The lizards cluster on the concrete below, brown and shining under the Spanish sun. Each day, their basking schedule is the same. They emerge after their morning feed, roughly between 11 and noon, where they arrange themselves in singular lines or in concentric clusters, the older and scalier surrounded by a gaggle of novices who twist round each other, opening and closing their mouths, exposing their chests and backsides to attract each others’ attention. It is the water source that draws them in, the perpetual lure that has sustained endless generations in the Serengeti, the Outback or other similarly inhospitable environments such as this.
To survive, the lizards have developed certain adaptations. They coat their skin with a glistening oil to ward off the most harmful elements of radiation, they shield their eyes with specialized lenses and create shade and ground cover to aid prolonged periods of lounging. But their most specialized adaptation is strictly communication-based. For seemingly unbroken stretches, the lizards issue verbalizations that seem more about attracting attention than conveying meaning to one another. They chirp and whistle, squeal and screech. They bark in rapid fire in often overlapping streams. They gather around each other and chatter for hours, oblivious to the stream of traffic and pedestrians behind them, closing their eyes and lifting their faces to the sun. Evidently, real-world applicability or comprehension is not the intended goal of this communication. For the lizards, it is about making noise and being seen.
Between 2 and 3PM the lizards slink away for afternoon feeding. The exodus is rapid and simultaneous, as if driven by some unseen synchronized clock. In the cool shadows they commence their meal, consuming a diet that is largely animal-based with smatterings of vegetation. Occasionally, there is the accompaniment of an intoxicant from fermented fruit or a stimulant from ground berries or leaves. While the punishing sun delivers its most lethal rays, the lizards sleep for approximately one to two hours in the darkened crevasses of their lairs.
There is a lizard alpha male, characterized by large belly and endless flapping jaws. His female mate, ever in attendance, crouches by his side, delivering whatever attention is needed to satisfy his predictable range of needs. One bark produces liquid refreshment, two barks, a snack, three barks, more oil on his gleaming posterior. Around them, the juveniles hold court, giving proper deference to the older male, offering food or feigned interest as the alpha shows off his impressively bloated physique. In certain times of the year, his range extends beyond the periphery of the waterhole, where he patrols the perimeter of the land, marking his territory with careful liquid deposits, and undoubtedly reinforcing his status among would-be competitors. But those leaner months are but a far-off memory in the beating sun. For summers are meant for basking.
Generations of lizards have used the waterhole to congregate and maintain the social ties required to keep the band intact. It is the sharing of traits, of behaviors, of appearances that create cohesion. As the season progresses, their skin darkens with every passing day, a testament to the hours devoted to their daily ritual. It is their shared skin that signals belonging, of unity, and differentiates the local lizards from the pale and furtive northern specimens that have migrated southward to escape the yearly snows. Like other northern breeds, some have stayed throughout the year as semi-permanent residents, forgoing the counter migration for warmer conditions. But it is clear their differences set them apart from the rest. Their comings and goings lack the regularity of the lizard lounge. When they should be basking, the northerners are toiling. Rather than sharing the southern lizard’s penchant for gibbering, the northerners are strangely quiet, conserving their energy for punctuated moments of need. Even their build is different, where the poolside lizards are slender, sinewy, the northern lizards are stronger, stockier with thicker arms and lighter eyes. All gaze is on these strangers when they emerge from their cool den at random hours of the day. They are quiet, in a pair or even alone. Silence descends momentarily across the waterhole group to mark their passage. They do not join the lounge nor participate in the noisemaking. There is a certain degree of skepticism and mutual suspicion that exists between the two factions, with the pale northerners regarding the southerners as shiftless, lazy and the southerners regarding the other as cold and indifferent.
At night the juvenile lizards assemble in concentrated clots on the outskirts of the waterhole, whispering and jostling once another, their loud squeals growing increasingly voluminous with every passing hour. They are mimicking their elders, applying observed etiquette to establish hierarchy, determine fitness and ultimately select a mate. From its higher perch, the older male Northerner would, at times, lean toward the group and screech loudly, menacingly, clearly disturbed by the ceaseless din. In response the youngsters melt into the shadows, momentarily quieting before resuming once as the older Northern male is out of sight. They murmur and snort in his direction, contempt cautiously blooming in their scaly chests and flicking tongues. Despite their lack of years and experience, they intuitively know how deep is the divide.
