The air in Oaxaca’s Huatulco National Park is thick as soup, and the abundance of living things is so rich my senses feel saturated. Zapotec guide Perfecto Careno Ramirez brings the bounty into focus through memories of his childhood spent on this land. There’s the grado tree used to connect with ancestors in ceremonies; the cat nail vines’ roots that saved his friend by delaying a scorpion’s fatal sting; and the ‘ear tree’ with its tough seed cases his mother used to exfoliate when she bathed.
