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  This late-night event, dramatic yet so common in the non-Western world, changed my destiny. I wanted to know how those Roses saved Margarita’s life. Doña Rita couldn’t tell me much, only that she knew the red petals would stop the blood from pouring out. Her remedy remained an unsolved mystery until years later when I learned that the astringents in Roses and Rose leaves help stop bleeding.

  That was 1973. In 1969, I had left my hometown of Chicago and a career in advertising to pursue my dream of living closer to the land. With my young son James, I moved first to San Francisco. Then, with friends, we left for Doña Rita’s remote village in the Sierra Madre of Guerrero, where we farmed alongside the Nahuatl.

  Since the closest government health clinic was an arduous fourteen-hour walk through steep hills and raging rivers, the Nahuatl relied on centuries-old formulas of herbal teas, baths, powders, and salves to meet their health needs. So when a family member became ill, the village elders—who possessed thousands of years of healing knowledge—were called in to administer household remedies that invariably worked.

  Doña Rita and several other respected elders took me under their wings and taught me the names and uses of many medicinal plants. It dawned on me slowly but inexorably that the study of plants and their relationship to human illness would be my life’s work. I had discovered that I had a gift for healing in my hands. I had no idea where this interest would eventually lead, but I had a sense that it would satisfy my yearning to be of service to God and humanity.

  In 1976 I left Mexico, and the next year my daughter Crystal Ray was born in Belize—the former British Honduras—where I worked as a caretaker of an organic farm. When Crystal was two, we returned to Chicago, where I enrolled in the Chicago National College of Naprapathy, a three-year program that taught therapeutic body treatments that are an offshoot of chiropractic medicine.

  There in cadaver class, I met Greg Shropshire, a handsome paramedic with beautiful, healing hands. We fell in love and were married shortly before graduation.

  Greg and I decided to return to Belize. I missed the tropical climate, the year-round growing season, and the artist’s palette of skin colors that paint the human landscape; the indigenous Maya and Spanish-speaking Central Americans, the Garifuna and Creole peoples with their roots in Africa, the East Indians who had come as indentured slaves, the Lebanese who came as chicle-bosses, and the postcolonial Mennonites, Europeans, and Americans.

  As alternative practitioners, we wanted to live in a country where medical freedom and traditional healing were still honored. Belize intrigued us because it had a thriving, highly respected tradition of curanderos, healers and herbalists, and there was no “medical practice law” that made natural healing a crime. We wanted to bring up Crystal, not yet six, in a healthy environment, swim in a pure river, eat home-grown vegetables, and live close to the natural rhythms of life in the untamed bush.

  We decided to resettle in western Belize, buying thirty-five acres of uncleared jungle along the Macal River in the Cayo District, not far from the Guatemalan border. My dear friends Lucy and Mick Fleming, who had recently bought eighty-seven acres, called us when the land next to them went up for sale. We bought it sight unseen.

  So in 1981, when James was entering college, Greg, Crystal, and I set out for our new tropical homestead. There we worked to clear and plant the land while maintaining a small practice as natural healers in the town of San Ignacio, six miles downriver.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Linden Flowers, Basswood Flor de Tilo

  Tilia americana

  Linden flowers and leaves are a traditional home remedy in many parts of the world for coughs, colds, and sore throats. Generations of Central Americans have prized its effectiveness as a mild, pleasant-tasting sedative tea for children and the elderly and infirm.

  It felt like a hot, sticky day in my hometown of Chicago. I could have been catching a cool breeze on Lake Michigan, but I was on West Street in San Ignacio of western Belize, and the only relief was the stingy breeze from the Macal River. With a bag full of mangoes and papayas, I stepped out of our clinic onto the veranda and looked out into the hot, dusty bustle. I put down the bag and fanned myself, feeling too restless to sit down. A wave of homesickness washed over me.

  I loved San Ignacio, which is the largest town in western Belize and only ten miles from the Guatemalan border, but today, the sweltering, unforgiving heat; the loud, blaring punta rock music popular in Belize; the row of shops along a narrow, dusty street; the mangy, threatening dogs; and the pungent, powerful smells of everyday life seemed too foreign.

