When we first ran across this old overgrown cemetery above Central City in Colorado, the first thing we had to ask ourselves was, "Who are the Knights of Pythias?"

Maybe you know, but I had to look it up. I guess that's the old person's way of saying I had to Google it. My gracious, how did we ever know things without Google? Trek all the way to a library? Wow, we had a lot of energy. Anyway, I found out, if you don't know, the Knights of Pythias is a fraternal order founded in 1864 in America. Of it, our revered then-president, Abraham Lincoln, said, "It is one of the best agencies conceived for the upholding of government, honoring the flag, for the reuniting of our brethren of the North and of the South, for teaching the people to love one another, and portraying the sanctity of the home and loved ones." Well heck, who wouldn't want to join on those words of endorsement?

And again, maybe you know, but I had to Google "Pythias," as well.  He and his pal, Damon, are historical characters who lived in the 400s B.C. and the depth of their friendship is the subject of Greek legend. They belonged to the Pythagorean Brotherhood founded by the father of Greek philosophy, Pythagoras, who held that the two most excellent things for man were "to speak the truth and to render benefits to each other" through bonds of friendship and loyalty. Pythias and Damon's bond has been immortalized by a historical incident in which they had each others' backs when the king of Syracuse condemned Damon to death. (Various renderings of the tale switch the roles of Pythias and Damon ... which can be confusing.) The fraternal order says, "Their loyalty to each other, the adventures that beset them, and the outcome of this noble friendship form the basis for one of the most beautiful stories of history as exemplified in our ritual."

Though many of the gravestones are in disrepair or have disappeared altogether, it's a pleasant cemetery that now finds itself nestled among the aspen trees, with wide paths through the forest. Of the five old cemeteries in this area, all pretty much right next to each other, I find this one the most peaceful. 

George Stroehle, below, was born in Austria and fought in our Civil War. Most army units had a band and George was a musician, first class. (Naturally I want to know what instrument he played!) The 45th Illinois Infantry was a highly-respected Union infantry regiment that fought in some of the most famous battles of the Civil War including Shiloh and Vicksburg. I don't know which years he served in the infantry, but it existed 1861-1865 expressly to fight in the Civil War, and was disbanded afterward. His kids are buried across the road in the Masonic cemetery. 

I can't say exactly why, but I really like Captain Webb's disassembled gravestone right along a path between the Knights of Pythias and the Central City cemeteries. I guess I want to know what he was a captain of. I couldn't find any information on him; his wife was born in Cornwall, but I found nothing further on her either. These are three photos of it in different seasons. 

My little phone camera actually tends to work pretty well catching sun rays and lens flare, and as I walked by this gravestone I noticed a beam from the very low sun striking the top of the stone. So I got out the phone and snapped a pic but planned to maneuver around to arrange the scene such that the sun beam was directly above the pointed finger. But alas the phone ran out of battery, so I only got this one photo. Even though it wasn't what I ultimately wanted, I think it's still a pretty fun picture. 

The boundary between the Knights of Pythias Cemetery and the Central City Cemetery is not clearly denoted. On the west side of each cemetery there is a gate and metal fence; the cemeteries are side-by-side and there is nothing I can see separating them into the northern one (Pythias) and southern one (Central City). There may have been a fence in times past, but walking between the two you come across this lovely vista, and the grove of aspen trees seems like the natural border for them. 

To me it seemed that Nellie Ballard's grave, both photos below, was on the Central City side but she's listed in Find A Grave in Knights of Pythias with an additional, but not filled-in, entry in Central City. I found several other names that had two listings in both cemeteries, so I think the boundary is fuzzy to everyone. It's hard to tell from the photos, but this is right on the connecting pathway. Nellie has such a friendly tree arching over and protecting her. 

 So now we have wandered far enough south that we are conclusively in the Central City Cemetery.  

"Chas" Engdahl (given name Charles) died instantly in 1907 inside a mine in Russell Gulch when a series of dynamite charges he was tamping 1,600 feet below ground exploded.

One of the best things about exploring the old cemeteries near me is that a lot of the epitaphs spur me to learn local history that I didn't know before. I learned a lot in Leadville's Evergreen Cemetery a couple years ago. Having run across this tombstone below, I was motivated to Google the Sleepy Hollow Mine, and learned about a major event in the early days of Central City -- the Americus and Sleepy Hollow Mine disaster. 

