I've uploaded my photos from Mexico! Some turned out nicely, though as usual I'm unhappy with how few I took - I took many more than what I posted here, of course, but I'm referring more to content. I have next to nothing that captures the colorful city of Merida, or the rural Mayan villages where people still live in houses made of thatch and wood. Evrything is open to the air, and washed with pink, or white, or turquoise. Butchers and food vendors have carts on the street selling panuchos or chili-covered mango...One of my priorities for the next few years is to get a good camera with a telephoto lens, largely to be able to capture people discretely from afar.

( Ria Celestun & Chichen Itza... )

In short - I loved Mexico, and I can't wait to go back as soon as possible. I couldn't help but feel that I was in a land of wild,  ancient gods quite different from my own (even before I went to Chichen Itza). It's a wonderful place with so much light and color, incredible food, generous and warm people, and a fascinating history. Merida is fantastic, and I'd definitely recommend it over the more touristy Cancun.

I went to a virtual lecture today, which is one of a series on global systems and climate change broadcast weekly from various places across the world via satellite (today's was from Southampton, UK). The focus of the lecture was on why (and when) the earth switched from a "greenhouse" to an "icehouse" climate, sometime around the Oligocene (that's a fancy way of saying 23.8-33.7 million years ago). Before then, we had crocodiles and breadfruit living in Greenland, and carbon dioxide levels were quite high, making the earth a relatively toasty place to be. Then, "suddenly" (in geologic terms) we get polar ice caps forming that stick around on a permanant basis, and then ice ages begin with regular frequency about two million years ago (though they were certainly occurring before then).

There were lovely digrams and interesting infromation, but all I had to do was see a time chart that included "whales diverge" on the evolutionary time scale, and all I could think about were the giant, carnivrous, hoofed mammals that decided they wanted back in the water. Forget the peaceful, slow-moving behemoths you see on the Discovery Channel. Imagine instead a giant hoofed hyena the size of a hippo wallowing about in the shallows, gradually moving deeper...deeper...

kiwikat and I went to the free zoo yesterday, and even though it was too chilly for many of the animals to be about (the black bear looked a bit on the sleepy side but obliged us with a "snuff! snuff!" of his snout in the air) it was still lovely. The polar bears and penguins were conspicuously absent in what should have been very homey conditions, but we did see some crocodiles inside the herpetarium with their heads resting on the surface and their bodies dangling in the water. Some animals, like the lemurs or the Galopagos tortoises, are so incredible to watch and yet it's increasingly difficult to feel that sense of amazement simply because we've gotten so successful at reproducing wildlife in other forms- television, computers, etc. Then, when you see them up close in a zoo setting, it takes a concerted effort to remind yourself that this is another being, and it's not a projected image.

Not so with the large snakes, or the crocodiles. That ancient instinct manifests, and the flight or fight response starts tugging at your sleeve. Even still and watchful they have such a strong presence.

The otters were a joy, as always. They are genuinely content, playful and energetic, even a little cocky, showing off for an audience. I could watch them all day, and will myself a furry tail and webbing for my feet.

On my way home from the lecture today, I saw the feathered wings and clean breastbone of a pigeon, splayed like an angel in the grass. For a moment I was thrown out of context, and had to remind myself not to pick it up, bring it home, inspect. When I lived on Great Duck Island two summers ago, we were always bringing back bits of dead things for each other. "Look, Squee! I found a guillemot chick!" "Sarah, a herring gull dropped this flounder! Draw it!" We were like children in our own Garden, and death held equal fascination with life. We would hold impromptu necropsies on the helicopter pad, or sift through gull chick vomit to see what the lobstermen were baiting traps with. Gulls would eat other gulls' chicks, crows would dig up petrels, and the eagles would eat them all. It was a hawk that took my pigeon, though, and left its wings beside the parking garage. I feel some sense of victory, knowing that it made it here.