  My husband, Greg, my daughter, Crystal, and I had been in Belize for two years. Our dream farm, six miles away by dugout canoe, was becoming a nightmare. It was a never-ending struggle to keep the jungle from encroaching on the two thatch huts we had built and called home. Our effort to transform a muddy, burned-out clearing into a tropical homestead was not the fulfilling experience we had imagined. We were seriously contemplating returning to Chicago. The indecision about whether to leave or hang on was frustrating.

  I hated to quit, especially when I felt in my heart that we belonged in Belize. We were eking out a living from our natural healing practice, but even the herbs we’d brought from Chicago, which were our livelihood, were beginning to decompose from the unrelieved humidity. There was no way to replenish our supply. Clearly, our time was running out.

  Shielding my eyes from the sun with a flattened palm I saw a diminutive old man sitting on our wait bench in the cool shadows. He had an air of learned patience. He seemed content to sit and watch the people pass by, peering at them with interest. His clothes were patched, badly stained, and threadbare, but freshly laundered.

  “Buenos días, señor,” I said, stretching out my hand to greet him. He seemed startled and took a moment to compose himself before rising to greet me. His slight but sinewy frame barely reached my chin. Age had bent him slightly over at the waist, yet he had the bearing and presence of a much younger man.

  He pushed back his sweat-stained yellow Pepsi cap, and I saw that his features were identical to those of the stone carvings at the ruins of the ancient Maya city-states such as nearby Caracol and Tikal. His face was a haunting rendition of the classic Maya profile: the long, hooked nose, the flat forehead, the drooping lower lip, and the upturned eyes.

  Taking both my hands in his, he smiled warmly, looking into my eyes and speaking in a raspy voice, “Mucho gusto. Mucho gusto.” The feel of his tough, leathery hands conjured up the image of an experienced bushmaster slicing expertly through a tangle of wild vines. It was obvious the old man had spent decades in the jungle.

  “Won’t you come in and sit?” I suggested, wondering if he had come to see me as a patient.

  “A friend left me here to wait for him while he runs an errand. Someone told me I might like to meet you,” he explained in Spanish. “You are interested in the healing plants. Is this so?” he asked, carefully setting his stiff legs into a chair in the treatment room. He accepted my outstretched hand, and I helped him into the seat.

  I explained that I was a natural healer, with a doctor’s degree in naprapathy. “I use herbs, massage, and diet therapies in my healing practice.”

  He was straining his eyes to see what was in the quart-sized glass jars on the shelves behind us. “What are those?” he inquired.

  “My herbs,” I explained. “Would you like to see which ones I use in my work?” I pulled down one of the jars, preparing to launch into a primer about herbal medicine. But the old man stopped me and said, “First, let me introduce myself. My name is Elijio Panti of San Antonio Village not far from here, and I…”

  As soon as I heard his name, I almost dropped the glass jar. I had been about to give a plant lesson to the best-known Maya medicine man in Central America.

  Great and terrible stories circulated about this old Maya doctor-priest. Some spoke of near-miraculous healings, cured diseases, and numerous lives clutched from death’s bony hand. Oth
ers claimed he was a lecherous old man, prone to molesting unsuspecting women, a drunk, a witch, a sorcerer, and a perpetrator of evil spells on innocent people.

  I knew virtually nothing about local witchcraft beliefs except for gossip. Rumor had it that Elijio (pronounced Ay-leé-hee-o) Panti was from a family of black magicians. His father, it was said, was an obeha man, a practitioner of black magic who enchanted hundreds of women to be his lovers. I had heard that Panti also enchanted women, both for his own pleasure and for patients who paid for the service.

  But as I looked down into the old man’s gentle eyes, I found it hard to believe he was evil. I felt it more likely he was misunderstood, as healers often are. I too had been called a witch and had been accused of fanciful deeds.

  Three of my patients had sworn that Panti had cured them of diseases no one else could even understand.