A major issue with mining here is keeping water pumped out of the tunnels and working areas below ground. We recently ran into a fellow who is working in one of the old mines in Central City that has been purchased with plans to restart production ... after about 200 feet of water is pumped out. Anyway, several adjacent mines in 1895 were in a dispute over the issue of drainage and prorating the expense of drainage between several owners. One of the owners decided to let the water collect in the lower portion of their mine which was above portions of the adjoining Americus and Sleepy Hollow mines. The reservoir of water broke through a section of ore and everyone below the line of the break was almost instantly submerged, "and their bodies must lie there for weeks," according to a newspaper article from the time. The article describes the rescue effort:

"The sounding of the whistle gave the first signal of disaster, and soon the shaft building of the Sleepy Hollow mine was so crowded with families and relatives of the imprisoned miners and those wanting to give assistance that it was almost impossible for the work of rescue to go on.

Sheriff Williams finally arrived on the ground, the building was cleared and practical miners offered their services in lowering the bucket. The farthest depth attained was 330 feet, the accumulated gas forced up by the rising water being such that a candle would not burn at a greater depth.

A second effort was made, a larger sized safety lamp having been place in the bucket. The rescuer who fist descended in the bucket found Mr. H. Prisk at the 330-foot level. On reaching the surface he was almost in an insensible condition. Another man went down afterward, but was unsuccessful in reaching a lower point in the shaft owing to rising of water."

Fourteen men in total drowned in the mines, two in Americus and twelve in Sleepy Hollow. Below is a historical photo of the funeral in Central City for the disaster victims.

Mr. Albert T. Chappel was thrown from a wagon while hunting with friends, and as unlikely as it seems, his double-barreled shotgun discharged in the fall. The shell from one barrel hit his arm and from the other hit his leg, which subsequently had to be amputated. Although the amputation was successful, he died but three days later from gangrene. He was 21 years old.

I'm afraid I just have to chuckle at Mr. Ely's middle name — the "J" stands for Jabez — because I always thought "Jabez" was a made-up name for the Ogden Nash poem, "The Boy Who Laughed at Santa Claus," which features the naughty boy, Jabez Dawes. It says Mr. Ely was a "pioneer of 1858" ... I've seen that epitaph on several gravestones in various mountain cemeteries in Colorado. Just makes me wish I knew more of his story; these epitaphs are such a tease! 

I find it so interesting to see where the people who died here hailed from. Big cities have the reputation as the "melting pots" of America. But the old mining camps and towns were full of immigrants as well. I think Ireland and Cornwall are most highly represented around this area, but George Stegner, left, was born in Saxony, Germany. 

Thomas Hooper, born in England, died in 1881, aged 22, in the United Gregory Mine when a block of rock above him gave way beneath an ore cart and he was crushed to death under one ton of ore. 

William Reynolds died at 31 from “miner’s disease.” No further description is given of what exactly that means, but I presume a type of lung disease, as is probably the most common health affliction of miners. His parents are from Cornwall. His dad died of heart failure. I find these tidbits interesting because they are some of the few male deaths not listed as some sort of accident. Of course many a cause of death is a mystery to history, not noted for posterity, but of the ones I find info on, it's rare to see a non-accident cause listed, even though William’s was still related to mining. Both men's obituaries specifically mentioned they were very well liked among their peers. Mrs. Reynold's death is listed with the now outdated term, “apoplexy.” I.e. a stroke.  

A few more shots I have no further info about, but I think they are picturesque amid the mountain forest reclaiming them.

When I looked up Joseph Nicholas George, gravestone on the left below, I discovered he is buried in yet another discreet cemetery, even though there is no indication that it is separate from the Central City one. But there is actually a tiny Foresters Cemetery, for members of yet another fraternal order, the Ancient Order of Foresters, which originated in England in 1834. If you’re curious, as of course I was: This order, evolved from the even older Royal Foresters, was at first a social order until the members decided they had a duty to assist their fraternal brethren who fell on hard times “as they walked through the forests of life.” Rather than allowing their families to become destitute if the head of the family was incapacitated, the members began paying money into a common fund to dispense as “sick pay” and funeral grants to those in need. I like that their chief officer is titled simply High Chief Ranger (and the various lower ranks are other types of “rangers”) rather than some kind of ridiculous title (in my opinion) of other orders like Noble Grand (IOOF), Exalted Ruler (Elks), or Worshipful Master (Masons), etc. The Foresters seem a little more humble and egalitarian. 

Lillie Mitchell, aged 7, is the stone on the right, also in the Foresters.

So to my knowledge so far, all in one basically contiguous area above Central City, there are seven cemeteries for the old miners and pioneers, five of which belong to some fraternal order.

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We skipped a trip to Mexico in 2021 because of COVID and came back in March 2022 during my nieces' and nephews' spring break. And what a magical time that proved to be (we've typically gone earlier in the winter) at my favorite little lagoon, Popoyote Lagoon — a refuge for the American crocodile which has also become a refuge and nesting zone for a plethora of birds. If you happen to have been following me for awhile, you'll have already read how the roseate spoonbill population has exploded over the years I've been hanging out at this lagoon. There are vastly more birds and also vastly more mangrove branches and other foliage making the photo shooting ironically more difficult in spite of the burgeoning population. I found a few holes in the foliage I could focus through, but they were few indeed. 

