El Valle De Anton

Dear Lola,

The Chinese have this saying.  They say the frog sees only the sky from the bottom of the well.  We travelers are like this too, the way we travel two thousand miles to isolate ourselves in museums and preserved antiquity. 

I sense that what happens now, or is about to happen tomorrow, reveals more about our world than tumbled-down bricks and aged parchment.  To travel into today is to climb out of the well.

That's why I am writing you from the small town of El Valle de Antón, which sits inside a volcanic caldera, and which is sometimes known as ground zero for global extinction.

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