The Jalisco town of Mazamitla is a haven in the sky. Its name comes from Nahuatl and means “place where arrows to hunt deer are made.”
(It always amazes me how indigenous languages form compound expressions into single words.) The name begs the question, what if women named the site? It could be the “place where firewood to make pozole is found.”
“I am very thirsty.” is one word in Nahuatl: Namiqui. The “place where water bubbles up” is expressed in one word: Ajijic.
Sicilians have the same thing. The word for “dead”: “Swimming with the fishes.”
Anyway, Mazamitla was all about remote dense forests or woods. And that’s how it is promoted, even today.
For its natural environment, Mazamitla has been declared a Pueblo Mágico (Magic Town), set at 2,200 meters above sea level. That’s roughly 6,700 feet in the air, or another 1,700 feet higher than the “place where the water bubbles up.” The air this high up is thin and clean, so much so, that you can get a little bewildered and light-headed, like staring too long at Fox News.
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