Rudy and I moved to Guatemala City, his hometown, in 2014 so that he could help with the family business. When we first arrived, we settled into his old room at his mother Annelie’s sprawling, U-shaped home. Much to my mother-in-law’s delight, we stayed. Guatemala City sits about 5,000 feet above sea level, in a valley surrounded by mountains and volcanos. Annelie’s house overlooks the city from the edge of the basin, and the first time I visited, twenty-five years ago, two volcanos erupted simultaneously in the middle of the night, clearly visible through the large window in my room. It was primordial and intoxicating—I half expected dinosaurs to storm through the garden. The earth here reminds us that it’s fully alive. It shakes and trembles and several times a year is covered in a blanket of ash. Spit a watermelon seed into the dirt and you’ll see sprouts in a matter of days. ↩It’s all too common, sadly, for places still rich with traditional local know-how to value what comes from abroad over what’s made at home. It was important to us to break with that attitude—and easy, too, surrounded as we are here by so many beautiful handmade things. We patched together a carpet from wool textiles woven on waist looms in the Mayan highlands and used wood that had been curing at the family sawmill for over three decades.