I think I will not find myself here in the month of March again, making this an extra special year, and a real highlight for my decade of visiting. So I'll share with you a fair bunch of the photos I managed to capture. Although it will be hard for you to picture in your head the photographing challenges, please admire all of them for how tricky they were to get! And know that I was able to get a passable photo of only a tiny fraction of the birds actually present. 

Let's start with my favorite baby ... yes, of the ones I could see I had a favorite — this little spoonbill that I nicknamed The Baron, as he was always looking over the edge of the nest and spreading up his wings, just itching to take that first flight. 

They're cute but a little gangly.

This one in a nest of older chicks has some personality, too! This nest I could photograph because Erik held open a hole in the fence wide enough for me to fit my lens through. Thick foliage plus a chain link fence to overcome! 

We'll come back to more spoonbill chicks, but now check out these baby snowy egret chicks! How sweet are they?! The layer of gray feathers mixed with the white is kind of a cool look.

We'll come back for more egrets, too. But here is one more species whose chicks I saw — wood storks. This first pic, with the tiny little head barely sticking up above the nest, my arm nearly fell off holding up my heavy camera and lens, as I had to shoot basically straight above my head, and after I saw it pop up once, I waited and waited and waited for it to pop up high enough again to snag a photo. And alas ..... 

These are some older wood stork chicks. One of the cool things is that for all the bird species, the nests held a variety of ages of the chicks from sleepy, newly hatched ones to demanding teenagers.  

Wood storks are rather fascinating birds and it seems pretty obvious how they got their name. Here's one sitting in its nest quite well camouflaged with the wood branch beside it. 

They are quite large birds; it's amazing how they manage to squeeze their nests into this area in such dense foliage among a high density of other nests. See more wood storks in my post from 2020.

In addition to so many babies, I had the pleasure of spotting a new bird species I hadn't seen before: the yellow crowned night heron. I watched this couple building their nest each day and am a little sad I was there too early to see their chicks, I bet they are cute! But this was another shooting situation that just about took my arm off. There was one little hole that I could see them through the thick foliage. So I had to stand in a precise spot holding my lens up for ages until they moved just right into the spot of open space. I wanted to get photos of them interacting with each other, which meant, of course, I had to stand and wait even longer for such actions to take place, lens up, finger on the shutter button waiting for that magical fraction of a second when all factors came together. But I think it was worth it. These might not be world class photos, but I'm super pleased considering what I went through and how beautiful the birds are. 

For the longest time, the pair would only "pose" in tandem, never looking at each other or interacting. 

Then they only faced opposite directions. I'm not sure the caption for this one, but the one with its wing open is saying something to me. I presume she's the female, as she's a tad smaller than the other one. It's like she is showing me her wing like a ballroom dancer might hold up her gown for all to see its folds. The way she's got her leg extended out contributes to my sense of her being a dancer, perhaps getting ready for a tango. 

I also waited for ages to be able to get a photo of them with their top feathers splayed out. This was about the best I managed, which isn't awesome and their feathers aren't as far out as they can get, but it's something. 

Finally they face each other. By the time this moment happened in the tiny space available to capture them in a photo, my arm was literally trembling from the strain of having held up my heavy camera/lens combo. The hole in the foliage was so small, and these birds were more camouflaged than the white egrets and pink spoonbills, a number of people walked by me pointing and talking about the spoonbills, I'm sure wondering why I was focused at a tangle of trees instead of the magnificent birds, haha. A couple people kindly pointed out some spoonbills as if I couldn't see them. 

And then, poke! "Get out my way, Bub!" 

Okay, as promised, now back to the spoonbills and egrets ... at feeding time! Lots of noms to be had from the throats of mom and pop. 

 So yummy! 

These snowy egret parents I actually felt a little sorry for. Their growing children look very demanding! 

Look at how sinister the middle child on the right is! Whew, I'm glad he's not a predatory bird who could hurt me, or I'd be scared! 

I don't know how to properly convey to you the overwhelming cacophony that filled this small lagoon teeming with baby chicks of several species all crying for food and crying for whatever other reasons and parents calling for whatever reasons ..... Here is a photo to try to illustrate the density of nests throughout the lagoon. I can see eight nests and three species of birds in this one shot, just taken with my phone camera. Now imagine everywhere I can see in the lagoon is as dense, and a lot of those birds are making noise. Also notice at the bottom of this pic the egret looking silly preening the underside of his wing. 

