San Marcos La Laguna, Solola — December 22, 2024

I came down through San Marcos in the late morning, past a property where thatched roofs sat above tiered stone garden beds and a single tall palm leaned over a lawn cut by stepping stones. The whole hillside seemed to be building itself slowly — another cluster of palm-leaf roofs above retaining walls, two small white houses behind a chain-link fence, one with a curved wall I kept turning back to look at. I stopped at a small dome-shaped stone hut on a flagstone patio, red tubular flowers running along the low wall in front of it. By afternoon I was down at the lake. Pebbles, small waves, a single boat out on the water, thin wooden posts standing in a line near the reeds. The big mountain across the water was half-hidden in haze, and the sun was coming through the clouds above it in straight pale bars. I sat there a while. This is the kind of place that doesn't ask much of me.