World Travels with Meg Pier

Stop 1: The Mountains of Puerto Rico

Racing the setting sun, we hugged hairpin turns as we rode the back of Puerto Rico’s Cordillera Central Mountains toward Barrio Caonillas. The narrow road cut through dense jungle vegetation and every few miles we whooshed through a bamboo forest ,where thousands of emerald green reeds, each almost a foot across, rose two stories high, bending across the swath of concrete we were following to form a verdant canopy. It was an odd sensation to see groves of these gigantic plants tower above me, with several of the smaller species in vases gracing my countertops at home. I felt a little bit like a ladybug on someone’s lawn, contemplating blades of grass.

On our cartoonish map, the route my husband Tom and I traversed appeared as a series of spidery white lines, labeled in tiny print as rural roads 145, 146 and 140 that descended across an appropriately-colored green background.

We faced forks in the road that the tourism cartographer had not deemed worthy of recording and more than once we made detours through family enclaves. Residents looked at us with both curiosity and broad smiles that suggested they didn’t see too many strangers cruise through their neighborhood and the ones that did were likely lost. After a couple of these diversions I became less concerned about getting lost, as the byways inevitably seemed to reconnect to the stretch of squiggly white line the map said we should be on.

The section of the map covering the extent of our journey named no towns; the only location that had warranted being spelled out was "Fabrica del Mueble" or “Fine furniture factory.” With no frame of reference to gauge our progress, we were both acutely conscious of the lengthening shadows, and our conversation waned with the light. We realized our assumptions about the duration of getting from Point A to Point B were meaningless. On another map of a different topography, an eighth of an inch would blow by in the blink of an eye. In this lush land that time had forgotten, that miniscule increment the size of a fingernail represented an hour.

Our eyes and our energy were intently focused on the road in front of us, as though we could will our destination to appear before us. For all we knew, the mountain retreat we were headed to would be around the next bend, or over the next mountain peak.

We made a particularly steep descent and came face-to-face with a green wall of mountainside, the road making a hard right angle. Even with the mounting sense we could find ourselves driving this terrain in the dark, I couldn’t resist asking Tom to pull over so I could take a photograph. The enormous expanse of green that loomed ahead was backlit by the setting sun, and a small white house at its base served to underscore its immensity. Tom heaved the heavy sigh of one who recognized a losing battle, and pulled off on the shoulder.

Getting out of the car, I saw that an even more minor road trickled off to the right, along which several small houses were perched, with a few people outside. I walked toward the escarpment to take a few shots and heard Tom call out “Buenos tardes, donde Casa Grande?” The response came in English and was music to our ears—if we took the tiny lane in front of their homes, and went over a small bridge, we would arrive at our destination.

Soon enough, I was relieved and grateful to see dusk descend from the deck of Casa Grande. With the waning light, the wind picked up and a symphony swelled, courtesy of the resident creatures of the night. A call and response of chirps and croaks ensued and as the harmonic hum rose and fell, the lights of the handful of houses hanging on the hillside across the valley began to twinkle in the darkness.

The next morning, from the same perch, I enjoyed my coffee and seeing day break over the peaks, their cloak of mist rising and then disappearing with the sun. In a matter of minutes the dove-gray sky turned periwinkle and fluffy clouds began to tumble across the tree line atop the mountains. Tom and I went for a short but laborious hike up the mountainside, accompanied by a black dog with a friendly smile, who we learned had just turned up the day before. Life’s cycle played out before us, from the fallen leaves carpeting the jungle floor to the tender tendrils of leafy vines curled around massive tree trunks.

The night before, I spent some time talking to the lodge’s owner Steve, who told me about the path that had led him here some 15 years ago from life as a Long Island lawyer. He shared with me some of the myriad changes that had taken place in that time, ranging from getting divorced to becoming a yoga instructor to bringing his new business successfully through economic downturns and a major hurricane. In each instance, he was never completely sure what the outcome would be, but he also said he felt sure he wasn’t making a mistake. Today, he told me, he can look back and see that it was destiny.

Welcome words to a gal whose roadmap is sometimes a little vague.

