Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer
Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2021 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"River of Faraway Dreams"
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Many people have asked me what inspired us to “leave civilization” and come to Belize in the mid-70’s? That is a question more easily answered from the *gringo* perspective, rather than the Belizean one. The ‘60’s in the U.S. had been an era of extraordinary civil unrest: the assassination of two Kennedys, of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There was Vietnam; high school friends had returned with broken bodies and twisted minds, or not returned at all. Political demonstrations, the Kent State Massacre, and Tricky Dick Nixon. I was sick of racial violence, sick of unnecessary wars, sick of the inequities between rich and poor, sick of crooked politicians, of ever-increasing noxious pollutants, sick of herbicides and pesticides, brown air, toxic landfills, and poisoned waters. I was a young idealist and seeking Eden. We wanted to raise our child in a clean environment, to grow our own food, and live a simpler life. Perhaps in that sense, from a Belizean standpoint, we were refugees -- ex-pats,
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fleeing from a country we no longer believed in. Belize was English-speaking, agriculturally oriented, and we could drive there without crossing any oceans. Also, since my earliest childhood, I had experienced flying dreams. There was one recurring vision of a faraway land. It did not feel like a place of fantasy, but rather a very real place I would one day experience first-hand…
Effortlessly, I was flying, flying, flying. As through the eyes of an eagle, I saw that particular river, a secret place with a green snake of water, flowing from south to north, threading its way through a shaded tropical forest. There were great boulders half-submerged in its clear green depths. Sometimes, instead of flying, I was swimming between those monoliths, swimming alongside a giant tarpon who had swum upstream from a distant sea. At other times, it seemed as though I saw the river from a different perspective. It seemed to be further upstream in the mountains, further south, where it seemed to flow from the east instead of south, and was blue, rather than green.
Thirty years later, I lay on a large, smooth, sun-warmed, pink-and-black speckled boulder, up in the Mountain Pine Ridge, below a giant waterfall. Closing my eyes, I reveled in the warmth on my skin. For a brief time, I was conscious of the rushing crystalline blue waters at my feet, and the chirping birds overhead. But soon the sounds faded into a hazy daydream...
Effortlessly, my wings spread, I sailed upward, the winds wafting me high into the air. I looked down on the familiar landscape of the beautiful green river. I knew this place. I flew high above it, this time heading upstream, further and further south than I had ever been. I came to a great bend in the river, a large tributary that fed into the river from the east. I had never seen the great elbowed canyon before, but somehow I had always known that it must be here. I followed the tributary. The water was no longer clear green, but instead became a brilliant turquoise, blue and sparkling, with unmatched clarity. As I wheeled in flight like a bird, boulders of pink and black speckled granite rose from the riverbed, and I saw myself below, stretched out on the rocks...
Abruptly, my mind was sucked back into my body, and I sat up looking at the glistening water.
This is it, I thought. The river of my dreams. All of it. The green of the Macal, and the turquoise of the Raspaculo. All these years, and I had never put it together before. This place had always been here, from time immemorial. Not merely a dream, but a premonition of what the future had always held in store for me.
Effortlessly, I was flying, flying, flying. As through the eyes of an eagle, I saw that particular river, a secret place with a green snake of water, flowing from south to north, threading its way through a shaded tropical forest. There were great boulders half-submerged in its clear green depths. Sometimes, instead of flying, I was swimming between those monoliths, swimming alongside a giant tarpon who had swum upstream from a distant sea. At other times, it seemed as though I saw the river from a different perspective. It seemed to be further upstream in the mountains, further south, where it seemed to flow from the east instead of south, and was blue, rather than green.
Thirty years later, I lay on a large, smooth, sun-warmed, pink-and-black speckled boulder, up in the Mountain Pine Ridge, below a giant waterfall. Closing my eyes, I reveled in the warmth on my skin. For a brief time, I was conscious of the rushing crystalline blue waters at my feet, and the chirping birds overhead. But soon the sounds faded into a hazy daydream...
Effortlessly, my wings spread, I sailed upward, the winds wafting me high into the air. I looked down on the familiar landscape of the beautiful green river. I knew this place. I flew high above it, this time heading upstream, further and further south than I had ever been. I came to a great bend in the river, a large tributary that fed into the river from the east. I had never seen the great elbowed canyon before, but somehow I had always known that it must be here. I followed the tributary. The water was no longer clear green, but instead became a brilliant turquoise, blue and sparkling, with unmatched clarity. As I wheeled in flight like a bird, boulders of pink and black speckled granite rose from the riverbed, and I saw myself below, stretched out on the rocks...
Abruptly, my mind was sucked back into my body, and I sat up looking at the glistening water.
This is it, I thought. The river of my dreams. All of it. The green of the Macal, and the turquoise of the Raspaculo. All these years, and I had never put it together before. This place had always been here, from time immemorial. Not merely a dream, but a premonition of what the future had always held in store for me.