On The Road

At times when the weather turns bad, like really bad, I have to sit down and reflect for a moment.

There is a hurricane bearing down on The Yucatan peninsula tonight. I can only sit on my comfortable couch in San Francisco and think about what that means. It’s not that we have a shortage of natural disasters here in SF, they just usually don’t announce themselves a week ahead of time. Earthquakes and windstorms are rather be here now that way.

Hurricanes on the other hand are different. We can track them now. Know where they might go. Know if they will build in strength or just peter out before hitting one of the most interesting places on the planet. Although I’m not talking about that Babylon called Cancun. I’m talking about all that is beautiful and interesting along the long shore of the peninsula, the jungle inland and the people, some of them magical, who live there. It looks like tonight is going to be a full on storm hitting the peninsula dead center.

The water of the Caribbean coast of the peninsula is the most incredible color of blue. As a painter, I can say that it’s a blue that can never be painted, although many have tried, because it can only exist in nature, and in that one place. The water kind of glows, as if it is actually back lit, or as if it is lit from underneath, rather than from the sun above. Palm trees line the beach, a beach made of white fluffy sand. Pangas rock gently on the small waves of the sea.

The stone ruins of Tulum that drop over the cliff and into the sea have survived a eight-hundred or so years of storms, I’m sure they will survive this hurricane too.

It’s hard to know that this special place may be hit hard. I take comfort in the knowledge that, as all things in nature do, the area will actually survive the storm.