PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS
Looking out the window I was fascinated by the endless variety of landscapes that rolled by. Every time the bus came to the top of a hill, or ended a long sweeping curve, a completely new and different panorama would appear. There seemed to be no sense to any of it. Huge bulbous mounds sprouted from flat slopes, gradual inclines unaccountably became sheer drops, and there was no consistent alignment of the hills and valleys - they ran in every possible direction. We were in the highlands of Guatemala where seismic and volcanic activity is ongoing. There are 4 different mountain ranges running more or less parallel from west to east, each of which curls slightly southward in the middle of the country. If that weren't enough to scramble the topography, each year up to 180 inches of rain has its way with the land. A renown French geographer, Jacques Elisee Recluse (1830-1905) was awarded a gold medal by the Paris Geographical Society for his 19 volume master