Features

Every spring I head for Alamos, a pink-adobed, cobblestoned village tucked against the western slopes of the Sierra Madres in the state of Sonora, Mexico. It’s a pinprick spot on the map, located at the end of a narrow, two-lane road. The way to Alamos was paved in 1962. Before that it was just a rugged, pot-holed dirt track through miles and miles of high Sonoran desert. 

Mammoth saguaro cacti and oddly striated rock formations punctuate the monotonous scenery until you arrive within a few miles of Alamos. Then things begin to get interesting. The terrain grows hillier and the road becomes windy. Bougainvilleas bursting with color grow tangled and thick between crooked vara blanca fences, tethered together with bits of string and pieces of cloth. Orange, red and day-glow pink explodes over earth-tone walls capped in smooth adobe or pointy shards of broken soda pop glass. Green, blue and purple doorways demand that one wear sunglasses, not because of the glare of the hot Sonoran sun, but from the sheer intensity of their brilliance. Emerald palms, neon parrots, tropical flowers, trees laden with bananas, mangos and dates make it impossible not to squint in Alamos. 

I have friends who live in this colonial paradise—Bay Area transplants who once took Highway 15 due south from Tucson, followed the road until it dead-ended in Alamos, and quite simply never came back. Sure, they visit relatives and friends from time to time, head up to Tucson for supplies, jaunt here and there across the border as needed, but their hearts and minds are back in Alamos. It is not a bad place to be. 

Dogs and children run lose and wild in Alamos. Roosters crow throughout the day. Burro hoofs click on the narrow cobblestoned streets, echoing off the high adobe walls of the old haciendas and the ancient, crumbling cathedral. And throughout the village, day after day, week after week, year after year, the people of Alamos sweep...and sweep...and sweep. 

There is nothing more sweet sounding to me then the lilt of straw bristles hitting tile, palm fronds swishing against stones, crooked coarse sticks sweeping over packed dirt in a mesmerizing, soothing melody. Alamos could be the epicenter of the universe when it comes to sweeping. It’s a wonder it hasn’t already been swept away. 

Everywhere you go in Alamos, someone is holding a battered metal dust pan and a smooth wooden handled broom, its bristles well-worn, but in perfect alignment. On doorsteps, in churches, within tiny bodegas, outside on the sidewalks and in the middle of the street—sweeping tile, wood and bare ground into a high polish—pushing a broom and holding a dustpan is the rhythm of Alamos. It is its song and its dance. Everyone is sweeping the town dust-free until a flock of chickens skitter around a corner, the wind comes up, or a farmhand in a perfectly white straw hat, plaid shirt, tight jeans and a tired pair of cowboy boots pushes through the bodega’s swinging doors. 

In Alamos I awake to street sweepers—not monstrous, obnoxious five-ton city trucks, but one or two stooped old men pushing dust back and forth outside my high bedroom window. 

Back home in the East Bay I own two vacuum cleaners—bulky, heavy pieces of machinery that perch precariously on my steps, snake awkwardly around corners and squeeze tightly underneath the sofa. They roar and rumble, choke and snort, like wild pigs truffle-hunting in a cluttered forest. 

I grab a broom in frustration and try to sweep the way people do in Alamos. But it is not a natural rhythm for me. It’s not in my genes, my blood or my family history. It is not a dance I know. No matter how hard I try to sweep in Oakland, it never sounds like Alamos. 

For information about Alamos, go to www.solipaso.com. 

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