A VISION OF UTOPIA
(Page 3 of 4)
January/February 1972
By Mark Lediard
All the fishermen laughed at me. Even later, when I had become somewhat competent, they were hysterical every time I fished. I think my attempts to do their thing endeared me to them. "Look at the gringo!" they'd shriek as I heaved the net overboard. From my point of view, I was MAN HUNTING FOR HIS FAMILY . . . from their vantage point, I wasan aquatic Charlie Chaplin.
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Whatever the overlay, the reality was that two hours of daily tarralla throwing in the lagoon kept us in free fresh fish (even when we had ten others living with us). The nets were easy to weave and we bought enough material for $10 to make a big net (good for shrimp, mullet, snook and catfish) with plenty left over for a few small crabnets.
OK. For an investment of under $15, we had a subsistence garden and all the fish we could eat. In spite of overwhelming ignorance, we were living off the land. Water was free and plentiful from the well or from the fast-flowing rivers that fed the lagoon. We stocked up on rice in the marketplace and our diet was completely natural and completely balanced.
Materials for housing are free and abundant along Mexico's west coast. The fishermen's homes are all made of dried palapa, the sturdy leaf of the coconut palm. Logs and sticks from trees around the lagoon are used for a house frame and palapas do the rest. Each leaf has a hardwood spine—perfect for crosspieces—and the leaves themselves are woven onto the frame and crosspieces to make the walls and roof. For the elegant, concrete can be poured over the sandy floor.
The palapa but has been traditional housing in tropical Mexico for centuries and two men can build a 50-footsquare, totally rain-proof house of palapa in less than two weeks. Aside from low cost and speed of erection, the palapa hut's main advantage over concrete is its ability to stay cool at midday and to remain flexible when high seas and frequent earthquakes are cracking concrete walls. It also gives even unskilled pioneers a crack at the feeling of self sufficiency that arises from providing cozy shelter out of local materials.
Building a home and planting a garden in the Paradise we discovered will require a substantial investment of energy at the outset . . . but your Utopia will more or less run itself thereafter. The dues are cheap. Daily attention to the garden and a healthful tour or two of paddling the idyllic lagoon with your net will leave you many moments to tune into where you are in any manner you choose.
There are crafts to learn and practice on that Pacific coast: hammock-making (a useful cottage industry), survival skills (the natives are a graduate course), weaving (lots of Indians in the villages). There's a culture to grok. A language to learn. And, perhaps most importantly, there's a pristine seashore to run on and explore (and to restore you). Clearwater waves rise out of the ocean like laboratory slides, flashing bright pictures of the life within. It's like a glimpse of what the struggle for a decent environment is working toward.
