Interesting Bird Week

The past three days have been filled with bird encounters. None of them have anything to do with the vermilion flycatcher pictured above -- I just included him since we saw so many of them in Oaxaca and frankly, this post bums me out so much that I needed something pretty to start with. Onward:

- Monday evening after yoga I caught, with the help of Julie and Trixie and the support of other yogis and folks in the parking lot, an injured female mallard. It took a fair amount of coaxing and Luna bar and strategizing before I finally had her in my hands. She had a badly injured, most likely broken, right wing and some serious pecking. I drove her, wrapped in a sarong that Julie pulled out of the back of her car, to the Humane Society and handed her off. She was pretty calm, but let's just say that she doesn't like cars. I still have to follow up with Wildcare to see what happened to her; my suspicion is that she wasn't fix-able and was probably euthanized.

- Tuesday morning while hiking in the woods with Jasper a hawk flew low across the path right in front of me, with a rat in its talons. Probably a red-shoulder, judging from its size and tail feathers, really weighed down by its prey. Sweet!

- Wednesday evening coming home after yoga I startled a robin in our yard who then proceeded to fly straight into the window. Its neck broke on impact. I scooped it up and it died in my hand.

So now it's Thursday and I'm hoping for better avian interactions - no more deaths, please.

Stepping Gingerly Back In

After an absence of 11 days, here is what I notice:

- that my email is filled with advertisements, enticements to shop on-line for everything from shoes to water filters. When I see it all at once, I really feel its impact, and so I've set about unsubscribing from many lists.

- that some political candidates send altogether too much mail. Of the more-than-week's-worth of snail-mail that the USPS dropped on my doorstep on Saturday, at least 50% was from candidates for state assembly. Since I voted absentee before leaving on vacation, I recycled them with impunity, even ferocity. New personal eco-vow: not voting for candidates who flood my mailbox with their crap. [Ojala que Obama no lo haga!]

Interestingly, one of the first topics at the yoga retreat, in one of Ann's classes, was pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses, the pulling in of the focus. One of the actions I am taking now, to support my own pratyahara -- and by this I mean minimizing the distractions that fritter my attention and calm -- is reducing the number of times I'm solicited and highjacked by a commercial announcement. I don't expect I'll ever unplug myself completely -- that, for me, is like giving up coffee, WHY? Especially since for me, as I explained to those who griped at me for spending time on my laptop checking email and writing while on vacation, being plugged-in keeps me connected to the people and issues I care about most.

So the way I'm choosing is to be really vigilant about how I'm connected, to only let in what needs to be on my radar, what supports my continued expansion. Sorry, Athleta, the terry beach-dress doesn't make the cut!

Market Day in Tlacolula

Keep in mind as you look at these photos that it was about 80 degrees out. The blue tarps strung over the Sunday market in Tlacolula, just down the highway from Teotitlan del Valle, kept the sun off, but sometimes created an absolutely stifling cloud of grilling-meat smoke combined with mangoes in the heat. Joe got involved in stringing the tarps up, since his superior height (compared to the average Zapotec local) offered such an advantage. In the first photo, Peggy and I pose in the typical aprons that all the women wear over their clothes (I should have bought the one that Peg has on, since OF COURSE the poinsettia is native to Oaxaca!).

Since I didn't want to offend, I photographed the women on the sneak, mostly from the side or back - but all of them sport the apron, the ribbons in the braids, the rebozos or big babushka-style head scarves. I had to pause while cruising the market, just to soak it all in - the insane color-overload rendered me speechless.

And then there were the turkeys...

Oaxaca, city impressions

We had the smarts to schedule a few days in Oaxaca City and one more on the end, book-ending our 7 day yoga retreat in Teotitlan del Valle. There are many things to see in the city, and we jumped in with both feet.

On Thursday, May 22^nd, our flight landed at 8am. We hopped in a combi ($12, no taxis at the airport) and were taken directly to the sweet Casa de los Milagros (see separate post for details on that). We met up with our friends Peggy, Jim and Michelle at the Milagros. After a delicious breakfast (fresh yogurt and homemade granola, rife with pumpkin seeds, amaranth, pecans, then the open-faced delicious quesillo sandwich whose name I now cannot remember), we strolled down to Café Nuevo Mundo on Calle Bravo for some “real” coffee. As a rule, Mexican brewed coffee is really weak. We San Franciscans needed the depth of an espresso to kick-start our morning.

At Nuevo Mundo they make particularly beautiful and delicious mochas with the characteristic cinnamon-rich Oaxacan chocolate. Sweet!

From there we ambled down to the ethnobotanical garden for a two-hour English language tour with guide Carol Turkenik.* I was a little nervous about the tour – two hours in the hot sun on our first morning, in English – but we learned so much. It was in many ways the perfect start to our Oaxacan vacation, since we really got to see the biodiversity of Oaxaca and understand its role as the most diverse place in Mexico, itself one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Everything good – ok, except coffee and tea – originated in Oaxaca, our guide would have us believe, or at least everything that we eat every single day: chocolate, chiles, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, squash, things which were unknown to the so-called Old World. Impossible to imagine the cuisine of India or Thailand without the spicy kick of peppers and yet how far and wide these plants traveled to create those distinctive flavors.

From the ethnobotanical garden, we wandered through a few museums and the markets. Amazing! It’s hard not to be totally sensorily overloaded – the color, the smells, the abundance of fruit and vegetables, the fabulous tlayudas (why don’t we have these oversized, thin corn tortillas at home?), the quesillo stands, the many mole y chocolate stores where they’ll grind the cocoa beans and add sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, nuts to your specifications. And everywhere the older women in traditional dress, the hair braided with bright ribbons tied together at the bottom, colorful aprons over their dresses, rebozos draped over their shoulders or heads. The baskets of toasted crickets with garlic (chapulinas).

I myself was a bit of colorful abundance, drawing stares and comments for my tattoos. One old lady in the Zocalo, startingly shorter than me, stroked my arm and said, “Como ropa,” “like clothes.” Joe was entertained by observing people’s reactions to me, although this made me a little uncomfortable, shades of my childhood experiences in Mexico, when my parents would make me walk alone in front of them down the street, tickled by the reactions to the guera.

* Carol Turkenik is the author of a little guidebook, "Oaxaca Tips," available around Oaxaca, or from me. I'd love to loan it to you, if you're going!

La Casa de los Milagros, Oaxaca, Mexico

Somehow we managed to stay in the most beautiful place in Oaxaca. Thank goodness for the internet!

La Casa de los Milagros is family-owned, a three-room bed and breakfast located close enough to the center to be convenient to everything, yet far enough away that it’s removed from the hustle and bustle. The owners, Adriana and Rene, are charming and accommodating. The breakfast in the morning in lovely and delicious.

I think what I loved most, besides the owners and the way the place is painted and decorated, is that they hand you the keys. We – that is, Joe and me, Peggy and Jim, and the woman who occupied the third room – could let ourselves in and out at our pleasure. At night, it was our house, the owners and staff live and sleep elsewhere, so that we really had the feeling that it was our place to come home to.