Day 5 - Favorite quote

While I'm tempted to pick a line from Monty Python, I think another might be a better fit.

"The truth must dazzle gradually, lest every man be rendered blind." Emily Dickinson

Chosen more for the memories it evokes than for the phrase itself. This quote was written on a wall in a house in Bahia de los Angeles in Mexico on the Baja peninsula. I was there with a school group doing biology/geology field study. Bahia was one of my favorite places we visited. The house was very interesting, though all I really remember now is the toilets and the quote room. I slept outside in a hammock the night we stayed there. The toilets were in a little building separate from the house. We had 5 gallon buckets next to them to pour water in and trigger the flushing mechanism. When you'd done your business, you had to go down to the ocean and refill the bucket, then haul it back up the hill for the next person.

I'd love to go back if I ever got the opportunity. It was a great little town, and the water wasn't so warm as it was further south. (A good thing, I promise.) There was one island that was really just a rim a land around a lake. One little section of it was low enough to allow water to flow in and out with the tide. It was only about 3 feet deep and 10-15 feet across. While we were on the island, the current was flowing inward and there were lots of stingrays both inside and outside. They would swim up until the current caught them and shot them across into they lake. Then they'd swim slowly back (the current was quite strong) and do it again. It was like a stingray waterslide. We tried it too, of course, and it shot people across the gap almost as quickly as the rays if you caught it just right with your flippers.

If I were a little less dependent on modern conveniences, I think I might just run away to Bahia.