As the temperature gradually cools, the lizards spend less and less time gathered around the hole. They retreat reluctantly to their dens in the rockface, warming their burrows and losing their tawny summer hue. Crisper air splinters the group, tearing the lounge apart. Now summer basking is replaced by winter stockpiling; congregation is limited to brief exchanges as the lizards must venture out into the wider territory. Silence descends. The echo of splashing lizards fades, the surface flat, uninterrupted. The rockface is instead filled with peering eyes, each watching the next as they make their daily forays to care for offspring and supply enough food for the leaner months. The days grow shorter, the moon rises sooner.
It would be a mistake, however, to believe that group cohesion has fractured permanently. The lizards have merely retreated for winter torpor, their body temperatures slowing, their skin growing paler as the darkness gathers. The colony maintains its collective core, waiting for longer light and warmer days. Through the walls they hear one another, comforted by the clanging sounds of food preparation, of female lizards admonishing their disobedient offspring or mates, of the unbridled sounds of lizard lovemaking. Collectively, they wait, they tick the days, marking the day until that exhilarating moment when the entrance to the waterhole is open and, once again, they can gather and reaffirm the strength of their tribe.
The Northerners instinctively know this too. They have understood from early days that the lounge was whole and impervious, integration and adoption an impossibility. Not that they would want entry, even if it was granted. Evolution has done a nice job of not only delineating geographical differences that manifest in physical contrasts, but behavioral as well. For the southern lizards, their place and purpose is clear, unmistakable, their line is long and unbroken, the lizards of Ogijares, whose forebears have perched on these same rocks for generations. Their love for this strange and dirty land is unquestioned, even to themselves. It is about knowing that your distant ancestors slithered down these same trails, sipped from these same pools, gathered round this same waterhole with companions who all looked and sounded the same. It is a sense of propriety, of belonging, of pride over a land that to outside view, presents as little more than a dusty hill covered in rocks and rubbish. They cannot, do not want to understand why anyone would leave; it is betrayal after all, a scorning of one´s evolutionary inheritance. Nor do they possess the capacity to interpret how two outsiders would find their way here, appearing mysteriously as if sprung from the earth itself. It is not outright hostility that guides their perception of these strangers, just a vague bewilderment that arises whenever they are seen. Where do these outsiders come from? Why are they here? And how long will they stay?
These same questions plague the Northern lizards. Why are we here, they ask themselves over shared meals of fish and grains. How do we fit into this perplexing environment so devoid of the characteristics that defined our origins - crisp, verdant streams, sparsely populated dense forests that create cool shadows at day, a canopy thickly alive with insects at night. So absent of the familiar sounds, the smells that tethered them to themselves. The damp earth, the green and growing things, the silence of the mornings broken only by crows. There, their bodies followed the procession of the seasons, the line that threaded one month to the next. In the summer they would hunt cicadas, gorge themselves on dewberries, slip from moss-covered rocks into green ponds, pass snapping turtles and leopard frogs. In the winter, as ice compressed the land, they would burrow deep into the earth, under fragrant leaves, the cool seeping into their skin, dragging down their body temperatures, slowly, slowly, until their forms were little more than another inert feature of the frozen soil. Delicate fractures in the ice heralded the arrival of spring, tiny rivulets of water seeping through the cracks, prying open their groaning eyelids. Insatiable thirst, hunger roused them in the end to find their way out of winter torpor, to lap furiously at early spring clouds of delicate winged midges.
But the world, as it does, beckoned, whispering promises of better hunting grounds, larger territory to claim and make one’s mark. So they went, dragging behind them little more than bundles of food and bedding. As they traveled, the landscape around them shifted, trading humid forests for vast expanses of sandy rock, dotted with pine, shrub brush and endless symmetric rows of ancient olive and almond. In this new alien landscape their very skin rebelled, railing against the lack of moisture, the sudden abrupt departure of green that had unknowingly pervaded their minds, their temperament with its mysterious, calming wash. Harsh was this new environment, sun bleached and brutal. In summer, blazing waves of heat rolled across the land, bringing clouds of rust-colored dust all the way from the desert farther south. The drought did not help either. Days, weeks, months of no rain leached water from lakes, exposing their rocky bottom and the occasional undignified sheep skeleton. In response, the Northerners’ impulse was to hide, tuck themselves under rocks and pray the heat would end. At night they would wake up panting, haunted by dreams of distant, silent forests and cool bird-filled mornings. During the day, they would forage half-heartedly, stinging from the inhospitable environment around them, dejectedly dragging behind them fruit shriveled and pursed from the heat.
