Glimpse of the Past

Moving past the bored-looking guards, automatic weapons draped casually over one shoulder, I step beyond this dirty world of poverty, this world of brown hands outstretched, and into the realm of the spirits, a new world cleansed by the humid sigh of the jungle. The trees hum with the sounds of thousands of years of crawling insects, brightly colored birds taking flight and capybara rooting through the underbrush for their next meal. In this place, time disappears and the voices of past, present and future blend together into the song of the forest. Shafts of sunlight and green leaves reach out to touch the bare skin of my shoulders. As the sun-dappled trail winds through the tree trunks, I catch my first glimpse of the past, just ahead.

I’d imagined for months leading up to this moment just what it would be like, to turn this corner and see, rising from the verdant earth, a monument to the gods. A Lost City. The pyramids, mere shades of their former glory, stubbornly enduring an endless fight against the ravages of time. Stone skulls leer at me from between the roots of the towering ceiba trees all around. The rough surfaces of the stone carvings provide an ample home for the slow creep of the serpent green lichens that suck life from these barren surfaces. The Grand Staircase, the longest Mayan history in existence, tumbles down upon itself, hopelessly scrambled. Amid all these signs of life however, the thing that strikes me most about Copán is the silence. The jungle fades away as each traveler walks in silence, straining to hear the call of the Maya.

1300 years separate me from King 18 Rabbit, and the 20,000 he held in thrall in this city of stone, blooming from the jungle in a strange flowering of humanity. 18 Rabbit was a god among men but today, his children scrape a living from a country scarred by drugs, civil war and death. And yet…in this moment, it is quiet, and there is a butterfly perched on the crumbling stone. Delicate violet wings quiver in the fragrant breeze that blows through the trees, bringing the sound of the jungle back to my ears. Life goes on among these old stones. The Maya endure, the jungle endures: locked in the dance of eternity, with dips and turns simultaneously grotesque and heart-achingly beautiful.