Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

We’d been steadily trudging uphill, and I was panting and stopping
frequently to catch my breath. Don Elijio, with nearly fifty years on me,
was hardly breathing above normal, as if this journey were a leisurely stroll
through a city park. He rarely if ever stopped to rest. Like the zampope, the
leaf-cutter ant, I thought, smiling, watching the back of his spindly legs in
his little black boots.
I caught up with him in front of a tangled canopy of green vines and
small waxy leaves. He put down his burdens and sliced through the thick
lianas to get to the center where the root system was hidden. He motioned
to me to come closer, and I caught a glimpse of an exposed bit of a gnarly,
black root trunk, which he was scratching with his thumb. He smiled and
hailed, “Aha! It is good luck to collect medicine with a woman companion.
The Goddess of medicine, Ix Chel, has her subjects show themselves to the
healer more readily. Smell this root, my daughter, and remember.”
“Ix Chel, who is she?” I asked while scratching and sniffing the ebony
root. I wasn’t at all prepared for the foul stench.
“Ix Chel is Lady Rainbow, and she is queen of all the Goddesses. It is
she who watches over healers and helps them. She also makes medicine
plants grow and leads us to them. She is the guardian of all the forest plants
and queen of the forest spirits who guard the plants and animals. She is also
a friend to the healer.”
Don Elijio continued working toward the root with his pick. “What is
this root called?” I asked, turning up my nose and making a face that made
him giggle.
“This is Zorillo!” he announced excitedly. “And it is the largest one I
have ever found in forty years of collecting on this mountain. This cabrón
must be as old as me—a great-grandfather of the forest.”
Zorillo means “skunk” in Spanish, and this root certainly deserved its
epitaph, Skunk Root.
While his steel tool pecked at the earth, he exulted, “In the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I take the life of this plant to cure the
sick, and I give thanks to its Spirit.”
He let out a squeal of surprise when the thickness of the root was fully
exposed. “We use this root for many sicknesses. I use more of this than any
other plant in the forest. I’ll work here to dislodge this grandfather from his
bed while you cut away the vines overhead and strip off the leaves.”