The local inhabitants, on the other hand, greeted the boiling temperatures with ease, joy even, drawing upon thousands of years of evolution to cheerily glide through their days. They understood the rhythm of the land, its peculiarities, when to rise, when to eat, when to venture out, when to stay put. Their eyes were accustomed to the dry earth, the rocks, the pockmarked earth scraped of vegetation. Their nostrils, comforted by the scent of orange blossoms planted in artificial gardens nourished by mud channels that strategically directed what water remained. Their ears no longer heard the constant buzzing, the shrieks and roars of other creatures in motion around them. They possessed not the urge to question the structure and flow of life around them, it was simply home and each understood their place. Most of all, they understood that the waterhole was the center of life itself.
Unconscious acceptance is an indisputable evolutionary advantage. It allows a species to consolidate its energy, its resources, and focus fully on the tasks essential to life - procreation, rearing one’s offspring, securing enough food to sustain the leaner months, honoring the hierarchy of the tribe and securing a place for elder members to age and die with comfort and dignity. It creates tight social cohesion, each member of the herd is keenly aware what its neighbor is doing, when they rise, what they eat, who they mate with and what ails them. They are lifted, held and bound to one another through all seasons of life. Breaking these ties can mean seclusion, despair, even death. The rules are passed down, whispered from females to the shell-like ears of her tiny offspring, reinforced by observation and cemented by experience.
In contrast, when creatures possess the ability to question one’s place, one’s path, one’s purpose, only trouble can ensue. Discontent blooms quietly, persistently, it settles like a sticky film over all rituals of daily life. At first a tiny kink in the machine, it mucks up the works, disrupting the smooth runnings of the daily cycle. Over time, the discordance grows, tilting the entire axis, until its inhabitants feel uncentered and unmoored, at odds with the very air around them. This is a precarious place to rest. Such imbalance threatens the very core of what motivates one to rise in the morning and prop oneself up throughout the day - a sense of self satisfaction or at the very least, direction. In the absence of such supports, initial disorientation can steadily gain momentum, creating its own unhinged orbit, an electron threatening to burst through the atom wall to its own demise.
The Northerners had arrived starry-eyed, marveling at the expanse of mountains framing the waterhole from their privileged upper perch. The initial months were filled with enthusiasm as they joyfully arranged their den and scoped the surroundings of their new home. It was the promise of change, of a new life in a new land. They even considered the possibility of breaking through the frontier of the Southerner´s band, gaining entry and a place among the lounge. At night the male would coax the hesitant female toward the waterhole, extolling its virtues in the height of the summer crush. She was a land dweller, and not so easily convinced. He would romp and splash while she observed warily from the shore for any threat. They sought connection in the local favored feeding spots and exchanged a few bright chirps with neighbors that would occasionally emerge from their own burrows. The future stretched out, bright and unbroken in its promise of uncharted possibility.
Over time, this initial spark began to dim. Perhaps it was the impenetrable wall of heat that descended in the spring and stayed well into the fall restricting the majority of movement from sunrise to sunset. Perhaps it was the soupy orange mud that would rain down from the sky blown in from the vast desert in the south, coating every available surface with a thick layer of cement-like dust that made cleaning all but futile. Perhaps it was growing intolerance of the shouting and shrieking of the Southern Lizard clan paired with the ubiquitous din of other animals traveling at almost all hours of the day and night. But deep down, the Northerners began to perceive something else was influencing this halting lack of integration - they simply did not fit. They felt this intuitively and so did the Southerners. The Southerners were friendly enough, courteous chittering when encountering each other in passing. The morning nod, the evening tail wave. But pleasantries are where it ended. This is not to suggest the fault belonged to the native lounge, in fact, over time, the gulf surely could have been crossed with consistent, intentional efforts on the part of the interlopers. With cheerful deference, one day the Northerners could have shown up at the Waterhole, ready to lounge with the rest. They could have set themselves up within chirping distance of the Alpha male, ignoring stares at their white skin and pale eyes. They could have offered salutations, complained about the heat, referenced what food they caught that day and from there, gradual acceptance would grow. In time, the male would be allowed to accompany others on the hunt, the female offered access to the inner gatherings of females to chatter about mates and offspring. Surface cohesion would spread, tighten, strengthen until the Northerners felt lifted, held.
But something was amiss. After all, when you are strange, lizards remember your name. There was something distinct and undeniable that set them apart. By all accounts, the Southern clan was a happy bunch. There is a certain comfort in regularity. Of knowing what will come and planning meticulously for it. Of seeing your offspring first burst through their leathery egg sacs, bragging about their first skin shed to the other females, watching with pride as they make their first kill. Of waiting with breathless anticipation for the weather to warm and the Waterhole to once again regain its place as the center of life and leisure. To show off to other lounge members your new physical improvements or material acquisitions from the year before.
