June 11, 2020
Moctezuma II, the last-but-one emperor of the Mexica (Aztecs) was fond of fresh fish. Every day, he had some brought to him from the waters of the Caribbean by a relay system of runners.
Most of us who come here end up exploring some of the paths in the hills and mountains around us, and there can be a sense of discovering something when we do so. This feeling of pioneering only fades after we’ve had a few encounters with farmers and people gathering wood, and we realise these ancient trails are still in regular use.
They aren’t roads, they’re tracks, often with protruding rocks and short, steep stretches. A human can walk on them (carefully, of course) and presumably Moctezuma’s fish couriers ran on some of them. Since the Spanish came in the 1520s, horses, mules and the occasional burro have made the journey carrying burdens of various sizes.
Burros are vanishing from the farms and villages of Mexico, but you can still come across them. This guy was friendly, and posed for his picture.
In the old days, there were actual roads in the lowlands, broad enough for people to pass easily. Today, these might be the routes of major highways. But the mountainous location of Tenochtitlan, which became Mexico City after the Conquest, is such that easy paths didn’t exist much. You’d have had to follow the trails the last part of the way with that fish, which of course had to arrive fresh.
Ask the right person in any community round here, and you can get information on where paths start, and where they go. Often, they’ll run for many kilometers, and it takes hours to go from one village to another. They can be fun to hike, or they can be dangerous, depending on how strong your legs are, and how flexible your knees and ankles. I’ve never had a bad accident on one, even if I’ve had a couple of tumbles, but I’m always respectful of the fact that they only exist because they were worn down by passing feet, not constructed in any sense.
Often, so many feet have passed along them that they exist in their own gulley. Summer rains assist in eroding these. The paths twist and turn their way up the hillsides, twist and turn some more through the heights, then twist and turn still more on the way down. Google Maps might show you some of them, but it can be misleading as to the actual distance you’ll need to march.
Where does it go – nowhere, somewhere, to a concealed valley?
Always, though, once you’re experienced, there’s that knowledge of how many generations of people might have walked along it. With paths that erode with the summer rains there’s often a more awkward one a little above the sections that fill up with mud. And sometimes land slips, and a whole new track has to be traced.
On some trails, there are also misleading almost-paths. This morning I hiked with my friend Gabriel near the village of Ocotitlan, and he wanted to avoid a return route that crossed a lot of fallen branches. He pointed out a trail that went near a cliff-edge, to which I agreed.
In 50 meters, it had dwindled to nothing. It was perhaps a track worn by deer, not people. We found ourselves in a patch of bushes that we had to push through in order to get back to a regular trail. The bushes had purple berries with red juice, and we’re still washing the stain of them out of our clothes.
But, tumbles and clothing stains aside, this is the pleasure of walking the trails. You never know exactly where one might lead – to a dead end, a cliff-edge, right back where you started an hour earlier, or to some small, otherwise invisible valley. I know my knees and other joints won’t allow me to walk on them for too many years more, but I’m postponing my retirement from trail-hiking for as many years as possible.
Mexed Messages 