Sea level and altitude
Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the conquistador who was executed in Panama by a political rival in 1519, when he was my very age, is considered to be the first European man to sight the eastern edge of the Pacific.
In 1514, Balboa and his extensive entourage stood at a high point view in the Darien region of Panama. By Balboa’s reckoning, the Pacific and the Atlantic were not the same elevation. The Pacific may have been at high tides, who knows, while the interior Caribbean Sea can be calm. For this reason, sea level was not understood to be universal, for centuries. The modern history of Darien was also launched from this expedition.
A balboa is the currency of Panama. His conquistador profile is on the coins.
Why is he still a figure in Panama when Central American culture widely rejects this particularly brutal time and heritage? Someone told me Balboa was not as bad as the others, like Cortes (a near contemporary). The description in Britannica does not come across favorable. It speaks to the evolution of Panamanian history, including its separation from Columbia governance and the geopolitical economics of the Canal.
The best cheap beer in Panama is probably Balboa, which has a metaphorical meaning I cannot quite put my finger on.
SEA LEVEL
Sea level is a magnificent concept of constancy, despite its momentary inconstancy. The sea is galatically dynamic and never perfectly flat, but it makes a perfect conceptual reference for altitude, a dividing line between the terrain of air and the vastness of the ocean. The line that appears to us as a giant wide simple horizon, but holds universes.
I long for sea level, at the sea. For the full oxygen-saturated breath of air, for the view, for the reminder of eras and movement and universes held beyond view.
For centuries Balboa’s original view prevailed: the generally-held academic view assumed that the the elevations of the seas were different and not universal. The tidal regime between the Pacific and the Caribbean can be wildly different — the Pacific has enormous tidal ranges over flats; the Caribbean wave regime and tidal regime can be mild. A kind of thinking that what is “obvious” and observed by the eye is empirical evidence and should be the guiding truth.
To put a point on it: European scientists planning canals in the 1800s across the isthmus of Panama did not understand that the seas were level. The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough shared that gem. The book is brilliantly written and researched, but penned 50 years ago and filled with the machismo mythology of the man-hero. Quotes from Theodore Roosevelt about living a full life. Quel Panama!
There is this bias in history, where we love the narrative of one man against all odds. These are relatable individualistic stories — they are heroes, perhaps unlikely in their moment but the hindsight eye of history will find them to be utterly fit! Or the one with the real vision, the one who will be successful, and the one who will make the grave mistake, who has a character flaw. Of course these men have steel, character, and beautiful women love them.
Primary words used by David McCullough to describe women around the main character of his story:
spectacular
magnificent
elegant
Consider Victorian literature, where nobility or criminality is part of one’s physique — one has a noble chin, the correct eyebrows to be a hero, or shifty eyes, a low bearing, sinister hands, one who can never be true-hearted. The series of Sherlock Holmes, the genius of evidence based sleuthing, is loaded with these kinds of observations.
From every gesture and expression I could see that he was a reserved, self-contained man, with a dash of pride in his nature, more likely to hide his wounds than to expose them.
The irony lies in how the very flaw of so many men and leaders who sought to build a Panama Canal could not move past the idea that the shortest route was not the best route. They thrived on the obvious visual of the situation. But it’s right there.
DARIEN
The Darien is a region of Panama that borders Colombia. It is famous for its impenetrability. It is where the Pan American Highway 1 ends. The US Government instructs Americans not to travel there.
And yet, upon its initial exploration, the Darien was considered an optimal location for crossing Panama due to the simple idea that it was the shortest place to cross the isthmus.
The Scottish Africa and India Company
The Scottish sent a colonizing expedition to Darien in the late 1600s, after a well-known successful businessman leader financed and led a plan to expand Scottish fortunes in international trade.
This settlement fell apart so fast that the second set of colonists left port for Panama before news of the disaster could travel back to Scotland.
Not only did the expedition turn out miserably, it sank the Scottish national fortune. Shortly after the Darien failure, Scotland and England unification became a clear political path forward. The Company, apparently, survived to trade in Africa and India through more traditional routes.
The Scottish tourism agency recounts this story in more grisly specifics >>
As The Path Between The Seas details, there were expeditions that claimed to have crossed the Darien with little effort on a footpath; other trained forces barely escaped alive.
In Darien today, a humanitarian crisis is taking place, as people leave Venezuela and walk through mountains of mud and rain and miserable conditions into Panama. On arrival, after surviving this grueling experience, they are turned back. There is no support system, the US closed its border to Venezuelans.
ALTITUDE
I live a mile above sea level.
Here, my body works differently. Breath is thinner. Thoughts are lighter.
What does it mean to live at altitude? What does it mean if you do not have a locus, a reference of sea level?