If you don't remember me saying this in the past, I reiterate that in 2012 there was but one spoonbill couple in the lagoon. Then ten years later it looks like above! I consider this a special experience in my life to have witnessed this population grow and flourish from one couple to more than I can count.

These spoonbill couples were so close to each other, the bottom pair could hardly stand up underneath the other nest. Neither of these couples had chicks yet. 

And some more spoonbills. I may not see them again here (because after ten years, I may not be returning during their nesting season), so I'm cherishing all the photos I managed to procure this year. A sweet pose from a couple and a silly pose from a bird looking at me upside down:

Visiting the same place each year for a decade and photographing the same animals has also provided an opportunity, I just realized, to chart my "progress" with photography equipment and skills. My first posts were with a point-and-shoot. Then I had a consumer-grade DSLR camera and lens. Then I got a pro-level lens and mid-grade camera, and finally a pro-grade camera to go with the lens. I think in addition to the upgraded equipment, my skills upgraded in tandem. I'm kind of embarrassed to leave up the photos I posted from the first few years! But I didn't start this blog to show off photography, even though it has evolved into a very photo-heavy blog. I guess I rely more on photos than words to convey a lot of my travel narrative these days. 

I didn't snag many photos of crocodiles this year. This whole lagoon is here because of the crocodiles, as a refuge for them! But there are several reasons why it was difficult to obtain good shots this year. Here are a couple, though, just as a nod to remember the reason that this amazing little lagoon is protected. 

Lastly, a couple other birds from a different nearby wildlife refuge: first a pelican and then a new bird I was introduced to, the black crowned night heron. 

In my post from 2020, our previous visit, I mentioned how happy we were to find our friend, Noel. This year we were very concerned because we knew that Playa Linda had largely shut down during COVID and we wondered if his business survived. We were saddened to walk to the food stalls and discover him missing. We asked around about him, and someone told us he still lived there but no longer had a food stall. We asked that man if he could relay a message, and we wrote an email address that Noel could contact us at. We walked back to our hotel feeling pretty skeptical that he would ever receive the message. 

The following afternoon, while Erik and the rest of the family went to play pickle ball (something my knees do not allow me to do), I was going to read the book I brought in the cool hotel suite, but the maids arrived just then to clean. I didn't want to tell them to go away and I also felt awkward just sitting on the couch while they cleaned. So I decided to go to the lagoon, though I hadn't planned to that day. As I was walking past the food stalls on the way to the viewing areas, I heard, "Shara? Shara?" I looked around, and there was Noel! He had received our message but didn't have a way to email us. So he had come to the beach and had been there all day on the off chance we might walk down there. The only reason I did was because of the maids coming to clean. 

So a happy reunion. We spent another day driving around together, sightseeing, and he took us to a delicious local's restaurant for lunch. OK friends, I hope you enjoyed a little time with me during baby bird season in Ixtapa! 

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This post was started to show some photos from a particularly forlorn cemetery near me, the Caribou Cemetery. But while I'm at it, I decided to include some photos of the surrounding area. (and as usual, it got a bit out of hand — "some" = quite a lot) Caribou is actually responsible for the name of my town, Nederland, because the gold and silver were mined at Caribou at over 10,000 feet above sea level, but transported down to a mill that lay 2,000 feet lower in Nederland, which in Dutch means "lowlands," so it's all relative. I used to volunteer at our town's Visitor Center and we got quite a few Dutch visitors, and they always wanted to know why our town at 8,200 feet above sea level was named after their country meaning "lowlands."

There is much literature on Caribou and I love the area, and someday I may make my own post about its history. But today we're just going to visit the cemetery and some environs. The first photos here depict all that remains of the town of Caribou that was once home to as many as 800 people. Tons of internet sources claim 3,000 people and I don't know the original source of that which everyone regurgitates. One acquaintance checked the actual census log for one of the boom years, which listed the population at 500, and another extremely knowledgeable source has mentioned, firsthand, 800. So I'm going with 500-800 during the boom years. The first photo shows the skeletons of a couple stone buildings in the distance; now in 2022, that is all that stands. The second photo shows the waning remains of a wooden cabin from some years ago which is now almost wholly digested by the plants. When I first moved here, it was still standing, the only other remnant besides the stone structure, and I've watched it melt back into the earth. It is a beautiful landscape, though, and I can hardly begrudge the flowers for taking back their land.

My original post  of this title proceeded now to the cemetery, but by 2025 I had so much new information, updates and photos to add about the cemetery and the mines, I decided to break the post into two parts. So the cemetery and landscape parts now reside in the article, "Caribou Cemetery and the Glories of the Mountain." So here we will now start with the mines. All the old mountain communities in my 'hood are mining communities established in the 1800s, which experienced varying levels of success and longevity. Like so many in Rocky Mountain Colorado, Caribou was a boom-bust town. The rich lodes were discovered in 1869; by 1870 the place was packed; and by the latter 1890s it was all but deserted. Mining was revived on and off in subsequent decades for different mineral veins. In the other article of this now broken-apart post you can read about the last real miner, Tom Hendricks. His mines, the Caribou and Cross, are now operated by another company ... and that is a bit of another story I won't cover here.