The Northerners did none of this. They held themselves at a wary distance, pained by the chaos and the din. What are they doing in there, the loungers would hiss when seeing shadows moving in the Northerners’ lair at odd hours of the day. Why don’t they sound like us? Do they even have offspring? Outwardly, the Northerners seemed awkward, uncooperative, unsocial. Inwardly, the Northerners felt the same. It was only a matter of time.
As the months and then the years stretched out, the Northerners' quiet discontent bloomed like a bubble. The female would venture farther and farther out into the territory beyond their commune, finding comfort in what little green and growing things she encountered along the way. The male would busy himself with all manner of work, leaving the rockwall to distract his mind and body. They would send reports back to their tribe members up north, marking with puzzlement their lack of integration or commonality with their neighbors. Leave, their band would bark, find a better habitat!
The notion of departure gained rapid momentum in the waking thoughts and nighttime unease. It was instinctual and persistent, a gnawing sensation that began in the gut and radiated outward in strength, a pebble in a pond. As much as inertia defined certain species, a desire to move defined others. Just ask the great clouds of monarch butterflies that would travel 3,000 miles to cluster on the trees of Central Mexico spurred on by decreasing day length and temperature. Or the Sargasso Sea eels, who travel by the millions over 6,000 miles as silvery larvae from their homes in Northern Europe to breed and die in their namesake sea only to start the cycle anew. It is not knowledge that drives them but the microchip buried deep within their minds that emits something far more persuasive, instinct. It says, pick up, go, linger not too long. The Germans even have a word for it, Zugunruhe, the migration restlessness experienced by animals programmed to move.
Whether it was zugunruhe or a more intellectual assessment of their current environment´s limitations, the Northerners began to prepare. They consolidated their energy, their possessions, tossing out what served them not and gathering together what they would need to move on. At night, tails curled around each other, they would stare into each other’s eyes and whisper chirps of encouragement. They were aware they had the most essential asset required to undertake any such momentous endeavor, each other. Individually, they were somewhat solitary creatures, keeping to themselves in the midst of the communal tendencies of their southern cousins. It was the silence of their home, the stillness, seeing other species was a jolt to their senses, provoking a desire to scurry away and hide behind a moss-covered rock. But as a mated pair, they were strong, solid, dynamic, able to overcome the worldly challenges all lizards endure. In the mornings, as the sun sparkled off the dust motes in their sleeping chamber, the female would drag herself to the upper reaches of their den and prepare a morning stimulant for the male, who possessed an impressive capacity for long uninterrupted periods of slumber. He was the bolder of the two, confronting predators and other obstacles with an audacity that instantly drew the shyer female to his side. Though more reserved, the female was wily, neatly arranging all the particulars in the background to help them survive each day without being flattened in the road or scorched to death in the iron sun. Now, bonded, the pair wriggled through life in parallel strength.
It was near summer by the time they were ready to make their move. Around them, the air was dry, the sun already strong. The Waterhole was buzzing with life, the juveniles a year larger and all the more abrasive, tumbling over each with their clumsy attempts at asserting their burgeoning fertility and leaving behind a trail of litter in their wake. Alpha male was already stationed with his scaly entourage, oil gleaming. The Northerners had set their sites on the coast for promises of better hunting, a more amenable climate. Perhaps exchanging salt waves for the stagnant Waterhole was a welcome thought, promising a new set of resources and opportunities. At the very least, the sound of the waves could potentially drown out the worst of the endless noise of the Southern population that lived there.
Given their nomadic nature, the Northerners needed little time to gather up what few provisions they possessed. Truth be told, they could not vacate their den fast enough. As they got their bundles together, they knew they would have to pass through the gauntlet already gathered at the Waterhole. This would most likely be the last encounter between the two tribes. A sea of eyes was waiting, following their steps, observing the parcels dragging behind. There was silence, brief eye contact, and without warning, something unexpected. The Southerners turned in unison toward the retreating pair, and raised their tails to signal recognition, respect. It was an act reserved only for members of a tribal unit. The Northerners paused, mild shock rippling their features, and slowly returned the gesture. The moment was brief but recorded by all. As just as it began, it ended, tails slowly lowered once again. The Northerners crossed the threshold of the territory and continued southward, not looking back. Behind them, the jubilant roar of the Southern clan resumed, until it too faded into the background.