Stop 2: A French Village

On a misty morning last summer, in a French village whose motto is "Sempre endavant, mai morirem" or “Always forward, we'll never die,” I found myself in an ancient cemetery.

In an unusual burst of early morning ambition, I had decided to go for a walk after waking up just before daybreak. A block or two from my hotel, I wandered into an alabaster acre packed with miniature marble mausoleums shoulder to shoulder, and rows of ivory crosses that resembled outstretched arms touching fingertips. In the midst of this pale sacred space, the air damp with heavy fog, a black cat scampered across the chalky gravel. Startled, I actually shrieked and jumped several inches in the air. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I bolted through the elaborately scrolled wrought-iron gates.

Reaching the main street and recovering from my palpitations on a bench, I segued from spooked to crestfallen.

Collioure is shaped like the arc of a palette and encircles a poetic port, its perimeter dripping with delicious pastels. Matisse is reported to have said "No sky in all France is more blue than that of Collioure." He and his fellow painters Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali had been drawn to the quality of light here, and like them, I sought to capture the town’s rich shades, albeit with my camera rather than a paintbrush. When I had arrived the prior evening, even at dusk I could see the promise of lush hues hidden in the shadows of the tropical foliage, cubist architecture and picturesque harbor.

My sunny expectations were now dissolving. With the sky hazy and thick with humidity, the day I had envisioned for myself seemed destined to be a washout. Disheartened, I dragged myself off the bench and began walking toward the water, navigating through the narrow, maze-like streets, empty at this early hour. Ruminating as I rambled, my pace quickened with my temper. I fumed that I had driven the better part of a day in the height of Europe’s summer holiday season, only to have my photography party spoiled by the certain rain.

With each step my disappointment deepened and then made a hard turn down the emotional dead end that is resentment and anger. Taking long, purposeful strides propelled by frustration, practically at a run and breathing heavily, I turned a corner and shot out from a cobblestoned alley. The scene in front of me stopped me short.

Beyond the deserted plaza and small sandy beach was a study in shades of peach, tangerine, and apricot. Against the backdrop of a glowing sky layered with mist lay the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean, the color of ginger tea. The long curled arm of ancient defensive bastions encircling the harbor was a shade of deep rosy tan. Standing on a paddle board, a lone figure using a single oar skimmed along the surface, heading out to sea. Watching him, with the lapping waves the only sound, my anger sputtered out like a snuffed candle. With each stroke of his oar, the sun rose higher above the horizon line, its rays wringing out the fog.

Rustlings along the perimeter of the harbor awakened me from the brief and unexpected spell of enchantment. An elderly man in bathing trunks, towel thrown over his shoulder, appeared on my right, walking down to the beach. A few feet from me, a father and son with fishing poles emerged from the warren of densely-packed buildings. Far to the left, a trio of teenage boys dove from the sea wall, the splash followed by their wet heads surfacing seconds later, ringed by ripples in the water.

I moved along the waterfront and nodded at the other early risers: a matron stood with hands on hip peering at the church bulletin posted outside its open door, out of which another black cat sauntered. A man paused to take in the view, three fresh baguettes under his arm. Looking up, I saw a naked toddler wander out on to a second-story balcony, plop down on her behind and stare back at me.

Taking my pick of the network of intersecting lanes that wound their way up the hillside, I delighted in discovering one charming little detail after another. Someone had adorned the surface of an ancient shutter with tiny hearts, sketched in chalk in a tic-tac-toe pattern. A statue of a Madonna and child nestled in a niche in an old wall. Outside a cubbyhole storefront was an artful display of overlapping linens and quilts in varying patterns, in the center of which hung a heart-shaped cache, sweetly stitched with the word "Amitie," or “friendship.”

I made a slow climb up the steep, crooked streets, fronted with houses in Crayola colors and wreathed in fragrant bougainvillea. At Collioure’s heights, I looked out over terra cotta rooftops and enjoyed the same azure expanse that Matisse had so prized.

Collioure illustrated for me a lesson I seem to need to learn and re-learn. Life is not black and white, or all or nothing; it is the multi-hued shadings and contrasts that give a day its texture and meaning. Nothing is static, and any given situation can be seen differently, given a little time and some perspective.

