Columns

Thirty-six years ago, one of the deepest thinkers I’ve ever bumped into wrote a short essay on death. I tried to read it all those years ago but the ideas were too difficult for me to grasp ... or maybe I just wasn’t ready.

My wife Susy and I recently joined Salvador and Diana Mayorga for a tour of selected historical hotspots in Ajijic and Chapala. Our “Cicerone” for this visit was Jorge Varela, author of  “Mr. Lawrence,” a short piece of historical fiction (in Spanish) based on writer D.H. Lawrence’s 1923 stay in Chapala, where he began work on his novel “The Plumed Serpent.”

This was a talk I did not want to miss. National Geographic photographer Ben Horton was to speak about his work as an explorer during a conference promoting a new series of textbooks for teaching English with NatGeo photos and themes.

Since I’m interested in both exploration and teaching, this looked exactly like my cup of tea, and so it was. I just regret that so few people turned out for what I’d say was one of the best adventure and conservation presentations I’ve ever experienced.

We were strolling along Ajijic’s Malecón with new friends. One of them gazed at the placid waters with dreamy eyes and began to tell us stories of amazing animals with exotic names like Megatherium and Gomphothere, creatures which used to frolic alongside the lake in prehistoric times.

Whew! Putting a book together is quite a job and, believe me, it’s twice as difficult if the text is bilingual. Yes, this second volume describes, in both Spanish and English, 25 new sites chosen from among more than 200 attractive outdoor locations which I wrote about in this newspaper over the last 30 years.

Some time ago, we stumbled upon a small shelter cave in a remote part of the Primavera Forest, alongside El Río de las Animas, the River of Ghosts. Inside the cave we found a shimmering white, bell-shaped column of rock which I decided to call La Reina de las Animas, the Queen of Ghosts.