Whenever I hear about 9/11, I will hear, from the background of my memory, the
sound of monkeys. Ericka and I had arrived a day earlier on a little,
twin-prop airplane that had carried a dozen of us north from Guatemala City
over the verdant canopy of Central American jungle to Tikal in Guatemala's
northern province, and back in time five centuries to a Mezoamerica the jungle
swallowed whole. We entered the ruins at daybreak under the silhouettes of
monkeys in the treetops above us, climbed temples to look out over the jungle
canopy, wondered quietly about the lifestyle of a people whose world ended
before ours began and whether that world made any more sense or was in any way
more satisfying than this one...
Had I put pen to paper at any other time in the history of human civilization,
my words would have followed another course. But as fate would have it, Ericka
and I found ourselves exploring the Mayan ruins of Tikal on the 11th of
September, 2001. They say every member of the generation of the 1960s
remembers in perfect detail where they were the moment President Kennedy was
assassinated. For a generation still in school in the 1980s, the explosion of
the space shuttle Challenger was to be our equivalent. But 9/11 eclipsed even
that, and for the rest of my life whenever I hear about 9/11, I will think
about Tikal and hear, from the background of my memory, the sound of monkeys.
Ericka and I had arrived a day earlier on a little, twin-prop airplane that had
carried a dozen of us north from Guatemala City over the verdant canopy of
Central American jungle to Tikal in Guatemala's northern province, and back in
time five centuries to a Mezoamerica the jungle swallowed whole. We entered
the ruins at daybreak under the silhouettes of monkeys in the treetops above
us, climbed temples to look out over the jungle canopy, wondered quietly about
the lifestyle of a people whose world ended before ours began and whether that
world made any more sense or was in any way more satisfying than this one.
And then the planes struck the Twin Towers. There they were on CNN on a little
TV over the front desk of our guesthouse, smoke trails streaming, flames
gutting the upper stories of buildings about to fall. And all I could think
about was the rise and fall of empires and ages.
Tikal retains much of its mystery, and while the Mayans were in many ways ahead
of their time, they too vanished without a trace for generations while the
irreproachable jungle swallowed what they left behind. Today it is best
appreciated in the chill of early morning, to the call of bird song and the
first calls of the monkeys. But what I'll never forget is the silence, and a
glimpse of what remains when it all comes to an end.