The extended region around Caribou townsite is known as the Caribou Mining District. Within it lies, among many others, the Pandora Mine, which basically overlooks this valley.

It was part of the WWI revival of the area, extracting tungsten, which was a highly sought mineral during the Great War used to harden the steel of gun barrels. We have visited these meager ruins, mostly just some machinery for a hoist at the headframe, several times but I only now took the effort to do the research to figure out what mine this is. Like the 3,000-person bustling town of Caribou reduced to nearly nothing, I was surprised to see photos from 1966 of this mine, long abandoned by that time. I'll replicate my experience for you.

First are the remains that we find today. The top photo is from the hoist; the mine shaft is directly beneath it (to the left) but now filled in, as nearly all shafts are by now.

Now my surprise at finding the photos below in the Carnegie Library for Local History, Boulder, collection — a bunkhouse for the workers. The forest has certainly reclaimed that building so completely it makes me wonder if it was actively torn down. Next time we are there, we will try to see where this bunkhouse could have been.

And this pic matches the first one in my series, showing the machinery inside the shaft house, which now just sits in the open air.

According to thediggings.com there are 80 claims and 46 mines — 29 "producers" and 17 "occurrences" — in the Caribou Mining District. And the Anchor Mine is another one of them still accessible by a combination of 4x4 road and walking. I couldn't find much information about it online and published this article anyway in 2022 with the pittance I could find. In 2024 I received an email from a guy whose great-great-grandfather, Moses Ingram, staked the original claim in 1859 as a member of the 59ers -- the earliest rush of pioneers seeking mineral wealth in Colorado. His family still owns the property and has tried to maintain and protect the site from the harsh winter conditions over the decades, though doing so is a mighty tall order. He shared with me some information about the mine site, and its state today. This was greatly appreciated and now I can share it with you.

Mr. Cass wrote, "The Anchor is a silver mine that produced a bunch of purest silver in the region. In the mid to late 1800s silver was just as expensive as gold, but in the 1920s when the United States decided to go with a Gold Standard (instead of a Silver Standard), the silver market crashed. My family was still able to keep the mine open until the beginning of WWII because of the purity of the ore."

The mining cart tracks are still intact from where they exited the mine, which is now collapsed, to the sorting shed. It's a fairly common sight around here to see old mining cart tracks disappearing into a mountainside or just seemingly petering out (the mills or ore bins having collapsed and rotted away). Here you can still see some of the ties covered in moss in the water stream that comes out of the mine. I always like these "roads to nowhere."

At the ore bin, or "sorting shed," the miners would sort out the good ore from the rock they chiseled out of the mountain into one bin, and the rest into the second bin to be emptied onto the ore dump. Mr. Cass mentions that the ore dump at the Anchor is very small owing to how much rich pure ore there was inside the mine. Once there was enough good ore in the bin, the miners would park an ore wagon (or later a dump truck) below the "good" chute, open the bin door and load the ore, then take it to the ore mill southwest of Caribou to be smelted. 

This is the shorting shed, as photographed prior to 2024. 

Mr. Cass wrote, "There used to be what was called a snow shed (that was actually a corrugated metal tunnel) running from the mine entrance, past the tool shed and connected to the sorting shed. The snow shed allowed the mine to be active even in the winter." You can see the tracks passing by the well-maintained tool shed, below.

"Back in 1986, when the Hunt brothers artificially inflated the silver market, we thought about reopening the mine. A cousin of mine, knowing that the snow shed would be in the way of modern mining operations, completely took out the snow shed. He did this without consulting the rest of the family. This still provides consternation within the family to this day. This action left the west facing entrance of the sorting shed open to the harsh winter elements. A few days after we decided to reopen the mine a gentleman from Arizona (who had researched wonderful producing silver mines to capitalize on the (unknown at the time) artificial market inflation. He chose our Anchor Mine as the best bet to go into partnership with. He brought in a bobcat to start removal of the caved-in entrance to the mine. Once he got to the first main timbers of the mine, the mine completely emptied of thousands of gallons of water captured by decades of snow peculation from above timberline. The man from Arizona declared no further progress of reactivation because every single timber inside the mine would have to be replaced due to the size of the mine and water rot. This, in itself, would cost a fortune to do so. So, we immediately abandoned the idea of reopening. This was a Godsend, because it was only a few weeks later that the Hunt brothers were caught and jailed for the deception they created.

