Mexico

Verdant Cloisters and Summer Rains

I once stayed at a house in Mexico where it was impossible to tell what was inside, and what was out. Behind a high wall, lush cloisters flowed into gracious rooms. I ate mangos every morning and it rained every afternoon. Only one other person inhabited it at the time, and so my days were spending exploring the seemingly endless labyrinth alone. I was young and romantic, and it was humid and unfamiliar—a combination that resulted in a particularly poignant sense of enchantment.

I fell in love with the house as I have with a few other places in my life. Our love affair was brief, but passionate, and those days of echoing thunder, tumbling bougainvillea, shadowy rooms and strong winds helped to shape a spirit inclined to solitude and wanderings, given to all manner of dreams.

Afar, France, Italy, Mexico, Oxford, Texas

The Peripatetic Blues

I’ve moved almost once a year for the last ten years. Mostly I’ve been back and forth between Texas and Oxford, but I’ve also lived in France and various other places in-between. Every time I move I’m always certain that it’s for the last time, but I haven’t stopped yet. I blame that wandering impulse on my mother using her maternity leave to travel with me in tow. Just two weeks old, I slept in drawers from Canada to Colorado.

This blog is a testament to many exquisite experiences and happy moments. But then sometimes I get those blues common to the long-term traveller. I call them the Peripatetic Blues, and they often come on during overcast days or sleepless nights, when you’ve been traveling alone or away from home just a little too long, when you feel the distance between yourself and those people and places you love too keenly. I’ve gone nine months without seeing my family, years without seeing my closest friends, and have spent months at a time 5,000 miles away from my husband. I’ve missed births, deaths, and just about every ceremony and rite of passage common to the American youth. I’ve lived most of the last decade out of two suitcases (plus one carryon). On balance, considered in times of greater fortitude and self-reliance, the blues are a small price to pay for the privilege of boundless wandering. And as with all blues, these peripatetic ones pass in time. The pleasures of home are only rendered more acute with every journey elsewhere.

From the Archives, Mexico

Mexico, 1930s

Images from the family archives.

Mexico

Details of San Miguel

San Miguel www.bluemesablog.com

Mexico

The House in Mexico

In our house in Mexico, you could never quite tell whether you were inside or out. Bougainvillea tumbled through the windows and you could always hear the sound of running water from the courtyard fountains. The house was hidden behind a high, sturdy wall on a small street, its long rooms and bright courtyards cloistered from the world. In the afternoon I would always climb up to the roof to watch the rain come over the hills, into the colourful valley of San Miguel de Allende, and finally to our house. It would render the rooms almost black. The courtyards, usually sunny, would glow in the diffused light reflected off of the red walls and fountains. As the rain began I would flee down the spiralling stairs to sit by the painted wood frame of the window in my bedroom, in the gloomy library, or under the arcade of my favourite courtyard, and wait for the storm to pass, although I never wanted it to.

Gretchen M. Greer

freelance writer and photographer

Category Archives: Mexico

Verdant Cloisters and Summer Rains

The Peripatetic Blues

Mexico, 1930s

Details of San Miguel

The House in Mexico

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