I
did not know my father's father well. I know he was a charter member
of the Appalachian Trail Club and there is a memorial plaque in his
honor above the door of a log cabin on Old Rag, a mountain in Virginia
that he loved to climb. I know he was a newspaper editor who also achieved
modest recognition as an amateur anthropologist, epigrapher and poet.
My
grandfather was an entertaining correspondent, especially when he traveled.
And he traveled all the time-Africa, China, India. Every month or so
we'd
receive one
of his fat letters, profusely mapped and illustrated. And on his rare
visits, he was a grand storyteller with a great flair for the dramatic.
We
would have only to ask him some small question during dinner and he
would immediately call for the globe to be brought from its customary
place by the dining room window. Then he would pull it even closer to
the table, clear his throat with great ceremony, and begin his discourse,
turning the globe of the world round and round, tapping his finger at
each precise spot with enthusiastic flourish.
He
told us strange and wonderful stories about the lost civilization of
the Maya and his efforts to retrace the steps of John Stephens, the
American lawyer and explorer who first discovered the ancient city of
Copan in 1839, "Which:'my grandfather would intone passionately, "rose
up before him like lost Atlantis in the middle of the Honduran jungle"
There
would be a stir in my grandfather's voice as he described what he had
seen, "Here lie the ruins of a splendid, almost futuristic city, built
four thousand years ago by unknown people, employing unknown methods
to erect massive pyramids and monumental buildings, impossible to duplicate
today, even with our advanced technology. Here lie the remnants of a
complex writing and mathematical system, and astrological calendars
of remarkable accuracy. The science, the genius of it all! But the builders
and the scientists themselves have disappeared without a trace!! Where
did they go? Who were they?"
"Some
people believe the Maya were survivors from the lost continent of Atlantis:"
my grandfather told us, and as corroborating evidence produced a paper
tracing he himself had made of a pictograph showing a