San Jose Chalmita

     Just a few miles from Tenancingo center is the mountain town, San Jose Chalmita. It lies within a mountain range of glassy limestone. Once you leave Tenancingo going west towards Zumpahuacan you climb up a little to San Pablo. There the road escalates quickly twisting like a roller coaster affording vast panoramas towards the west and east


                               
                                                      Panorama towards the west


                               
  Panorama east. The mountain in the distance is Xinatecatl or Nevado de Toluca, a dormant Volcano


     Finally the road flattens as you enter the village of San Jose. The church, made of gray limestone, dominates the view.


                                       


                                              
                             
                                       
           
                                        


     There are wonderful surprises about the San Jose if one is willing to walk a little. Its rocky paths descend into foliage and emerge revealing the mountains which embrace it. It is frozen in time and thawed by sun each day to divulge its secrets, and there are treasures trapped between the past and seasonal ritual.  A mountain is a magical place, up and out of the regular world. It was said once in a book that people who dwell in the mountains theoretically live just a little longer than those below. They spin faster relative to those that live at lower altitudes because they are perched upon an outer edge of the planet,,,just as a bicycle wheel rim spins faster than its axel in order to cover the greater distance of its larger circle at the same time that the axel makes one revolution. The climate is different in the mountains,,usually cooler. The sunlight is more intense in the thinner air. Air is compressed as it travels over the peak and increases in velocity, distorting and stretching the shapes of the clouds as if they were high jumpers leaping over a bar. Mountains figure prominently in human mythology, where both Gods and men do roam. They are gateways to heaven,,and sometimes portals to hell. Spirits are said to haunt the tops of these great folds in the earth. People living on a mountain are a little like those living on an island, more isolated,, sequestered. Their home is an island , whose summit, like an atoll pierces an ocean of sky.

     

 

My lawyers desk

 

Hello Kitty swing

 

A real Christmas cactus 

                                         
                                                                        Roof cobs

 

Roadside adornment

                                          
                                                               Sitting around the house
  
     In San Jose Chalmita there are three choices. Be a mescalero, an empuntadora,, or leave. San Jose has been an isolated island since a group of people who wanted to escape the Mexican Revolution settled in this remote place. To scratch out an existence in this rocky place has always been a challenge. Electricity and water only arrived just a few years ago.

                                    

     I visited the family of Don Semitrio Vargas. He is a mescalero and his daughters are empuntadoras. We walked among the agaves, endemic to this region, from which mezcal is made. The destination was Semitrio's simple still down the steep hillside near the spring. Semitrio had just finished cooking the piñas and was preparing the next day to begin the distillation.

                                            

  

   

The simple Alambique or still down below

  

   

   

     Meanwhile his daughters were preparing a meal for us  of hand made tortillas, beans, and rice. 

   

Areceli making tortillas

          After the meal Areceli, Aurelia, and Rosy began their work puntando rebozos. 

 

 

  

 

Don Simitrio

 

Aurelia

  

Hermita embedded in the rock

  

The Pantheon

 

 

Rosy showing off a rebozo

 

Maribel showing her work

 

Amalia, another empuntadora.

 

There is a sound that is heard throughout the village. It is a click made with the thumb of the empuntadoras. A home made steel flat thimble allows them to tighten the knots. In the lazy afternoon the air is filled with the clicking of human crickets.