Progress for me has been recognizing that expectations can often cloud my view. Today, I ascribe to the battle cry of Collioure’s residents; it’s OK if achieving the big picture sometimes involves a bit of an uphill slog for me, as long as I am moving forward. At least now I know I will eventually see clear skies.

Stop 3: Alaska's Icefields

I wish I had a nickel for every occasion that I signed up for something offered without thinking it through. I have a long history of responding with an enthusiastic “Yes!” to anything with a question mark at the end. It’s almost reflexive that affirmatives roll off my tongue whenever I am presented with a raised inflection in someone’s voice. Confronted with the wide open space at the end of a sentence that has trailed off without a conclusion, I leap in to fill the void. I often walk away from these conversations with the puzzled realization that I have agreed to do something about which I am slightly uneasy.

Thousands of feet in the air above Alaska’s Juneau Icefield, as the tiny craft into which I was strapped suddenly sailed sideways with a violent gust of wind, I had just such a premonition validated, along with the sensation of having left my stomach far behind. The practically 360 degree panorama visible from the helicopter’s mostly glass enclosure was a swirl of white, black and gray, with the landscape below almost indistinguishable from the different kinds of condensation drifting by. The sky was layered with intersecting swaths of clouds, fog, and mist hovering above an amalgamation of earth, ice and water far below. The otherworldly expanse was a vast wilderness more remote than anything I have ever experienced. If it weren’t for the splashes of rain visible on the windshield, I would have felt shakily suspended in soggy space.

The relentless roar of the rotating helicopter blades rendered conversation impossible but my husband Tom could see the terror in my eyes. Rocking slightly back and forth with no real predictable rhythm, like the odd flight pattern of a hummingbird, the helicopter descended toward the glacier. As we came closer, I could see veins of translucent blue emanating from the smoky shades of the immense field of ice. Getting nearer, I was jarred to see how black the ice was with grime; the sight conflicted with my image of a glacier’s surface as pure, gleaming white.

Tom leapt from the helicopter and bounded off; I yelled at him not to go far and gingerly disembarked, taking hesitant footsteps. I was both repelled and fascinated by the deep, deep fissures in the glacier, from which the brilliant luminous turquoise of pure arctic ice glowed. Looking into the depths of these cracks, they seemed as bottomless as the horizon seemed endless.

While the atmosphere was surreal, with my feet on the ground, from the depths of my fear another emotion began to flutter, one somewhat similar but far more welcome: awe. Despite the gut-wrenching, heart-pounding, hair-raising half-hour to get to this frozen outpost that few other people would ever experience, or perhaps because of it, I felt a reverential, soaring exhilaration.

My free-falls into fear can occur under far less dramatic circumstances, and be triggered by much more mundane, everyday events. Negativity can swallow me up and once it does, it can be like an abyss from which escape is difficult. I am learning to say an emphatic “No” more quickly when such moods descend and to choose to seek a source to stay grounded. Often, when I am able to take a hard look at what’s lying at the bottom of my anxiety, a beautiful, liberating lesson is illuminated that can give my heart wings.

Stop 4: Echoes of Time

I swerved off the road, slammed on the brakes and jumped out of the car, sending dust flying up from the desert floor. Squinting in the hard sun, I stood transfixed by the horizon, where a yin-yang performance of earth and sky played out. Against the backdrop of a cornflower blue sky, and atop the mountain range in the distance, a curving white bank of clouds undulated in a weird rhythm.

In a cosmic game of musical chairs, puffy cumulous clouds wafted along at a steady clip then suddenly paused and dropped into the lap of a valley below. Each gauzy ball of weather nestled briefly in the gap between the purple peaks, with a wispy white arm draped across the shoulder of the summit ahead. Then, synchronized to a divine beat I couldn’t hear, each cloud rose at the same time, gracefully rolling up the pinnacle before it and the cha-cha line again moved on.

I’m not really sure how long I stood on the roadside and watched the atmospheric tumbleweeds blow by; eventually the sound of another car on the lonely highway interrupted my reverie. As it whizzed by, I felt a blush of foolishness, self-conscious at being caught in the act of staring at the sky.

