The Wishing Rock

Octavio buys books about the indigenous cultures of Mexico. His knowledge about the ancient art of Central and South American and Egypt is extensive. To listen to him discuss the sculptures at the archeological sites of Monte Alban, Mitla, Lambityeco, Dainzu and Yagul is to learn how these sculptures relate to ancient art throughout the world.

Octavio is always on the lookout for new and interesting places, which will appeal to tourists with special interests. It was in one of his books that he read about a big rock that could be tipped only with a finger. He casually mentioned it several times and promised that he would try to learn more about it.

He did not speak about it again until my third visit in 1996 when we were returning from Ayutla. He turned to me. “Let's try to find the big rock today.” Shortly thereafter, he turned right onto a road that ended in a small village.

The village was arranged like an exclamation point. The upper part of the punctuation mark was the long dirt road lined by small houses fronted by grass plots. The dot was the church at the end of the road.

It was just after mid-day. It was the hour for siestas. The village was silent and empty of people except for a man who stood at the door of his house. We stopped to ask about the rock. The man doffed his hat and thought. “I have heard about it,” he said. “You need to drive to the church. The rock is just behind the church. You can't miss it.”

We followed his instructions and parked beside the church, confident that the rock would be easy to find; there would be something to identify it, a fence or a sign. But a community doesn't reveal its secrets so readily.

Octavio approached a house near the church. Two women emerged in response to his greetings. One cradled a baby and clutched the hand of a little boy; the other led a little girl. They exchanged pleasantries with us and listened with an impassive expression as to why we wanted to see the special rock. They knew its location. Our intentions evidently were sincere enough to win their approval, and they agreed to show it to us.

The women and children climbed in the back of the car. Octavio let the older children choose a succulent pear from the fruit we had purchased in Ayutla. The children didn’t waste time; they immediately bit into the flesh. Juice trickled down their tiny chins and onto their hands. Meanwhile, the women directed us down a rutted dirt road, which headed into the countryside. We were to park the car at a water tank and proceed on foot.

The hike began at two stiles separated by approximately four yards. Three horizontal logs fitted into an upright log on either side. Wooden pegs on the ends of the horizontal logs slid into corresponding holes on the sides of the uprights. The stiles brought back memories of Maine pastures and the Swiss Alps; however, Oaxacan stiles didn't have moss or lichens, tangles of bushes, puddles of water, paddies of cow dung, or buzzing flies attracted by the cow dung.

Once through the stiles, we descended a slope to a valley cultivated with rows of black beans. Narrow irrigation channels of hardened clay followed the slope's contour to the bottom.

From the floor of the valley, the climb was ever upwards. The terrain was rough. We frequently stopped to catch our breath. Not so the women. Even though they carried the children, they easily navigated the difficult ascent. The view, though, made our breaks a pleasure. A blue sky dotted with white clouds, a ring of soaring mountains and in the center, the miniature village, flowing like a sand-colored river through land made verdant by the rains.

We hiked up and up. Although the women didn’t disclose the rock’s location until we were a couple of inches in front of it, we could sense their mounting excitement. “There it is! Right there!” Without them, we would have missed it. No one would be able to find it without the help of a knowledgeable guide. A long time ago, the boulder must have broken off from an adjacent outcrop. It lay like a beached whale, as tall as the women. Other boulders kept it company.

The women showed us the indentation where we should put our finger. “Use the thumb,” they advised. The groove at one end of the boulder had been worn smooth by countless petitioning thumbs. Our thumbs tested it. Success! But our hands, elbows or feet failed to move it. The huge boulder remained motionless until we used a thumb. We examined it from all angles, even squatting to look at its underside. None of us knew the answer to the puzzle. To the women and to us it was a miracle.

We learned more. “You have to make a wish before you put in your thumb.” Each of us observed a few moments of silence while we made a wish before we inserted a thumb to rock the boulder. “Your wish has a better chance of coming true if you remove a pebble from the boulder." That was impossible. The pebbles were bound tightly into the rock’s matrix.

They revealed that on New Year's Eve, the villagers form a procession. Everyone carries a lighted candle. After they arrive at the boulder, they make a wish and rock it. Some fashion votive offerings from small stones. The skeleton of a diminutive stone house still rested at the boulder's base. It stood untouched, a silent testimony to someone’s deepest desire, the wish for a new home.