"By the time it was apparent the sorting shed would eventually succumb to Mother Nature’s wrath, it was too late. We regretted not installing some sort of protection on the west entrance to keep the snow out." Indeed, when I visited the mine in 2024, I was saddened to see the shed had further collapsed (photo below), with the side wall leaning over precariously. Its saving grace might be the trees it's basically leaning against, they might help keep it from completely collapsing to the ground.

Mr. Cass continues, "Shortly after the loss of the original residence in the early 1950s, the family decided to restore the original compressor house into a livable cabin (what you see today)." This is the quaint cabin today, below. There is a bench beside the brook there that I love to sit on and relax in the peaceful setting. 

Machinery is sitting out in the open on the site, but seems to be faring relatively well. I imagine this came from inside the compressor house, ousted with the remodeling. But I will need to confirm.

In spite of the sad collapse of the sorting shed, the family agreed it would be "a fool's errand" costing a lot of money to restore and maintain it against the ceaseless forces of Mother Nature. She always wins in the end.

This I believe is the original cabin of the first miners, just up the hill from the later one, at the edge of a pleasant hillside meadow. It's quite large for a wooden cabin of its day, compared to what we often see in the area. 

Can you find the little forest troll peeking at me??

I was delighted to find the meadow was full of perfectly plump, ripe raspberries in the fall.

I'm always commenting on how amazing it is that we find new-to-us old cabins or mines or miscellaneous mining equipment in the forests. And all these years we've been going up to Caribou and exploring around, it wasn't until 2025 that we learned of the New Jersey Mill foundation remains! And only because a friend told and showed us. I can't believe I was oblivious to it all this time. A large population of the miners at Caribou's mines were Cornish and were expert stone masons. All around this whole area in Boulder and Gilpin Counties you can see the remains of their handywork in retaining walls and foundations. They could build amazing structures without mortar. (Europe's Incas! haha) 

Here are a couple historic photos from the Carnegie Library Collection of the mill. You can see the stone foundation underneath the wooden structure on the right side of the first photo. Some miners sit atop the roof in the second one.

Some closer shots of the expertise of their stone work.

As sturdy as the man-made structures are, still the trees have an unmatched tenacity. And if they want to grow into the middle of a wall, well that's just what they'll do.

Lastly, we'll head back toward the Caribou townsite but west of it for some hilltop views of the area, most of which is contained within the Indian Peaks Wilderness. 

Up above the clouds.

There's Pinzy down on the trail. You can see all the way to the flatlands from up here where Boulder and Denver sprawl to the east. 

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Some pockets of water at the beach in Salinas, about a half-hour drive from Pirabas, were not just warm, but actually hot. The waves were a gentle size along the nearly flat ocean floor, and our volunteer group ran down the beach and into the clear, undulating waters, splashing each other and screaming, all of us momentarily transformed into six-year olds. After awhile, though, we disbanded and each fell into our own world. 

I walked and walked and walked along the water’s crystal edge and truly felt like I would walk off the end of the earth. The white-sand beach stretched on for miles, and I was completely alone on its surface. I began to wonder if I had been born again near the beginning of time — a solitary creature born from the ocean, its great salty womb still forming the rest of life — and the sun was all mine, and the sand and the sky. I ran and skipped, and laughed out loud.  (original photos are film, by the way, I've put pictures of my pictures in these Pirabas posts, so not the greatest quality)

I thought for some time of never turning back, of abandoning the world. Never before had I felt it would be so easy. I could just walk away on powder-soft sand. But I never follow through with such grandly romantic ideas. I walked back to the group, collecting handfuls of perfect sand dollars along the way. George had found a dead fish in the water and brought it to the van for us all to see. It was long and silver, about as thin as the width of a thumb.  It had horrifically sharp teeth protruding from its mouth, and it made us all shiver in the hot sun.

We sat audience to a marvelous sunset. I wandered off again in the dusk and gazed out at the ocean. I had come to Brazil to see the people, but the only things then in my field of vision, in my whole perceptual arena, were pure white sand, water, and sky. I felt like the heavens could just pour down on me all the secrets of the universe, as if the condition for this gift was this particular solitude. Something about standing there with the land stretching on and on the length of a continent, the water stretching on and on the width of an ocean, and the sky stretching on and on to cap the planet. It felt weird to be standing inside of my time-constrained body amidst the timeless elements that persist before and beyond comprehension. I thought then of the quote I think of most often in nature, one that speaks deeply to me — Emerson's: “I become a transparent eyeball. I am nothing; I see all. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me.  I am part or particle of God.”

