down onto the sidewalk. Stuffing pops out of furniture cushions. Nothing is really done.

To make matters worse, since the first phase of the renovation was completed six years ago, much that was finished, nicely painted, shiny and new back then is now peeling, a bit rusty or otherwise weather- and time-worn. The house is very comfortable, but in its current condition it is not a candidate for any design or decorating awards. And since that sort of thing is not an interest of mine, I doubt it ever will be. I do not worry about a little peeling paint or falling plaster here and there. These things happen to an antique house in the tropics. I am not about to dedicate an excessive amount of my time to maintaining my home in picture-perfect condition.

I have never been on the tour, but am aware that many of the homes included feature award-winning architecture and are among the most elegant and well-appointed in Mérida. I just wasn't sure my unfinished home,  set up more for comfort and convenience rather than impact, would fit with the program. But Jennifer convinced me that visitors would be interested in seeing a place that is "lived in."

So last Tuesday they came. There were about twenty on the tour, enough to make my ample front sala feel a bit cramped when they'd all gotten inside.

It was obvious that most of the tour-goers had done a little homework or visited other homes in the area. Mostly they asked specific, practical questions about the ins and outs of fixing up an old house in Mérida. Many were interested in materials not so commonly seen north of the border, things such as polished concrete floors and poured countertops and the variety of tiles and stone used in finishes. Some loved the copper sinks and basins from Michoacan. Others had questions about gardening and plants.

I even met a couple of readers of this blog.

It was an appreciative group, and I found it interesting to view my home through their eyes. Once again I was reminded of how fortunate I am to live in this place.

Goodbye. These People Are Serious.

They are waiting. Hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of people. Tomorrow is the end of the world.

I took this photo of a white-clad group in the woods of the archaeological zone of Kabah last week. They spoke Italian as they wandered through the ruins of Kabah and climbed over the ancient buildings.

As we were leaving, I noticed that the group had congregated, formed a circle and were meditating. It made a beautiful, peaceful image and I decided to take a photo. I stayed at a respectful distance and did nothing to bother them or interfere with the proceedings. But immediately a man who'd appeared to be a group leader began waving his arms violently at me. If looks could kill, my world would have ended right then and there. I turned and began to walk away. I kept my eye on the group, though. The man was not meditating. He preferred to glare angrily at me until I was out of sight.

Then I recalled the miffed looks we had gotten from other members of the group. A couple of them had chosen to sit and meditate here and there in the middle of walkways on the site, and seemed to be upset that we were walking by and talking. I tried not to bother anyone, but I feel that if their meditation skills are so feeble that a little noise is a problem then they shouldn't have chosen to meditate in such a public place. These individuals were not a good advertisement for the peace and tranquility achieved through meditation.

A friend who was with us this day emailed me later to say that she had seen an article online about this very group, which apparently is wrapped up in some sort of Armageddon cult.

The point is that although these people seemed to be having trouble reaching bliss through meditation, they are serious. Maybe relaxing is a little difficult when you believe that the world is going to end later in the week.

The Diario de Yucatán today published a brief summary of past Apocalypse predictions, of which there have been a great many over the last couple thousand years. The Jehova's Witnesses have predicted the end at least four times. Various Christian sects and cults also have predicted the end on occasion based upon biblical writings. Of course there is Nostradamus. Scientists and mathematicians, including Sir Isaac Newton also saw the end coming at one time or another. There have been plenty of others. And we're still here.

The Diario also published an article in which an expert on pre-hispanic Maya culture states that modern western culture radically misinterprets the Maya calendar. "The Mayas were not able to predict the arrival of the end of the world, among other things, because in their worldview the linear view of time, with its apocalyptic mentality inherited from the Judeo-Christian tradition, did not exist."

There you have it. The modern view of it all is so different from the cyclical, pre-European point of view that we've got it all screwed up.

I went to La Flor de Santiago yesterday to have coffee with friends. I was the first to arrive and the only client in the place, so José the waiter talked with me for a few minutes.

José asked me what I thought about the end of the world. I told him I guess that the ancient calendar makers figured they were in good shape when they were a few hundred years ahead in their work, and that had they not been rudely interrupted by the Spanish, they'd have updated the calendar and added a few more centuries by now.

José laughed and nodded. "Pretty simple isn't it?" he said. "Lots of locos out there."

I have plans for the holidays and a brand new 2013 calendar. I've also got a few blog posts in the works. Look me up the day after tomorrow.