I imagined the scene during New Year's Eve: the dark night, the bright stars and the moon, high in the sky, gazing down upon the adults and children with flickering candles as they moved in a slow, majestic parade down the slope, across the valley and up the steep ledges. It had to be an impressive sight, one to silence inconsequential talk or thoughts.

On the afternoon of New Year’s Day, the community travels to the boulder a second time. Both processions are an old custom; how old, the women couldn't say. Their parents and grandparents participated, so to them that was old. “Before our grandparents went there,” they said, “who knows?”

We were leaving the area, our backs turned to the boulder, when Octavio called out, “Turn around! Look! It's a man!” We turned, and there, in profile, was the giant head of a man. The back of his head rested on the ground. He stared up at the sky and drifting clouds though a deep eye socket. His nose was long and sharp; his chin, protruding and well-formed; his ear, a white stone. We had been tipping a man's head by placing a thumb in his crown!

It reminded us of the giant statues carved on Easter Island. “What can arise in one part of the world can arise in another,” Octavio whispered. It was the women’s turn to be surprised. They had never realized that the rock resembled a man’s head. This was important information. After we left the village, they would lose no time in sharing it.

But wait! The women asked if we would like to inspect the shrine to the water. Of course we would! And so in the sweltering sun, we backtracked to the car, drove farther down the dirt road and parked at a different location.

We passed through another stile. This time the women spoke in hushed voices as if the stile marked the entrance to a sacred space. Their muted voices and tempered gestures served to modulate our elation at being invited to this unexpected place of power.

Another long walk brought us to the spring and shrine. The spring fed into a square concrete well. A concrete slab covered its opening. The women raised it and motioned to us to look in. Visible, deep below, was the trembling surface of the dark water. Filled by the precious life-giving spring, the well enabled the village to provide water to its crops and livestock. It was no wonder that the people believed that the spring’s discovery warranted a shrine.

The white-washed chapel was on our right. It commanded a view of the well head from high atop a rock and concrete foundation. Outside and inside, the walls were painted to simulate the Mexican flag with green and red bands separated by the white wall. Steps on either side of the foundation allowed access to the chapel's interior. Built by the villagers, the shrine was the result of their collective thanksgiving to Our Lady of Guadalupe for revealing the spring that had changed their lives for the better.

We mounted the stairs and entered the shrine to face a statue of Guadalupe. A large tin can and a tall glass, which previously had contained a votive candle to Guadalupe, were on the floor below her feet. Both containers held sprays of feathery foliage and white daisy-like flowers. Green and red paper garlands decorated the wall above Guadalupe’s head, and green, red and white garlands draped her shoulders.

A memory hung in the air over the well and the shrine, a memory older than the village and, therefore, not articulated by the women. Since time immemorial, wells have been revered places, entrances into the deep, thresholds into the Underworld or into the Interior. To affirm their belief in the power of wells, people have erected shrines, made pilgrimages and left votive offerings(1,2). Did building the shrine symbolize this more ancient meaning, a meaning that was buried deep in the villagers' unconscious, just as the source of the spring was buried deep within the earth?

Back at the church, we reluctantly said good-by to these brave women who had dared display the village’s hallowed sites to two strangers. Perhaps never before had the sacred boulder or the shrine to the spring been seen by anyone who was not originally from that community.

Was it a reflection of our happiness at meeting the sacred, or did the village radiate joy? Everything and everyone seemed to emit light and cheer. It was late afternoon, the time when animals were returning from pasture. Even they appeared to leap and dance down the road home.

And that night, as if in answer to my question about a more ancient meaning of the well, I had a dream. In the dream, I approached the well and lifted its cover. As I looked into the well, I found myself slipping down the dark tunnel into the water and through the water to land on a vast sandy beach. The beach glowed, because each grain of sand emitted a golden light.

I explored the beach alone, absorbed in picking up precious stones of emeralds, diamonds and rubies. “These are my treasures,” I thought before I ascended the tunnel and closed the cover. When I awoke, the fingers of my right hand were tightly closed as if they still clasped the gems.

(1) Knab, Timothy J. A War of Witches. Harper Collins. 1995, pp. 63;121.

(2) O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara. A Book of Celtic Wisdom. Cliff Street Books. 1997.