Back at the wheel and down the road, I gave myself a mental “high five” for spotting a small sign I could have easily missed, and veered off the highway. I headed down a rutted road carved by tire tracks into an endless expanse of red dirt, dotted here and there with lonely crooked cacti. Passing a deep river bed etched into the dry, rust-colored earth, I reflected that it was likely to be surging with spring runoff in a couple of months.

I pulled into a parking lot with a lone car in it. Still not completely sure that I was in the right place, I grabbed my camera bag, slammed the door and looked expectantly around. As if on cue, a couple appeared over the horizon and walked toward me. Yes, they said, this is the V-Bar-V site; they pointed me toward what I had come to see.

I set off through a meadow of tall pale grass, following the trail as it sloped gently downhill and then branched into two, creating an iconic fork in the road. A week earlier I had been issuing instructions to a CEO; today I stood frozen in a field, befuddled by the simple choice of going left or right. In an alien landscape lacking all the familiar indicators that made reflexive my every action at home, I paused to listen, for what I couldn’t say.

With that act of openness, I awakened a long dormant clarity, hearing with great intensity sounds around me that I had been oblivious to moments earlier. Birds called—different birds mind you—I was actually able to discern the distinctive cries. I detected the murmur of moving water nearby. I noticed branches lightly clapping together, rustled by the same wind that drove the dancing clouds.

I chose the right fork and soon entered a wooded area, which eventually opened to small clearing at the base of a massive cliff, shaded by the surrounding trees. Approaching the red wall, a shaft of sunlight penetrated the foliage canopy, and the petroglyphs that I had come to see came alive.

Thirteen “panels” were festooned with more than 1,000 drawings made by the Southern Sinagua Indians. The slab of sandstone was crammed with a concentrated mass of symbols—stick figures, turtles, swirls. Unlike other sites that display rock art from numerous peoples, only one style is represented here—known as Beaver Creek, and believed to have been rendered between A.D. 1150 and 1400.

One of the panels, on the far left of the rock formation, unmistakably resembled a human profile, complete with a forehead, nose, upper lip and chin. In exactly the spot where an eye would be located, an ancient glyph in the shape of a circular spiral sat. In other places, figures seem to emerge from cracks, as well as dive downward and raise hands upward. It’s believed that some of these elements represent shamanistic practices to encourage rain or enhance fertility.

On one level, I was a kindred spirit to the creators of this primitive but powerful mural; I too often felt my head was filled with a jumble of vivid, feverish and slightly cartoonish characters careening off each other. On another level, even as a devotee of archaeology and anthropology, I wondered how we could ever know what had inspired this artistry, what had moved the mind and heart of a Sinagua man or women to lift their arm to this red wall to forge an expression of themselves.

According to “Sinagua Sunwatchers” by Kenneth Zoll, “The concept of time to the ancestral Pueblo cultures was probably more of an organic experience than a mechanical one. They felt the passage of time differently than we do today. They would have relied on their body clock to determine their daily activity. Time was not measured by a daily calendar but by the events that occupied it.”

For 25 years I had run my life on a rigorous schedule driven by ruthless conviction. I believed that if I reasoned long enough, or analyzed long enough, I could wring out an answer to any dilemma. Everything had become urgent and life or death. Uncertainty was to be avoided at all cost.

One week into my new life, and alone with the musings of the ancient Sinagua, I placed my hand on a depiction of a paw print, the rock face cool to the touch. How magical to not know, but marvel and wonder instead.

Stop 5: Malta

If seen from the seat of an airplane, Malta’s outline resembles that of a fish, and Marsaxlokk Bay is at its “mouth.” Home to about 70% of the Maltese fishing fleet, the harbor is like a bowl of beautifully-wrapped candy, with scores of vibrantly-painted crafts in hues of yellow, red, blue, green and brown, all nestled side-by-side. The bows of many boats are painted with the symbol of the “eyes of Osiris,” a practice believed to have been inherited from another civilization that once called the island of Malta home, the Phoenicians, a Mediterranean trading culture dominant from 1550 – 300 B.C.

