Sunset at Tenacatita

Written June 2, 2006.



No clocks. The sun gets close to the horizon, the wind changes direction, the burn leaves the air. I still don’t know what time that would have been, but in March, so close to the equator, must have been pretty close to six o’clock. We were camped on a small beach on the east side of a penninsula, a bar of sand between the mainland and a large rock. Across a grassy hump was Tenacatita, the village, with it’s broad curved beach, and the other side of our penninsula was the southern end of what we called the Long Beach, the beach that stretched literally for miles, north past El Tecuan, north north who knows how far, towards Puerta Vallarta. At suset our loose community, the several camps of Americans, would walk to the long beach to watch the sunset. We’d sit in silence, enjoy the breeze, listen to the rumbling crash of deep waves. There would be the scuttling of hermit crabs, the growing shadows on the sand. I would practice yoga then, a few asanas, for about 20 minutes. Mostly I liked to stand on my head. I got good at it that year, the only year I ever practiced regularly, and it got me in shape, I noticed, when the treeplanting season started. We’d gather at the high part of the beach, where the grass started, where the sand was soft and our feet sunk deep as we walked. The cool air fanned our sunbrowned skin.