Life of Hardin Vol. IV, No. 13

Looking Out My Back Door

When you look out my back door--two panes of sliding glass panels, five floors up an apartment building in Asunción, Paraguay--you will see the downtown skyline of South America’s oldest surviving city. If you catch it at the right time, you can watch a rose-golden sun blaze down through the open windows of the Wilson Building. The rest of the time you just see a light haze.

Somewhere over amongst the edifices is the presidential palace, where he doesn’t live but only works. There’s South America’s first train station, built sometime in the 1850’s. It’s empty except for the rats and an old freight car. Behind it all the Bay of Asunción where at times is harbored the Paraguayan navy--twelve patrol boats and a battleship. (Still not too shabby for a landlocked country.)

Over the bay a ways is Argentina. I’m not sure where. They haven’t marked it very well. One day I will teach myself to survey. Then I will find the border and mark it off with chalk or a picket fence. That way when I host tourists I no longer have to stand on my balcony, wave my arm and say vaguely, “Somewhere there you are looking at Argentina.” It is impossible to impress someone with that sort of thing. What good is it to live where you can peer into another country and not impress someone with the fact of it?

Smack in the middle of my view is a sky-rise which was unfinished when I arrived and will remain unfinished as long as I am here. At times ant-sized workers swing from the rooftop crane in defiance of gravity like characters in a Disney cartoon. But most of the time they sit very still and gaze over the bay, trying to find Argentina. This building is not the only one in such a state. About half of them here are half-done.

The main feature you see, however, is trees. The city seen from above is an ocean of green dotted with the occasional island of a red tile roof. Once in a while you spot a lapacho tree, similar to a dogwood except exclusively pink and in bloom most of the year.

One of the most outstanding and admirable characteristics of the Paraguayan mentality is an innate love for trees. In other South American cities concrete has taken over everything except for the wood and tin huts of the favelas. These are packed so close that nothing grows between. In Asunción a person is hard pressed to find a city beneath the canopy of foliage.

“Only God can make a tree,”* and a Paraguayan believes it. If just anyone could zap out a tree at will, then Paraguayans might deal with them with more frivolity. But a Paraguayan will not, will not, will not chop down a tree for any reason under heaven. All construction is done with concrete, not wood. All furniture, picture frames, wooden vases, etc., are made from imported wood. Let other heathen countries remove the forests.

Even roads give right of way to the tree. If a road is planned, and a tree is nearby, the road is paved around, and a curb is erected to encircle the tree. No matter that the curb takes up three feet of road, half a lane or two lanes, the tree is untouched. While driving I spend as much time dodging trees as I do dodging pedestrians or other vehicles. Other drivers get out of your way. Paraguayan trees do not. They have grown accustomed to their special treatment and are snooty about it. They now refuse to move, I doubt they will break the habit any time soon.

I admire the Paraguayans for their concern and conservation, but even a virtue taken too far is just a dirty nuisance.