October 31 Return to Creel

We woke up to find several Tarahumara children playing outside our door, while their mother worked to clean the big garden patio. The little ninos didn't take their curious eyes off of us for a second as we hurried to load our things into the Trooper. Monse collected our breakfast from the trees. A little girl, with a drippy nose, messy hair and a big knit sweater hanging over a multicolored skirt, tried to make friends with us in her language. We were entranced by her chirping and smiling. Tarahumara adults rarely smile in public. We felt sad to leave Batopilas. Even though the previous two days lasted about a week in our minds, we wanted to stay longer. Local people had gotten used to us. This was the most peaceful place in the world, for us as outsiders. A steady breeze charged through the canyon, through trees rich with fruit, into windows open year round and through narrow passages between rustic buildings. The dependable tropical breeze that swept across the river to cool Batopilas may have disguised troubled waters. We left town early and drove the good stretches of the road fast. We wanted to save daylight for the washouts or other unforeseen problems. The gas gage on the Trooper indicated that we had less gasoline in the tank than it took us to get into the deep canyon. We had drained our energy taking in millions of mental images on the way down to Batopilas, so we knew every twist in the river and every rise and fall in the terrain. We followed the river road, stopping to take a few last photographs, and climbed the steep grade out, not daring to stop. Every slight turn of the wheels was critical as sections of the road dropped straight down into the river. We were relieved to see the top, where there was a little room for error, for distractions or for a stray goat to pass on the road. We traveled fast across the high mesa and watched for Tarahumaras walking along the road. As we approached Samachique, more brightly-clad Indians were visible in the fields and near tiny houses in shallow valleys. Negotiating the turns that led back to the Humira bridge and up to the highlands around Creel seemed easy compared to the dangerous stretch behind us. We reached the Laguna Arrereco early, around noon. We stopped and got out of our vehicle to stand once more on solid ground, knowing we were back on the paved road, in easy range of Creel. We sat on rocks by the blue lake. Tarahumaras, mostly children, appeared from the dense forests all around. We bought some hand-made souvenir items from them -- little purses sewn with yarn donated to the Indians by area churches and Indian figures carved from tiny fallen branches. Two Tarahumara girls came to look at the large drum in the back of the Trooper and touched the glass windows, tires, doors, mirrors and chrome trim -- things they had seen little of in their villages. I wondered what this moment meant to earthly people in a place where outsiders were just beginning to show them how excessive the outside world really is. What were these girls' expectations for the future? We drove the last few kilometers to Creel. Many Tarahumaras were following trails beneath unusual rock formations near the road. They weren't unfamiliar with autos, but most that they saw were the big government trucks that built the road and the logging rigs that hired many Tarahumara men.

Creel was quiet on the night before El Dia de los Muertos. We wondered what local families were doing, but we didn't see them at the town cemetery. Sacred Indian hoops and Christian crosses covered with flowers decorated many of the graves. Margaritas was eerily quite on this night. NEXT PAGE