In the darkness the sun left behind, I moved my limbs to remember I was human — not necessarily because I wanted to remember, but more through a feeling of obligation to all that I had been for several decades. I moved through the slow, graceful movements of Tai Chi, parting the air like water. My arms and hands traced out circles with supple shoulders, elbows and knuckles, while my feet calculated a square box with measured steps anchored at the heel. I put my hand to my ear in the Monkey Listens pose and tried to hear the sound of humanity in the footprints that meandered through its grains like the sound of sea in a shell.

Then one morning we took a fishing boat to a haven of uncommon peace:  Ilhe du Buraco, a small sand island. On our way there, we stopped at the island, Fortaleza. It’s a long and narrow island, and we landed far down from where Kelly and I had been on our first day. Our two teenage boatmen led us around the island; they were going to take us to see the boy-shaped rock that the old woman had seen in her dreams, although the rock had collapsed in the last year and no longer looked like a boy. Legend says that a boy was killed there by the waves of the sea, drowned, and the rock formed in his image. The formation was deemed to be the work of God, of miracle. It has become a shrine where people make offerings. Once a boy from Pirabas ate a chicken that had been left there as an offering and, we were told, he went insane. When the Donas heard we were taking a boat there, they gave us adamant warnings that we not mess with any offerings.

As we walked along the beach, the boatmen suddenly squealed and ran towards some bushes inland. They came back, quite excited, with handfuls of a small, oval-shaped fruit with a thin, bright red skin and a pit in the middle. They bit into one with obvious delight and bid us do the same. The flesh tasted to me about like what I imagine paste to taste like, and I remembered then a kid in elementary school whom I would spy eating Elmer’s glue. When the teenage boys weren’t looking, I dropped my fruit on the sand behind me.

I thought of the folktale describing the origins of guaraná, which has recently become recognized in America as an ingredient in energy drinks. The highest god gave a baby boy to an infertile couple who grew to be handsome and generous, kind and peaceful. The god of darkness became envious and turned himself into a snake, whereby he bit the boy with poisonous fangs while the boy was alone in the jungle gathering fruits, and the boy died instantly. The mother came to understand that she was to plant her dead son’s eyeballs in the ground. She did this, and from these eyes the guaraná plant grew. The pits of the fruit are black and they are surrounded by white flesh. I wondered briefly if eyeballs would taste much different from this mushy ball of paste I threw away. 

Our guides then took us down the beach further to see two rocks that were in the shape of a heart.

They found a large crab in a tide pool there and managed between the two of them to grab it with sticks and put it up on the sand for us to see, where it chased us around with its snapping claws. From here the boys pointed out where, further down the beach, it is said that an incarnation of a Portuguese hero lived for awhile. The hero lived in the 1300s. He was so valiant and courageous that even after his death, his name was used to rally troops by saying he was coming to help them. People in Pirabas truly believe he has been incarnated several times throughout history. One of our boatmen, Cleumo, said his grandfather met this incarnate here on Fortaleza. The locals have many religious or mythological stories that we would catch only fragments of, and as far as I could tell, they carry a quite literal belief in legend and lore.  

Then we chugged on for another hour or more in our rented fishing boat to Ilhe du Buraco, which we came to refer to as Gilligan’s Island for its isolation and lack of “luxuries.”

Once we hit sand and couldn’t go any further, we were stranded there for about 6 hours until the tide came back in. As we walked through the shallow water against the receding tide, it pulled very strongly at our legs, pulling us backwards, as if trying to keep us from discovering the magic of the island. Above the water line along the white sand beach was a small cluster of one-room palm-leaf houses on tall stilts. Several men were repairing a roof, passing enormous palm tree leaves up a ladder to be strapped down to the roof.

Underneath the raised floors were small fire pits in the sand. Chickens pecked aimlessly and dogs drank out of small tin cans. Large woven baskets hung from the floor boards, swinging in the breeze above the sand. The houses were completely open on the ocean side and had half-height walls on the other three sides. I could just make out pots and pans hanging from the ceilings inside. A hundred yards behind their huts, the jungle began in an abrupt wall of foliage.

I silently applauded their antiquated existence. They lived primarily off the bounty of the ocean and the land, they lived isolated from any conveniences. You might think that this was merely through happenstance or misfortune. But it was through choice. Not far from their cluster of houses was a little “resort,” owned by a hotel in Salinas, that hosted sport-fishermen. It consisted of 6 tiny sleeping huts (just room for a bed), a small kitchen hut, and one larger communal hut with tables and benches and lounging chairs, all the huts on stilts and connected by a narrow wooden walkway on narrow stilts. The resort had a generator to run the kitchen. The islanders, however, did not. They didn’t work at the resort — the two workers were shipped out from Salinas. The islanders tolerated the tourists, but kept to themselves and their own way of life, not even lured into the comforts offered by electricity. They didn’t buy their own generators nor did they ever ask to use any of the conveniences of the little resort (which were rather minor, really). They had one well from which they could pump the rainwater that seeped down into the ground.  It seemed we had landed on a page that had been ripped from a tome of the lives of our long-ago forefathers.

