A VISION OF UTOPIA
(Page 2 of 4)
January/February 1972
By Mark Lediard
If you plant in June on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 30 miles north of Acapulco, nature will do all the rest. There, it rains once daily from June to September: the sun shines for most of the day, gathering clouds shade the tendrils in the late afternoon and the God-ener waters at eight. Pull up the spider grass every now and then and you're home free.
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If you plant during the dry season, you'll need a well . . . and, if you're lazy, a pump. But the water table near the shore is only ten feet down and easy to dig to and the supply of underground water is absolutely limitless. The water, sun and abundant good soil made our garden grow . . . even as ignorant as we were.
Our house was on the outskirts of a small coastal village. In the beginning, when we wanted fish, we rowed out to the fishermen's boats and bargained for a dozen mullet that were still flopping around the bottom of a boat. The mullet cost 15 to 20¢ a dozen, 25 to 50¢ bought 12 shrimp and a dozen freshwater crabs were 10 to 15¢. Catfish were free. Cheap enough . . . but we only bought fish during the month it took us to learn to catch our own.
The natives on that gentle coast fish with large, umbrella-shaped cast nets which they weave themselves. Nearly every toss of the net yields a fish . . . more often, several.
I watched in awe as, draped in folds of netting, the fishermen balanced precariously on the bow boards of their tiny rowboats and gracefully uncoiled to hurl 30-foot circles of nylon onto the clear water. The circumference of each circle is strung with hand-molded strips of lead that weigh a total of about 30 pounds. The leads sink quickly to the bottom, trapping the fish swimming in the circle described by the throw . . . then, gently, the leads are drawn together from above by a drawstring attached to the fisherman's wrist. The process is a delicate one: too much upward jerking and the leads rise off bottom, freeing the catch.
Every day I watched the fishermen. From the shore, it was like a water ballet. Eight or ten boats slipped over the glassy surface of the lagoon while dawn washed -the scene with red, gold and-finally-shining clear light. Dark bodies spun and gleaming nets whistled and unfurled. I had to learn to throw the tarralla. Bali-Hai was calling.
I'd become friendly enough with the fishermen to ask for a lesson, and soon I became the protege of a teenage boy. He started me throwing from the shore. For him, it was easy. Nobody teaches anybody here, he told me. You just do it. Your father does it, your brother does it . . . so when you're big enough, you do it. Here, watch me. See? Just do it.
The net seemed to me to be made of about a thousand yards of material. Even doubled, it was 15 feet long and impossible to manage. My guru laughed at me as I fumbled.
