Ducks, Flies, Gringos All Migrate

TEACAPAN, SINALOA, MEXICO-- About this time of year the Canadian snowbird feels the Great White North calling him home. It’s time to go. He’s not sure why.

He packs the car with Mexican trophies, Kahlua, genuine vanilla, wall tapestries, masks, Talavera ware and Mescal with a worm curled up dead at the bottom of the bottle to show how it keeps you safe from parasites.

He shuts off water, light and telephone and asks the neighbors to please keep an eye on the place for the next half year. He will return to find it as he left it, the only change from the day he turned the key in the rusty old door lock will be dust on everything, some dead cockroaches on the bathroom floor next his poison bait and a chair or a chest ready to fall into dust--it looks sound but is really just a bunch of termites holding hands.

All familiar, all unchanging. That lack of change is one of his reasons for fleeing back to Canada or the northern United States. Nothing about the weather or the country ever alters much here. After a few months, the sameness of each day is wearisome to those of us accustomed to lands of winds, rains and snows where a weather forecast is worth reading.

Below the Tropic of Cancer line, every day begins at 6 a.m. and ends at 6 p.m. promptly and precisely, one of the few prompt and precise occurrences in the entire republic. At dawn, there will usually be heavy dew, making it one of the best hours of the day. Recognizing this, people here often christen daughters Alba (Ahlva) which means sunrise or Rocio (Roaseeo) which means Dew of The Morning. Mexicans like pretty girls and pretty names.

By noon it’s just another hot, still day. At 3 p.m. the sea breeze ruffles the water of the lagoon, at dark it dies and huge yellow stars are set alight in a black velvet sky.

It isn’t exciting to know that the next day will be precisely the same.

Some who haven’t crossed the imaginary line of Cancer may have misconceptions about the tropics. They are not flambuoyant. Except for the Bougainvillea, imported from Brazil, there are no masses of flowers to be found here which could rival a British Columbia mountain meadow in August or a Vancouver yard full of flowering arbutus.

Flowers are revered here partly because there aren’t all that many. Mexico’s patron saint, the Virgin of Guadelupe, was identified by the flowering of roses in December at Mexico City. Big deal. Roses often flower in Vancouver in December. The tropic plants are showy, individually, but they can not march in ranks like an army with banners, as do ours at home.

Now the birds of winter are leaving for the north, but again it does not happen with the fanfare of their departure from Canada in the fall. Nothing here compares with the Vs of Canada geese honking above, or the slow wheel and cries of the Sandhill Cranes in September.

There was only one congregation of birds for migration on this peninsula. The storks, which had been feeding in groups of two, three or half a dozen, collected in bands of more than one hundred and then, suddenly, were gone.

The Cinnamon Teal, the Bluewing, the Blackbellied Whistling Tree duck and all the rest have just quietly, politely, absented themselves. No fuss, no bugling. .

Departed also are the Monarch butterflies in Michoacan, a state down south. To the puzzlement of naturalists, this tiny insect migrates from Canada to Mexico, taking two generations for each passage. Why? Reflect upon it and be humbled by how very little we know about this world.

The butterflies suffered this year. Here in the lowlands the climate doesn’t alter much but up in the mountains the tropics are not as tropical as they used to be. The road between here and Durango was closed twice by snow this winter and in the several butterfly ecologic parks of Michoacan tens of millions of them froze, caked in ice, on the tree branches. There were so many decaying butterflies that tourists complained about the smell.

In Sinaloa it’s harvest time. A chili field will display up to a hundred backs, bent beneath the scorching sun, picking at piece rates which may pay as much as $20 Canadian a day. Some wear bright, pink costumes, marking them as Indians who have come down from the mountains to replace Mexicans who migrated to pick in the United States.

“Yes, it’s spring,” says my friend Chicago Gomez, “We Mexicans can always tell, we see the gringos going north.” Other signs are there, but they are less dramatic.

April/02