Pátzcuaro

Less than an hour from Morelia.  A world away if you´re not in the know.  You can't catch the second class bus at the regular station; it takes off from an unmarked curbside at the edge of a bypass in a rundown colonia called Xangari.  Which is also the name you look for on the windshield of the combi.  $3.50 one way, or 5 dollars round-trip.  That $1.50's a welcome return for a traveller; the generosity of unsolicited helpful information even more so.

Sunslant and dust-brown, all the road there, greening at the curves..never dream a lake sating these sere horizons...pure red earth, dried-out agave-hills, tilled but vacant fields and tall dividing windbreaks..brittle stalks stacked in spiralling pyramids, last season's harvest, sun-drying...round a curve and there! turquoise-overflowing bowl of green.  Miles away yet but it fills the view: dome, island, near-perfect-symmetry, Janitzio.  Houses red and white complete the spectrum.  Morelos, stone fist raised into cloudlight, summit of its arc of memory.  You cannot take your eyes off the island, once you´ve seen it.  It is at once the oddest sight in this vista, and the thing most completely in its place.

Some factual assistance from wikipedia (as far as a place can be known by its statistics):  "The Lake Pátzcuaro basin is of volcanic origin...(its) watershed extends 50 kilometers east-west and 33 kilometers from north to south. Lake Patzcuaro lies at an elevation of 1,920 meters, and is the center of the basin and is surrounded by volcanic mountains with very steep slopes. It has an average depth of 5 meters and a maximum of 11. Its volume is approximately 580 million cubic meters."  The area is home to over 200 species of birds...water diversion (urban and agricultural) and logging, over the last 50 years, have reduced the depth of the lake by about 7 feet...

My friend who grew up in Michoacan painted a distressed picture of the lake she loved to visit as a child.  She said that, in her day, all the boats that ferried tourists and locals from the pier at the town of Pátzcuaro were like large canoes.  But over the years, the people had started using gasoline-powered launches, and these had polluted the waters to such a degree that she could hardly stand to go there anymore.  I approach with a forboding vision of oil slicks and floating fish.  But am relieved to see the same green-blue in the waters, at close range, that shimmers up from a distance.  What she saw here 50 years ago I´ll probably never know.  I´m sure it was even more gorgeous at that time. 

But such a thing, from my two afternoons round its edges, is hard to imagine.  From every tiny pueblo encrusted on its circumference it takes a yet more lovely glow.  This paved roadway is only the circlet for a queen of astonishing beauty, and the towns her willing admirers, and of course the light. Every side is her good side, and on every side she bestows her favors.

Every side every facet a portal, an opening.  "The natives believe that the lake is the place where the barrier between life and death is the thinnest." Veils so thin here, translucent, inviting in...drawing spiral...this circle road's a dance..a rise into green and downslope cruise back to aquasilver...wind rises, cloudswaths rain-blue sweep the ridges round, shadows build, and sun leans into slantwise dance with spent clouds leaving every surface sweating gold and aquamarine...every edge and outline caressed with brilliance..every form breathes color pure, intense enough to tear the eyes though they cannot tear themselves away from its completeness.  Storm signature, sweetness distilled.  Inundated atmosphere, incandescent flower-lush bouquet, no name, no word but every every memory waked, evoked, inhaled and in the moment lost again...tear the senses from this feast and resign the body north again before the light-and-color-symphony fades to visual silence...