The prisoner of chickens

The Story So Far: Last month, I moved to the mountains of Mazamitla. This is a small resort town some 7350 feet in elevation. I chose a cabin about two miles from the center of town, a perfect place to concentrate on my schoolwork.

The cabin has a fireplace, a bedroom and a kitchen. Outside the cabin is a hammock and open space, a horse, seven chickens, two little creeks, and lots and lots of trees.

The plan was to walk into the town on occasion to pick up supplies, hike the surrounding woods and waterfalls, enjoy my new adopted town. But after one night freezing in the cabin, I decided that I needed a space heater. The search for a little portable heating device changed everything.

My first full day in Mazamitla, I get on the bike and drive toward Ciudad Guzman, the biggest city around, some sixty miles southwest of here. Now, there are speed bumps all over Mexico, in small towns and big cities, and sometimes just in front of a restaurant or variety store. Most of the speed bumps are marked, but a few are not. So I hit an unmarked speed bump and lose control of the bike. I wasn't going very fast, thank god, but the bike and I skidded on the pavement. My left foot was under the bike.

I have some nice strawberries on my knees and elsewhere. Nothing broken, nothing more severe than a sprained ankle. Very lucky.

The bike's okay. Fortunately no damage there. There were some people in the area that saw me crash, helped me up, helped with the bike, called an ambulance, got me a chair, etc. Nice folks doing the right thing automatically.

The paramedics cleaned my wounds and wrapped the ankle. They had some difficulty ascertaining I didn't have a concussion - for example, they asked what day it was, and I lost track of the calendar quite a while ago, so that was a bust. They asked some other questions that I answered in butchered Spanish. After some deliberation, they let me make my own decision whether to go to the hospital or back home. I gingerly rode the bike home, saying a little prayer each time I saw a speedbump. I guess it's the ones I don't see that I should pray about...

My landlady took me to the doctor the day after the accident. He cleans and re-wraps the ankle, gives me some instructions and pills for the inflammation.

So three weeks of laying around the cabin. Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Repeat and repeat again. Listening to the three roosters brag about life with four female chickens. Watching the horse walk around nimbly, sure-footed in the broken field next to the house. I do my own laundry in the washbasin, hang it to dry on the wood fence and the cactus.

Every four or five days, I take the bike to town to load up on food, bring it back and stare at it. I wish I had learned to cook.

I started walking, ever so carefully. The ankle is coming along, and I can walk, as long as it's on flat, even surfaces.

Unfortunately, there are no flat, even surfaces anywhere. The driveway from my cabin to the road is steep uphill, unpaved and rocky. So steep I have difficulty going up on the bike. The road from here to town is cobblestone - all rounded rocks and gaps, lotsa gaps. It goes up and down, but mostly up, to town.

Yada yada yada - It's all complaining. In actuality I got a lot done - I'm now 1/3 finished with the non-thesis part of the Green MBA - and I memorized the speech of the chickens. I can tell whether it's Manny, Moe, or Jack waking me up at 3 am...

I swear. Can you imagine any other animal that's allowed to scream its head off, all day, and most of the night? That old thing about crowing at the crack of dawn, that's a lie. They crow at the crack of dawn over China, India, Gibraltar and Greenland, for chrissake. No sense of the appropriate time. I'm thinking of becoming a carnivore just for the damn chickens...

Anyway, my foot has recovered such that I could walk all the way to town yesterday. Woo-hoo! Freedom!

Mostly, freedom from my own cooking.

Another week or so, the foot continues to heal, I can begin to live the life I had envisioned. I've been a city boy most of my life, and happy for it. But growing up in Phoenix, I always had that hankering for the Tonto Rim outside Payson. Living in San Francisco, I pined for the pines of Tahoe and Yosemite. And now the pine trees are just outside the door. Soon I will walk among them...