  I asked him if he remembered a man who had suffered an awful wound, causing his leg to slowly rot away. “That man said you saved his life. He speaks very highly of your work, Don Elijio,” I said, calling him by the title of respect Latin Americans use to address their distinguished elders.

  He lifted his eyebrows as if trying to think back, but shrugged. He couldn’t remember, he said. He had seen too many patients to be able to remember each one’s story.

  The old man was more interested in my herbs in their jars. He stared at them, peering into the shadows on the shelf. “What are these?” he asked as he pointed again.

  “They’re herbs from the North that we have shipped down here for our patients,” I answered, delighted that a master was curious about my meager supply of herbs, disintegrating as they were. “You can see we’re having a problem keeping them fresh and free of mold,” I added.

  “It’s those glass jars,” he explained. “They cause the moisture in the herbs to grow mold.”

  I was taken aback. His matter-of-fact comment had addressed one of our gravest problems in Belize: how to store dried herbs and protect them from the ubiquitous dampness. I wanted to thank him, but all I managed to say was, “Hmmm.”

  “I chop my herbs and dry them in the sun,” he offered. “Then I place them in old cloth sacks inside the house away from the sun. That way they will last for months if you just dry them again outside once in a while. I’ve been doing this work for forty years, so I know a few things,” he added, a devilish smile creeping across his wrinkled face.

  He pointed with a scarred, crooked finger to a jar of Linden flowers. “Tell me, what do you use those for?”

  “Oh, you may know that one as Flor de Tilo, the Mexican name. The buds are very good for nerves and sleeplessness. Easy to take, too. It has such a pleasant flavor.” I was trying hard not to stare at him, but there was something oddly irresistible about the man.

  He raised both hands in the air and yelped, “Flor de Tilo! Mamasita, I have not seen or heard of that blessed tree for many, many years. My dear, deceased wife came from Yucatán, Mexico, and her family often spoke of how much they missed that herb. It was gentle but sure, they said. And this one?” he asked, pointing at Buckthorn bark. I explained that I used this herb for stomachaches and constipation. He studied me as we chatted. “Your speech is Mexican. Are you a Mexicana?” he asked.

  I told him that I had Italian and Assyrian parents but was born in the United States. I had learned my Spanish from living in Guerrero, Mexico, for seven years, studying plants with the Nahuatl Indian elders in a mountain village of the high Sierras.

  “It’s good to love God’s medicines. They often cure when the doctor can’t. People have to get help somewhere, so they come to look for curanderos like me and you.”

  I was flattered to hear him compare my work to his and thrilled by his interest and his curiosity about my herbs. I was succumbing fast to his charm.

  He glanced over at my treatment table. I could tell he longed to stretch out and let me loosen the kinks and knots in his old frame. I was just about to invite him to experience a naprapathic treatment, when a noisy, dilapidated truck pulled up outside.

  The old man’s friend had come for him and was persistently honking the horn to get his attention. “I must go, mamasita,” he said.

  Just before he left, I gave him a bag of the dried Flor de Tilo leaves and flowers he had admired. “Ahhh, this will help me sleep,” he said, with a wink.

  Shaking his calloused, weathered hand, I knew I wanted to see this medicine man again. I heard myself ask him if I could visit him in his clinic so we could talk more about plants. “I have much to learn about the Belizean plants,” I told him, “and perhaps I can help your stiff muscles.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, enthusiastically. “Come and visit me. I would enjoy such a talk, and my old muscles could use some beating and smashing.” He let out a chuckle at the thought and shuffled out into the bright street.

  He climbed into the truck and looked over his shoulder, waving his hand from side to side at the wrist like visiting royalty. The jeep spurted forward and lurched down the dusty, potholed street, turning the corner and nearly losing a wheel as it bounced out of a huge hole.

  Despite the heat and the weighty decision about our farm’s future, I felt light and happy after meeting the old Maya doctor. I imagined I felt a deep sense of integrity and simplicity emanating from him.