The inhabitants of Ilhe du Buraco had shunned what modernity had come to their corner of the world. I desperately wanted to walk up to their palm huts; they were the picture of the long-lost fairy tale "idyllic existence." But I felt almost like an extraterrestrial there—the gulf between me and them was huge. I felt somehow that they should be left alone. Yet I spied on them from a distance through the zoom lens of my camera. I felt guilty prying and spying on them with my camera, and I didn’t want to be caught looking at them, haha. But nor could I go over and talk or gesture to them. I was immobilized and I was fascinated. Our expedition leader went over and talked to them, though Portuguese was their second language so it wasn't a super fluent conversation. He said they were kind of standoff-ish and recommended we not wander over to their huts. I would guess that the islanders are not so happy about the "resort" intruding onto their beach, but I have no idea how the arrangement came to be. Who owns the island? Are the islanders compensated in any way for sharing their beach with the resort, do they even have any legal claim to the island? Unfortunately I have no idea. I wish our expedition leader had gathered a little more information.

So I sat down-beach from the islanders simultaneously happy and sad. Happy to be there and to witness this way of life which I had never seen in person — it was kind of a "National Geographic moment" for me [as this was my first experience of this kind, though many more would come along in my life]. Sad that I couldn't interact with the islanders and see their huts up closer.

There was no one staying at the resort that day, so the two workers there allowed us to hang out in the big communal hut. One of our boatmen had emptied one of his father’s fish traps right before we left Pirabas. There was a little barbeque pit at the resort, so the teenagers skinned and gutted the fish and grilled it for us. We didn’t have any silverware so we just ate the fish hot off the grill with our fingers — which seemed particularly appropriate there. My eyes rolled back in my head when I tasted it. We were all momentarily stunned by our first mouthful. We became so consumed in pulling the soft, white flesh from the bones and savoring each bite as it melted in our mouths, that we ate in complete silence. I don't know what kind of fish it was, but it was mighty fine eating.

When the fish was all gone, we thanked the boatmen and retreated back into the silence. We each picked a chair inside the open-air hut and sat motionless, and it was as if there existed no sound at all on the whole earth except for the sound of the wind gently stirring the dead grass of the roof. I don’t know if I had ever felt such peace. One can find moments of relative peace at home, but there is always the hum of technology surrounding you, even in the mute threads of carpet, the digital panel on the oven. Here was absolute quiet. We lived on a sandy star at the edge of the universe, silently twinkling. We were nestled into an eddy of time, where the currents and noise of “civilization” passed us by. I found peace in the antiquity of the islanders’ existence, a comfort that the past has not been obliterated, that there is still some continuity. And peace in the wind, the sand, and the water, surrounding us with a hand so gentle we were nearly floating — bobbing and drifting on this notion of life

When somebody finally spoke, it was so jarring, it seemed utterly alien. The sound hurt, and we all jumped back. There was a moment where we were unsure how to proceed. But once the silence was broken, it didn’t seem easy to regain, so we pulled ourselves from our introspection, and let the beach tease out our youth. We built a large sand castle and ran the soft sand through our fingers and toes over and over. 

When the tide finally came up and the boatmen said we had to go, we all felt as though we had been in a bubble all day that suddenly popped. We begged to stay longer, but they said we had to go. Reluctantly we gathered our things and trudged out to the boat with pouty mouths. At first there was a sad pall over the deck as the boat slowly chugged away. Somberly, we passed around bottles of guaraná and beer, which the boatmen had kept in a cooler on the boat. But as our hair whipped around our faces and the salt water sprayed up from the bow, lightly coating our bodies, we began to speak, in fits and starts, as if we had not spoken in years, and then the words began to flow and we talked about how amazing the island was. 

I never even spoke with the islanders, but it was the Brazil I hoped still existed. The villagers in Pirabas were running away from a life like this as fast as they could. I wanted to jump from the boat right then and swim all the way back to America, swim with fish and whales, and not cross back over the land that heaves with inexorable change. I wanted to swim away with dreams, with only a pocket for reality. 

But I stayed onboard. Of course, haha. I cried just a little on the way back, but no one knew it; they thought it was the salt of the ocean on my face. I cried because I was overwhelmed. It's far from the only time I've felt that way and shed a tear over it. But it might have been the first time. Just overwhelmed by the scope and breadth of human existences, the cultures, history, traditions, trajectories, coupled with the diversity of ecosystems on the planet.

Even after all the countries and cultures I've visited since this trip, the day on Ilhe du Buraco remains a memorable highlight. 

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