On Saturday we visited our last Maya site, our LAST Maya site. We visited the final major city of Chiapas: Tonina. It was an incredibly beautiful site, overlooking a vast, green pasture emphasized by the day’s stunning weather. I know that I’m using more adjectives than usual, but I was really taken by our last site, both because of the structure itself and because it was the last in a long line of incredible experiences. I have never been very good at dealing with “lasts” as my mother or any of my good friends will attest to. There is something peculiar about “last times” that always make me stop and think. Last days of school, last days of some age, last days of summer, etc... The idea of performing a typical routine for the last time is a particularly strange phenomenon because it’s such the meeting of two opposing forces. The end, which is termination indefinitely of something, and a routine, which be definition is a repeated action. Endings and routines don’t get along because of this inherent difference. When they do intersect, it is puzzling.
It felt so weird; climbing and exploring Maya ruins had become such a norm, a regular task of the group, but suddenly it was something never to be done again. To mechanically perform the same motions of climbing the pyramid, gazing out across the horizon, and carefully descending knowing full well that this time, there would be no repeats. This pattern that I had grown so accustomed to, that felt so natural, that I may have even taken for granted, would never repeat itself hereafter. When it occurred to me that I was experiencing my last Maya exploration I had to slow down and stop. I did whatever I could to make the moment last including pausing to look back, taking multiple pictures of the same structure, and taking each step as slowly as possible. Even when walking back to the van I made no attempt to catch up with the group, which I had fallen very much behind through the course of my deliberate exit. In the same way I savor the last bite of a good meal, I tried to take in as much of Tonina as I could before leaving the Maya and their incredible history behind me.
The only way I can describe it is a sensation. But rather than babble on about internal feelings that I can only begin to make tangible, I have included the pictures that have stuck with me most from that day and do best to solidify my feelings of awe at both Tonina and that entire chapter of this trip.

I threw this picture in because this whole entry was a little too heavy and nothing lightens the mood like a nonsensical sign! Translation: “Caution – Dangerous Zone”. Beware the evil Maya cacti garden…


The last in a long line of pictures taken atop pyramids.