  Still, I couldn’t get rid of that voice in my mind’s murkiest corner that he might be no more than a charlatan with a penchant for mischief. Worse, what if he misinterpreted my interest in him as a sexual overture? I’d learned from living in Mexico that many Latino men, of any age, mistake friendliness in North American women for open flirting.

  My internal struggle was less about the man himself and more about having faith in my instincts. I had decided long ago to make life choices based on faith, not fear. My instincts had never failed me, despite having taken me on some pretty heady adventures during my forty-three years.

  Putting the jars of rotting herbs back on the shelf, I wondered if Panti had an apprentice. Despite his vigor and bearing, he must, I thought, be in his eighties. When he died, would his profession disappear along with Central America’s rainforests? Had any of his plants been studied by modern science? Was he all that was left of the extraordinary medical system of the ancient Maya, a last thread dangling off a once-glorious tapestry of healers who were revered, perhaps deified, in their society?

  The thought that his knowledge of plants and medicine might fade into oblivion was heartbreaking. Would he want an apprentice? Would he teach me?

  By the time I arrived back at the farm, I was preoccupied with Panti and rattled on to my husband Greg about the idea that had been buzzing around my head all afternoon.

  “You don’t mean that old witch doctor, do you?”

  “Ah, let’s not call him that,” I scolded. “He seemed humble and spiritual to me.” Then I told Greg about the glass jars. “Of course!” he almost shouted. “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s so obvious.”

  We finished the dinner dishes by the light of our kerosene lamps and put Crystal to bed on the wicker love seat that once belonged to my mother’s living room set. An Indian bedspread separated her makeshift bedroom from the rest of the one-room hut.

  As rosy dusk fell over the jungle outside our door, I suddenly realized that if, by chance, I were to work with Panti, we’d have to stay on the farm.

  “How do you feel about staying in Belize?” I asked Greg, not sure how I felt about the big picture either.

  “This is much harder than I ever thought it would be, Rose,” said my exhausted husband. “I never seem to feel physically strong enough to keep up around here. I’m always tired. Every day I feel I have to scale a mountain just to be able to eat and bathe.”

  His face fell, jaw tight, when he spoke of the piece of jungle we had cleared away last month. It was already growing back and was several feet high. We were too broke to hire someone to help cut it down again. But it had to be cut down. Living too close to the jungle is dangerous: it brings
debilitating dampness, bush animals, mosquitoes, and marauding creatures who abscond with food while you’re sleeping.

  “I think we were both naive about what it would be like to live here long-term,” Greg said. There was despair in his voice. He got up to smash a scorpion meandering along our rustic, mahogany sink. With no running water, no electricity, and a road that was sometimes impassable, the litany of problems seemed endless. In order to get into San Ignacio, the nearest town, we had to canoe six miles down the river. Our life seemed like a perpetual and difficult camping trip.

  “I’m exhausted too,” I confessed. “I’m tired of worrying about money, and the dampness is like an ever-present enemy.”

  As a farmer, I knew the soil at our farm was poor. Despite the lushness of the jungle and the fact that the land had lain untouched for many years, the soil was impoverished, hardpan clay. It would take at least three years of hard work to build up its fertility with organic methods.

  Greg and I reminded ourselves why we had come to Belize. We had known the going would be tough. We wouldn’t have things like reading lights, hot showers, washing machines, or many of the other luxuries to which we were accustomed. Problems like the oppressive heat and rainy season would be endemic, just as city life had its crime and pollution. It was a matter of priorities, we concluded. And stamina.

  “Ah, what the hell, we’ve been down before. We’ll bounce back,” said Greg, rubbing my shoulders affectionately.

  “I’d like to go see Don Elijio, see what he’s all about,” I said, hoping Greg would share my dream about learning with the old bush doctor. “I’d like to ask him to teach me about the medicinal plants here. Maybe if we learned more about them, we wouldn’t have to worry about the herbs from home going bad. I think we just have to keep on trying, love.”

  Greg nodded as he sat back on one of the portable massage tables we were using for beds. “Maybe Panti could give us a few pointers on this jungle living, eh?”