For years, I've been afflicted by the climbing bug, and it has taken me into poverty.
In Tibet, our approach march brought us to the yak-skin walls of a tent that housed a family of five who squatted around a fire while smoldering yak dung, the only fuel, heated a soot-covered teapot, their only metal possession. In Peru, the higher we went up the road into the Cordillera Blanca, the increasingly fragile the structures became, so that the houses in the highest villages were the least inclined to survive the storms that visited them seasonally. In Burma, a shard of moonlight illuminated movement at the bottom of the hole in the shitter. It took me a moment to realize it was maggots, festering in the effluvium that leached into the river below, where the villagers gathered their water.
But I never cared: I was always there to climb.
As the plane began the descent toward Guaymas, the wrinkle of the Sonoran hills expanded into broader folds. I knew Mike and Khyber from home, and loved them dearly. Mike's a smooth-talking, generous bon vivant, who accepts my friendship without conditions. Khyber's burgeoning hormones mean that every young person of the opposite sex precipitates a storm of powerful emotions, but he's sweet and gentle and inclined to drape an enormous arm around my shoulder and then just stand there, not talking.
But in a short while I'd be joining a ragtag group that included four other people I didn't know. We were going to be working together as well as with the schoolchildren of the barrio, installing solar panels, introducing the children to the concept of renewable energy and documenting the project with video and blogging. All of this was new to me. I had more than a little apprehension as I exited the main room of the open-aired airport lounge and looked for the group in the adjoining foyer.
"Hey man," said Kina, all black eyes and blue shirt and hipster jeans and open-aired sandals. "Glad you could make it." Kina's famous in Jackson for his skiing; from what my wife tells me (girls talk about this stuff), he's also famous for his effect on women, who seem to go a bit wobbly in his presence.
A camera zoomed in toward my face. "Bienvenidos a Mexico," said Mike from behind the lens, amber glasses perched atop his closely-cropped head. It seemed to have grown a quarter inch since I had last seen him, forty-eight hours earlier.
Khyber towered over me, beaming.
"Are you the famous cb?" a pixie asked. She gleamed in the desert air, brown eyes sparkling, short bobbed hair pulled back by a silk scarf. A few errant tendrils offset her round face. Mati stood behind her, tussle-headed, broad-cheeked, a male version of the same genes. He was as handsome as his sister was beautiful.
"You must be Jennie," I said.
The members of the group moved in and out, laying hands on me as I stood in the rental car line. (Seven people, a big project, one van: do the math.) Outside, the light deepened on the Sonoran hills. A warmth that had been absent when I left Jackson began to loosen the skin on my face.
We eased onto the street, Jennie driving, Mati in the back, me in the passenger seat, the van ahead of us. Upthrusts of red volcanic rock glowed in the sunset. A ten-year-old Chrysler with Nevada plates honked once, then shot past as we followed the van toward town. The smell of exhaust wafted in through the open window; for a moment, conversation stopped, as if we were all inhaling.
This was going to be an expedition of a different sort.
Every good project needs a connection. The Guaymas Project had El Presidente.
Mike had made the acquaintance of Antonio Astiazaran Gutierrez, the mayor of Guaymas--El Presidente, as he was known here--a month earlier during his trip to Mexico to install a wind turbine. El Presidente was telegenic and ambitious and smart, and he was one of the few people in the state driving renewable energy. He had solicited the project, which erected the turbine over a busy highway between Guaymas and a nearby gringo retirement community called San Carlos. Mike had been the installer, and after a Tecate-heavy lunch or two, the pair had hit it off.
We pulled up outside the Palacio Municipal, a colonial building from the early 1800s that opened around an airy central courtyard. Soaring wooden doors led to busy interior offices. El Presidente's office was through the largest of the doors. He watched us with a perfunctory smile from behind his desk as we gathered in a semicircle around him.
As Mike talked, outlining the objectives of the project, El Presidente sat forward in his chair, his chin bridged on his steepled fingers. He was young, younger than I would have expected for the mayor of a city of 200,000 on the Sonoran coast, with neatly coiffed black hair and a politician's focus.
In the streets of San Carlos seventy-five solar panels sat atop streetlight posts. They had been designed to power the lights, but the systems had been poorly engineered, and the batteries had corroded.
Mike was convinced the panel systems would still work. Many of the original seventy-five panels had been stolen, but twenty-five still remained. If we could salvage them (a task that would be made easier with the help of El Presidente, who could commandeer a bucket loader and two electricians for our service), we'd repurpose them on the roof of an elementary school in Fatima.
Mike finished, and a moment passed. What, one of our group asked, did El Presidente want from this project?
"This is for the children," he said. His English was clipped, with a slight accent. "In a place like Fatima, they are just beginning to think about things like renewable energy. Having the solar panels on the roof will affect the children's consciousness."
He paused to see if we understood.
Sometimes reality is less important than a symbol. The wind turbine that Mike had installed on the highway from Guaymas to San Carlos spun day and night, but it had run into difficulty: the state energy company refused to allow it to be tied back into the grid. Renewable energy was outside the energy's company comfort zone, and they were worried that if everyone put up solar panels it would cut into their profits. But despite the ongoing battle to get the turbine tied in, it still spun, and anyone who drove the popular highway saw it outlined against the pale blue sky and thought of El Presidente.
As I watched the mayor watching us, I realized the Guaymas Project was going to have its share of reality, but it was also going to be symbolic. The panel systems, once installed, would generate roughly 1800 watts per hour--enough energy to power a number of the school's electrical needs, but not enough to get the school off the grid. Its true value lay in its position above the schoolyard: for the schoolchildren, it would be the first time they'd ever heard of renewable energy or seen solar panels. The panels would stay on the roof, year in year out, introducing each incoming class of students to an idea they had never previously considered.
El Presidente stood; the meeting was over. After ceremonial handshakes, we piled into the van and began driving toward the house where we'd be staying for the trip. As we drove, the night air whistled through a crack in the window, colder than expected.
"There it is," said Mike, pointing at the median. Our lights flashed quickly over a silver object. "The wind turbine."
I'm pretty sure I caught a glimpse of it, spinning silently in the dark above the highway.
Loading comments… 
