“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
The Copper Canyon, larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon, is actually a series of canyons carved at the confluence of six rivers within the Sierra Madre mountains in northern Mexico.
Our hotel rooms at the canyon rim seem to be precariously bolted to the side of the canyon wall, and peering over the edge at the beckoning abyss has a curious attraction.
The rock at the edge of the precipice is known as "Balancing Rock". It's about 8' long and 12' wide and rests unevenly on the two rocks beneath. If you stand on it and shift your weight you can get it to rock back and forth.
Cathy and I, along with our friends and neighbors Harry and Justine, embarked on five days of adventure and a very long ride on "El Chepe", a vintage train that runs through the canyon from Chihuahua in the north, to Los Mochis in Sinaloa, the legendary home of Don Diego de la Vega, aka "Zorro". The trip from the city of Chihuahua chugs across the desert before slowly climbing the Sierra Madre mountains, passing mile after mile of apple orchids, fields of giant rocks all inexplicably almost perfectly round, old Mexican horse and cattle ranches spread across hundreds of acres, and an enormous Mennonite farming community (who knew?)
I was going to add a soundtrack to this photo album but the sound of us screaming as we cabled into the canyon was a little too jarring.
"Each star in the sky is a Tarahumara Indian whose souls, men have three, women have four, have all finally been extinguished."
The Tarahumara have lived in these canyons for nearly 500 years having fled enslavement in the silver mines by the Spanish invaders. They live in small adobe or wood homes, or caves tucked under overhanging stone cliffs. They are extraordinary endurance runners, traveling enormous distances across the state of Chihuahua and along a network of narrow footpaths within the canyon walls.
Martin (pronounced "Marteen"), an indigenous Tarahumara, lives about halfway down the canyon in a small community of about 85 people and commutes to work each day at the hotel at the canyon rim on handmade sandals made of old tires. The run up the canyon takes him about 20 minutes, which, if I even survived, would take me the better part of a day. (I didn't ask if he goes home for lunch).
This photo, taken from a trail a few hundred feet below the canyon rim, shows the small farming community in the distant valley where Martin lives...
It's an awfully long way down there...
and an even longer way back up.
The Tarahumara pueblas or villages surrounding the canyon are typically spaced about seven leagues apart, the distance a person or horse can walk in a day, about 20 miles. A typical average-sort-of-everyday run is a kind of relay race where the teams run to three consecutive pueblas, or back and forth between two villages three times while kicking a small wooden ball about the size of a baseball or whacking the ball with a stick to pass it between runners. They also, of course, run up and down the canyon, despite the fact that they are not necessarily being chased by a bear or a mountain lion. Martin's fastest time for the 100 km canyon run is 10 hours. He said his brother holds the record, having completed the 100 km in 9 hours
The book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall, and the book "God's Middle Finger: Into The Lawless Heart Of The Sierra Madre" by Richard Grant, both tell extraordinary stories of endurance running by the Tarahumara. The record run apparently is 700km in 48 hours, stopping only for an occasional cigarette.
Martin was also our tour guide to the Tarahumara homes and small communities along the narrow canyon trails. The trails weave up and down the canyon walls with the homes built against the vertical stone on one side and a sheer drop to the canyon floor on the other, interrupted occasionally by the safety of a table of hand woven baskets or jewelry for sale.
The Cave Homes
Some Tarahumara make their homes in caves. This one, below an outcropping in the vertical face of the wall, is enclosed with stones, with the convenience of a door added, along with a stovepipe chimney. There is one open space inside with about a 7' ceiling, and sleeping for 12 on the stone ledges along the walls.
The neighbors live smaller, but relatively upscale, in a painted adobe house complete with a propane tank, and an actual water faucet.
The San Ignacio Mission
The San Ignacio Mission lies a short distance from the canyon in the Valley of The Mushrooms and Frogs and serves this local Tarahumara community. Built by the Jesuits in the 18th century the stones were hewn from the local rock and the mission appears to have risen from the surrounding earth.
Before arriving in the valley we assumed that the namesake frogs and mushrooms would be something harvested and marketed to Whole Foods. What we found was something a little more monumental.
This is farm and grazing land for the Tarahumara who live in these log cabins and live entirely off the land. Sections of the valley appear to be vast debris fields strewn with precariously balanced boulders looming threatening over a few homes.
Although these mushrooms haven't moved in a millennium, I bought my souvenirs quickly and departed quietly so as to not cause any disturbance
Flora and Fauna
The canyon is magnificent. The details of the flora and fauna is diverse and beautiful, changing with every microclimate as you descend into the canyon. Together with the Tarahumara and those who traveled this way before them, they have left their marks on the canyon walls in fossils and rock carvings. As Shakespeare once said, "I like this place, and could willingly waste my time in it."
El Chepe, the train home