I recently read James Gleick’s book on the science of Chaos. It excited some thoughts in me
and these I’ve endeavored to capture in the piece below. Although the themes are somewhat
philosophical, I hope it isn’t so dense as not to delight you.
The farm was recently vacated by the American tenant. Dad and I visited the deserted farm. I
recall finding on the floor of the abandoned hut the Ayer classic Language, Truth and Logic.
The book was dog-eared, crumpled and stained. I wondered which farmer would read such book in
the wilderness. I slowly read this book in my teen years and could not fully appreciate Ayer’s
philosophy. Years later I learnt that Ayer was a logical positivist like Russell and
Whitehead.
It was this time that dad planted red kidney beans one year and corn the following. This
particular year he was to plant beans. This rotational cropping has its origins in Mayan
traditions. We have improved somewhat on the slash-and-burn milpa methods by using a Massy
Ferguson tractor to harrow and till the land but our harvesting technique remains out-moded
and pretty much what harvesting could have been for our ancestors.
Let me first describe soil preparation for the bean crop. For tilling I was up at daybreak.
The misty morning was deceptively cool as I jugged the mile to the farm. Sometimes I rode on
the hydraulic rack of the tractor. The road to the farm was more bumpy on the ride. I always
thought dad owned a hundred acres of land and that this plot was all tilled for the crop. I
then had the opportunity to drive the tractor. My delight was to be left alone making the
turns of the cycloid tilling the land. The accompaniment filling the expanse of the farm was
the variant deafening puttering of the tractor. The pleasant morning fog quickly gave way to
the sweltering sun which burnt my face and forearms. The stirred dust settled and caked on my
sweaty skin. Occasionally low dark clouds would swiftly stream by spraying a gentle drizzle.
Seen from the roadway, the regular lines of the tilled land made a giant slate awaiting the
inscriptions of seedlings. I longed to see fully grown plants. I was impatient because
occasionally the wind came in gusts, little whirlwinds buffetting me with clouds of dust. This
was the process of erosion I learnt in high school science. With this the harvest may not be
that plentiful.
But this was an inappropriate consideration for this farm on the fluvial plain between the
Mopan and Macal Rivers, just above the juncture below which they flow as one, the Belize
River. Every year with the rainy season there is a flooding of the plain. The deposit is
bountiful. An adverse effect occurs when flooding is excessive. The crop is submerged and
destroyed. This happens occasionally. And even then the spoils may be greater than the loss as
fertile topsoil remains in the wake of the flood.
A few days after tilling I used the planter to sew the seeds. The reservoir bins were filled
with large, hard seeds. These planting seeds were covered with a red medicinal preserving
dust. On planting, the rows cut by the shear were kept parallel to the farm road. An evenly
spaced trail of beans was neatly covered by the following blades, a beautifully mechanized
process. Driving the tractor I laid an elbow on the adjacent fender and followed the planting
with a backward gaze pretending I was a farmer.
But our farming was not fully mechanized and further care of the crop required intensive
labour. The entire family worked to keep the grass and weed away from the shoots. Some of the
herbs bore thorns, especially the purple-stemmed weed. My fingers suffered their barbs while
my back ached as I stooped to clear between the shoots. I then became aware of mom’s stamina.
She would clear many tasks before I would complete one. And when I thought myself exhausted
she would continue clearing for hours thereafter. The natural stoop in her back facilitated
her efforts. We could not have been of much difference in height so the difference in work was
not due to a difference in bulk. The work was done to give the seedlings the chance for
survival. Mother’s care was instinctual.
Eventually the time for harvest came. The time when my uncles built the threshing beds. Again
the family was up in the wee hours of the dewy morning and in the field when the brush was
soft. We pulled out rows of plants and gathered them into mounds. By mid-afternoon they would
be dry and ready for threshing. Then the blows of the threshing poles would pop the peascods,
spilling the peas onto the drop-cloth below. We filled sacks of beans in a day. The lush soft
pink of the fresh peas made the effort seem worth the while. I swear I have never seen more
soft, pink peas than those we harvested.
Now I wonder if I had measured each pea and plotted successive differences in size, three
differences to a point, onto a three-dimensional space, whether I would discover a strange
attractor. I should study chaos and fractals in greater detail and perform such an experiment.
Who knows, a mathematical truth may be lurking beneath this surface.
Back at the farm the time came to relax in the shade of the ancient trees around the hut.
Trees that in their youth would have heard the chatter of our Mayan forefathers in a tongue we
regretably have forgotten. Trees that would have witnessed their labors in these fields. This
reminds me that dad said “I will not cut down these trees. I love big trees.” In his
subconscious he probably shares their experience. He gave me a lesson in the conservation of
rain forests. Under his trees we enjoyed the lunch mom prepared for us.
By evening, dad, who would have gone back into town, would return to fetch the family. The
cargo of beans was loaded onto the tractor. Then we had a jolly ride home, five or six
exhausted farmhands on a small Massy Ferguson tractor: two against each back fender, one or
two on the hydraulic rack atop sacks of beans and my father in the sole driver’s seat. We
would skirt the town and then sneak home through roadways that had sparse traffic. We never
came across a traffic cop.
By the end of the season the storeroom on the ground floor of our home would keep about 75
sacks of preserved beans. We sold beans to neighbors and usually had beans to last until the
next planting season.
All uncles and aunts were given sacks of beans. This lesson in the benefits of team work and
sharing was not lost on me. I saw figures but little new sociology when I read the mathematics
of altruism and cooperation.
In the history of the Mayan people I can see us re-enacting an ancient homage. Back then we
would have been peasants working on the farm fields of the Mayan priests and rulers. We would
be harvesting their crops because no doubt their fields were on the fluvial flatland. But I
would like to imagine we were administrators; we own the fluvial land. Additionally my dad’s
childhood home was on the hill. A few yards from his home was a Mayan ruin whose many shreds
of pottery I collected with childhood friends and used as miniature bricks to fashion medieval
European castles complete with walls, turrets and moats. My intelligent father could just as
well have been a cacique, leader of a Mayan nation in middle America. His home was on their
court yards.
Mayan temples, including Cahal Pech, were perched on hills encircling and overlooking the
fertile floodplains of my hometown. Our Mayan ancestors have reclaimed their sacred right to
the land on one of the mounds overlooking the town. We now have land with a Mayan ruin on the
crown of a hill on the periphery of the fluvial plain. This land is on the side of town
opposite to that of the farm. I think we could easily encircle the low-lying town. We could
have been among the prosperous rulers tending the deities and studying the heavens from our
temple tops while our farmhands cared the crops below. But all this is only a fantasy.
I myself was like the pea plant, nurtured by my mother and father. Now, many years after
enjoying nature and many more since the Mayan heyday, I have gone full circle through some
years of science and a morsel of Platonism. I am now home with a tidbit of the natural dynamic
systems of Chaos. Chaos is the deterministic disorder I first saw on the farm. It accounts for
the infinite variety in the forms of plants and animals. It will be found to underlie much
unexplained phenomena. Chaos no doubt accounts both for the collapse of the classical Mayan
civilization and for the re-population of Cayo with Mayan descendants. But we may never know
our complete chaotic history and biology. Nevertheless I want to think I have mom’s and dad s
endurance and intelligence and busy myself searching for chaotic patterns in nature. Then, who
can tell, a study of chaos may unearth ideas for the resolution of some scientific and Mayan
mysteries.
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