We chose, then, to escape to the North like so many times before. I would make
the same journey when I'd needed space in San Diego years before, and I knew
the route by heart: it went first to San Sebastian de Yali and then eastward
along the mountain ridges to this quiet mountain town in Western Jinotega,
where mountains crowded us on all sides and the air blews fresh and cool. For
good measure, rains blew in from the West, knocking out the electricity.
So it was that at 7:30 PM, Ericka and I were transported to the previous
century. The boarding house of adobe pressed around wooden columns, the meal:
refried beans cooked in a heavy pan with onions, some ground beef in spices,
flat tortillas toasted over a wood fire, and soft cuajada from some nearby cow.
We ate in near silence, gathered around a small wooden table that a wax candle
illuminated in soft orange light. Outside the wooden door, total darkness and
the sound of falling rain on the muddy streets. One hundred years ago, in the
years before even General Sandino stalked these hills with his armed men, life
here was little different at all.