Wanderings: Adventure on the White Road

Friday three of us were near Santa Elena, Yucatán, searching for a little-visited ruin known by a variety of names, but commonly referred to as Sacbe (Sok-BAY), which in Maya means "white road."

This was not a simple task. Maybe the several names were part of the problem. The fact that major Mayan highways connecting pre-Colombian cities also were called sacbe because they were paved in white limestone also could confuse things. And persons giving us directions were mostly elder speakers of the Mayan language, and that certainly didn't make communicating easier.

Valerie at The Pickled Onion, where we were staying, gave us simple directions to Sacbe and it sounded easy enough. But just to be sure, after we turned off the main highway as directed I stopped and rolled down the window to ask advice from a group of men on bicycles. They were coming from the parcelas, or farm plots, which was where we were headed. Immediately our little saga began.

Although I told them we were looking for the ruins of Sacbe, the first man apparently did not hear a word I said and assumed all foreigners wanted to go to the same place. He told us, "Kabah is back on the main highway. This is the wrong road."

When I said we'd been to Kabah and repeated that we were looking for the ruined Maya city called Sacbe, which was supposed to be down this road, another chimed in, "Hotel Sacbe is back on the main highway. You passed it. Better turn around."

After another minute or two of getting answers to questions I hadn't asked,  I decided to cut my losses and said "gracias." I said that I would turn around as soon as I found a wide spot. With that, we continued straight on down the dusty road past forest, occasional milpas and piles of irrigation pipe.

After a wrong turn that resulted in a hike down a long path to a bunch of bee hives, we finally thought we were on the right track. We'd driven past a whitewashed chapel and then an open gate as described by Valerie. After the gate, we were looking for a road off to the right.

We tried two roads on the right, parking each time to hike and scout the territory, all the time looking for odd piles of rock, worked stones or structures in the trees that might signal ruins. We even hiked a distance down one road on the left, just in case. We found more bee colonies and several times paused to watch birds, including Chel (Yucatan Jay), Ixchel (Green Jay), Yuyum (Altamira Oriole), Xtakay (Great Kiskadee) and Toh (Turquiose-Browed Motmot).

We drove on and finally saw an old man wearing a wide-brimmed hat, sitting in the shade of an irrigation pump house. When we asked about Sacbe he nodded and described just the ruins we'd been told about, and then said that we had come too far.

We climbed back into the car and followed his directions, backtracking and turning off on yet another dirt road, where we found a field full of grazing cattle he'd described. We passed through the gate, refastened it and began walking in the direction he'd indicated would take us finally to Sacbe. Almost immediately, however, a small herd of cattle, including one large, dark bull, began making its way very deliberately in our direction. Seeing this, we needed little convincing to change our minds about the idea, and trotted back to the gate, which we slid through and refastened securely behind us. As if to compensate us for this disappointment, in the area we observed a large, brown snake, noted wild orchids in the trees and found iridescent green wild turkey feathers.

I had been trying to call Valerie to clear up our confusion, but we had been out of cell phone range. Suddenly I noticed that here there was a signal, so I called. According to Valerie (who'd been to the ruins), way back at the pump house where the helpful man had advised us to turn around, we ought to have turned right. So we backtracked again and, waving at the man in passing, took the right turn.

We continued on for awhile, and the red clay cancab road suddenly became white and hard like a true sacbe. We joked that this must be a good sign. However, ultimately we turned around after talking to a man named Tomás who we found spraying his corn field where the road became too rough to continue in the car. Tomás had once worked a season assisting a team of archaeologists. He told us about many interesting ruins in the area, including a place where a trick of the full moon makes the ancient, abandoned buildings appear to be illuminated from within and another where at night voices can be heard whispering in a strange tongue. He offered to guide us to these mysterious places on another occasion, but did not know about Sacbe.

We were a little hot, tired and hungry at this point, and concluded that Sacbe was indeed best located with the help of a local who knows the area. So we promised to contact Tomás soon, and headed back to The Pickled Onion for a much-needed lunch and cool drinks.

Once again, as I often find, the original goal of the day was not met, but the unexpected adventure was well worth the effort. We saw interesting things. We'd found a sacbe, but not the ruins of Sacbe this time. We will return another day to continue the adventure.

Chance Encounters, Near Misses

"Would you mind trading places?" the man standing across the aisle asked me. "You've got the seat next to my wife."