Decorating the bows evolved from the days when superstitious seafarers created figureheads that originally represented fearsome creatures intended to scare the ‘bad spirits’ at sea. Later, the figureheads assumed a more altruistic appearance. Traditionally, the bows of Maltese boats boasted a triangular area called the “moustache,” which identified its home port, a tradition no longer observed. According to the old custom, when the master was in mourning, this area of the bow was painted black.

I arrived here to find it was market day, and the harbor was abuzz with activity. The shoreline was crammed with stalls selling local handicrafts, merchants vying for the attention of the crowds milling past tables spread with wares. The water was strung with boat upon boat, bow to stern across the crowded bay, fishermen calling to each other as they unloaded their catch. With each step, my eyes were drawn in a dozen different directions, jumping across the intersecting angles, the scene an ever-changing kaleidoscope of primary colors.

One craft caught my eye and struck a chord with me. I admired the symmetry of the boat’s lines, the neatly-organized boots and slicker laid out like clothes before the first day of school. The imagery made me think of destiny–was there in fact a great cosmic plan unfolding and were we all just along for the ride? I had recently made a big change in my life, and while it was one I had chosen, the unfamiliarity of my new course often left me feeling a bit at sea.

I wondered about the boat’s owner. Was his life as well-ordered as his gear? Was his existence as simple and predictable as his craft and its contents seemed to intimate? If so, was that a blessing he was thankful for, or a fate he resented? At times knowing what is expected of me can make life easier, and at other times, the hair on the back of my neck can stand up when I think I don’t have choices.

I also know a life lived on the water is one at the mercy of the forces of Nature, which is anything but predictable. My response to uncertain or chaotic circumstances is to fiercely attempt to structure what I can. My efforts to rein in life are generally exercises in delusional futility, but ones that can sometimes make me feel better, if only briefly.

Hungry from the sea air and waxing philosophical, I was soon eagerly devouring "Stuffat Tal-Qamit," a delicious octopus stew. The harbor is ringed with seafood restaurants, most of them two-storied, family-run enterprises. Business was brisk, with extended families at big tables piled high with platters.

I walked off my hearty lunch with more meandering around the harbor, where I met fisherman Joseph Farrugia. He and his son were unloading the catch from their "luzzu" (pronounced loots-zoo). They go out every morning just after sunrise to retrieve the nets they put out the prior evening before sunset. Their daily routine is dictated by a startlingly simple fact--in daylight, fish can see the nets.

Like Joseph’s boat, almost all those in Marsaxlokk Bay are luzzus. He told me the luzzu is much more suited to a fisherman’s work than a fiberglass boat—heavier, more stable, with its shape providing more space for his nets. Joseph uses three different kinds of nets, ranging from 24 – 40 square millimeters, with which he catches bottom fish, such as squid, octopus, and mallet. A good day brings 100 kilos of fish; a bad day can be as little as five kilos.

In the summer months, Joseph may go out as far as ten miles into the sea; in the winter, it’s not safe to go out more than a mile. Other than spots off-limits to fisherman, such as sanctuaries and diving sites, he sets his nets all around the island. If he has a favorite watering hole, he wasn’t saying.

Joseph said his family has fished for as long as he can remember. His son joined him recently; he was taught by his father and uncles when he was 15, more than 40 years ago.

When asked what he does for fun, Joseph smiled, and replied: “Fish.”

I left Joseph’s boat, and continued on along the harbor’s circumference. Before me, in a luzzu, a fisherman cut a line with his teeth. To his right, a man tugged on one of the piles of blue and green nets he seemed swaddled in. To his left, an old salt took lunch out of a paper bag. Behind him, the dark head of young fisherman popped up from below board, and scanned the horizon.

The string of boats across the harbor called to mind the double helix of a DNA strand, weaving together a millennium of life on Malta’s waters, a palpable pattern of time, place and tradition.

My visit to Marsaxlokk reminded me that by daring to cast my net in new waters, and being willing to go where the tide takes me, I was moving closer to the life I believe I was meant to live.