A Blast from the Past.

The monumental ruins left behind by past societies hold a romantic fascination for all...we marvel at them as children. When we grow up, many of us plan vacations so we can experience them first-hand.
--Jarod Diamond in COLLAPSE.

But, courtesy of your local independent bookstore or library, you can visit those haunting relics of the past in the comfort of your own recliner! Courtesy of your favorite author, you can enter a make-believe world that will transport you back in time, to when those were not monumental ruins but the focal points of vibrant societies. Here let's try it:

Tzikal lugged another bundle of firewood to the top of the pyramid, muttering about his aging knees and back with every steep step. Why they had to build these temples so steep I'll never understand. Typical priests, not thinking about the realities of life. Still, he mumbled, it's better to be a lowly bundle-bearer for the priests than having my daughter sacrificed to these insatiable 'gods,' ay-ay-ay, may they and their greedy attendants all vanish in a cloud of smoke from this bundle of wood. He paused on the forty-fifth steep step, turning to rest the heavy load on the second step above him. As always, he tried to look out over the temple complex to the vast expanse of cultivated land beyond. That could be her, he muttered, knowing that the tiny figure in the distance could be an elderly grandmama just as likely as his lively seventeen-year-old daughter.

"Up, up, you lazy donkey!" the overseer shouted down from the priests' platform. "That's your second stop already! You can sight-see on your way down," he yelled, shaking his gold-covered staff that flared in the sunlight as if it were on fire.

Tzikal laughed nervously as he deposited his bundle on the heap that he'd lugged up on his previous trips. "I'm sorry, Pak-Tziki, but my old knees can no longer run up these steep steps the way we did when you and were playful and young and--"

"Quetzal-Prokzi-Pak-Tziki to you, old man! You will show respect or I will show you the quickest way down those stairs!"

"Yes, I am sorry Quetzal-Prokzi-Pak-Tziki, on whom may the gods smile forever. I will be going for another load for the sacred fires, if that is all, sir," Tzikal said, his hand clasped over his heart and head bowed. But my heart does not bow to you, he thought.

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      So, how was your trip to the Mayan ruins? Mine was vivid, although I quite wanted to take Tzikal's childhood chum and show him the quickest route down those stairs, which are indeed steep, so steep as to be nigh-giddying on the way down! So steep that they've installed a chain for us tourists to hold onto...back when my muscular dystrophy was more a nuisance rather than a life-altering constant presence.
     See, I wrote about something I knew--91 steps on each side of the four-sided pyramid plus the priests' platform on top...do the math for the number of steps, or trust me that it adds up to 365. Cool, huh?
     As Stephen King said in ON WRITING..."See, books are magical. I thought it, and you saw it." [DLS paraphrase, but that's the gist f'shure!] So, tell me, to when and to where did you last time-travel?