Obstacles in the Road

If you have driven much in Mexico, I bet your first thought when you saw the title is that this post would be about the rocks that people use in the road to let you know that something is ahead....usually a broken down car or truck. But in San Miguel we have another kind of Road Obstacles.....Trees.

This tree sits at the bottom of our street and cars pass on either side of it....unless someone is parked so close to the bottom of the street that everyone has to go to the right of the tree.This is a two-way street and when it narrows down to one lane because of the tree the cars take turns coming and going.This one of the few wide and flat streets that we have in San Miguel so I think it was paved in recent history but there are these two trees that block one lane and they have been there for a while.

This is the saddest tree of all. Cars can pass on either side of it but I don't know how much longer it will survive. There are huge beds of ants at the bottom of the tree and the hole in the tree if filled with stones and sometimes garbage. It looks as if the garbage has been set on fire in the tree a few times because the hollow is charred charcoal. In the last year or so, some crew from public works has come out and mutilated this tree by "pruning" it so badly I felt like crying when I saw what had been done. There is no understanding of pruning or trimming a tree. Someone just climbs up in the tree with a saw or machete and starts hacking away until the limb rips off of the tree.

These have to be tenacious trees. They get no care. They manage to live in earth packed as hard a cement if not actually covered with cement. And who knows how many times they have been hit by a borracho driver. But the Mexicans don't complain about these obstacles in the road and the trees just go on from day to day doing their thing and casting a bit of shade.