seven years no winter

About the best way to solve the winter blues is to get out and head south. The winter in Mexico is just like summer in Western Washington; clear skies and not too hot. Winter in these parts is a lot like living in a cold shower with very dark sunglasses on. For seven years I traveled to and through Mexico. I stopped traveling to put down roots in my community. (I had never felt at home anywhere except in one vibrant town in Mexico). I did that because being gone for half a year and out of touch made me a perpetual stranger. I had been coming and going all my life, so staying put was a whole new experience.
It was hard, going to Mexico the first year. I was timid and frightened. I remember tramping through the "jungle" with a machete toting drunk and violent Mexican friend, head foggy from cheap tequila nights and perpetual diahrrea, realizing this guy could chop me to pieces and nobody would know. It was the best year of seven. I began to learn Spanish, at least I could pick out a few words, from sentences that sounded like hundred letter words. Then I became jaded. Dollar bottles of Pancho Villa tequila became common. Green coconuts wore me down. The mystery of a JeJene bite (vicious biting gnats) endured with stoic non-chalance. Nights of barking dogs and crowing roosters, deafeningly loud and bad music, the stench of burning plastic, all a memory faint, far off. Yet Mexico had given me so much, taught me confidence, friendship and community. Showed me the other side of life.
When I went south, I also went deep into my own self. Layer on layer peeled away, I was neither an American, nor a Mexican. With the permission of some very gracious friends, I got closer to my true self, my human-ness. I am deeply grateful for those kind people. Besides, the food was great. I miss the food.