We were in Cancún boarding a Florida-bound flight a few weeks ago. My ticket said "9-C" and his "9-D." We traded places so he could be next to his wife and a friend, who were seated in the center and window seats next to my assigned aisle seat. He was a tall foreigner, probably American, traveling with his Mexican wife and several others, including his daughter, son-in-law and mother-in-law. There were seven in the group, sprinkled in our row and the row in front of us. They talked back and forth, so it was impossible not to overhear that they were headed north to join a cruise in Fort Lauderdale.

I thought no more about them until ten days later when I boarded my return flight from Fort Lauderdale to Cancún. I again was in aisle seat 9-C, and to my surprise as I approached the row, the same man was standing in 9-D, as he had been on the previous flight. The whole group was headed home, in the same seats they'd had on the flight north. The man was looking expectantly down the aisle for the person assigned to 9-C so he could arrange a swap and sit by his wife, just as he'd done before.

This time I beat him to the punch. "Would you like to trade places?" I asked. "I believe I've got the seat next to your wife."

He immediately recognized me. After we chuckled and speculated for a few moments about what the odds must be against this sort of thing happening, we talked a bit about their cruise. When the plane was airborne, I had some time to think.

I realized that what had just occurred really is not terribly odd. These types of coincidences are actually common. It's just that much of the time when people with connections briefly pass by each other, we do not recognize the situation and never know what has happened. What was most odd in this case was, I think, that we recognized each other.

Exemplifying the point, during that same Florida visit I spent time with my cousin Greg, whom until a few months ago I had never met, nor even known existed. Due to a family misunderstanding in the 1950's, his mother, my mom's older sister, lost touch with the family in Baltimore and was never heard from again. Detective work on the part of another cousin, aided by Facebook, brought long-lost cousins together in Florida for the very first time earlier this year.

We discovered that my sister, who moved to Florida three years ago, lives only a fifteen minutes' drive away from Greg and his family. She has shopped routinely at the supermarket nearest her house, where incredibly, our cousin works as a manager. They may have seen each other many times, with no inkling that they were related. And we learned that our two families also had lived only a two-hour drive apart for four years in the early 1970's, complete oblivious to each others' existence.

Even stranger was the fact that my mother and Greg's dad, who is the brother-in-law Mom never knew about, had lived simultaneously at the same nursing home for awhile earlier this year. They had probably seen each other passing in the halls or possibly said hello to each other without knowing the true story. And for that matter, sadly, when visiting his father there Greg may have seen my mother, his aunt, (who since has passed away) without knowing who she was.

And I've seen this sort of thing before. My first college room mate in Alaska graduated from the same Florida high school as I, and had lived seven or eight blocks from our home. We'd never crossed paths only because he was five years older and had left the area soon after graduating.

A couple of years later, I ran into a girl in Fairbanks whom I'd met and talked to once several years before, as we jostled in a jeep along rural roads in Colombia, where we went to do volunteer work.

Once on a beach in Portugal I conversed with a guy who was laying on the sand near me. We discovered to our great surprise that we both had been born in Ketchikan, Alaska. It turned out that I'd known his brother at the University of Alaska and we had common friends. Years later, although we had not kept in touch during the interim, we bumped into each other in a coffee shop in Juneau, Alaska, and picked up where we'd left off in Portugal years before.

Later I quit a photojournalism job in Anchorage and went south for a few months. Returning home aboard the Alaska State Ferry Columbia, the first night out I sat down in the ship's bar next to a guy who I was astounded to learn was moving north to fill the very position I'd left.

These are only a few of the many instances in which I have experienced chance meetings in circumstances that easily might not have occurred. I've run into friends in the oddest far-off places. I've also bumped into the same strangers time and again in different parts of the world. On numerous occasions I've met others who have close connections with my family, friends or places I know very well. Were I an extrovert, I am sure I'd have even more of these stories to tell.

What is interesting to speculate about is how many times we come very close to these meetings, but never quite make the connection. Twenty-five years after our meeting on the Alaska State Ferry, we recently discovered, my photographer friend was on vacation in Mérida, and stayed only a few blocks from my house. We had been out of contact and he didn't know I was here. We missed that opportunity.

Over time, and particularly when we travel, we briefly pass thousands of individuals, and to a fair percentage of these we may have some sort of connection. I have to conclude that these tangents to our lives are all around us and that near-misses happen fairly often.

What this boils down to is that when these meetings occur, the coincidences really aren't coincidences. We are all part of an incredibly complex social web of friends, family, less-intimate contacts, communities and places.

The world is a small place. We really are remarkably close to everyone else.