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Although villagers are reticent to discuss some aspects of their lives with outsiders, they speak readily about the totora-planting, a point of great pride among those who live right on the shore of the lake. They describe the depth to which they wade out as "half a leg" deep, what English-speakers would call knee-deep. This depth can also be measured as four handbreadths or as "half an arm"--the distance from the elbow to the tip of the extended middle finger, a term for which the English equivalent, the cubit, is now an odd archaic word rather than a part of everyday conversation.
The usual time to plant is in September or October. The villagers explain that if they plant earlier, the lake could continue to fall, and the sun would dry the new plants when they are freshly sprouted and vulnerable. If they plant later, they face the risk that early rains might increase the sediments in the waters at the shore, causing young plants to rot. Heavy rains could make the lake rise quickly, so that new plants would become detached and float to the surface. To an interested visitor, the villagers could offer a fuller explanation of this planting season. They would point out that the lake rises and falls once a year. (This pattern has often made me think of tides, since the twelve-month cycle of the lake's level is as strong a rhythm for the villagers as the twelve-and-a-half-hour cycle of the tides is for people who live by the sea.) The lake is at its minimum in the month of December, early in the rainy season, and rises steadily from December through March, the months of heaviest rain. Though the rains taper off in April, the lake rises in that month because the rivers that descend from the cordilleras are still full. The lake reaches its peak, about 70 centimeters higher than its minimum, late in April and falls steadily during the dry season that last until October. At this time there is virtually no rainfall, and even the largest rivers drop sharply. In these months of cloudless skies, dry air and strong winds, water evaporates from the surface. The first rainstorms of October and November are not enough to overcome this loss, so that the lake continues to fall until the rains pick up again in December. Though the timing of this rise and fall changes little from year to year, the amount of the rise and fall can vary greatly-much as a heavy storm can cause tides to rise well above their normal levels. After a season of heavy rains or of rivers swollen by massive snowmelt in the cordilleras, the lake can increase by a meter or more, while a warm windy dry season can make it fall a good deal. Though totora plants can grow on their own from buds that sprout from rhizomes in the muck and from seeds that are carried by wind and waves to the shores, the reed beds take a long time to reestablish themselves once they have been dried out in times of low water or drowned when the lake is high. The villagers keep a close eye on fluctuations in lake level, and adjust their totora planting accordingly. By planting in September and October, they are able to monitor the lake level when the dry season is advanced enough to permit a precise estimate of the minimum level that the lake will reach. If the lake has been unusually high, they plant totora at the deep, offshore end of the totora beds, to compensate for the plants that drown at the outer edge. When the lake is unusually low, they plant at the shallow, onshore end, since the loss of totora occurs from plants that have dried out at the inner edge. (In years of very low lake levels [footnote 3], the villagers also burn off patches of dead totora. This burning, usually in July and August when the lake is roughly midway between its maximum and minimum, clears out the dense thatch so that new plants can grow.) It in is these dry years that they plant most intensively, knowing that without their efforts the totora will not come back as fully in years of higher water. Any visitors who miss the planting season can have the sense of seeing a living history exhibit if they arrive on Palm Sunday, which usually falls in April. On this date, villages make their annual visit to the boundaries of their reed beds. Many of them carry a special kind of weapon called a liwi. It consists of three rocks, each tightly wrapped in leather. Three hand-made ropes, woven of llama wool or horsehair, connect these rocks into the shape of a Y. A man can grasp one rock in his right hand and swing the other two over his head so that it acquires a good deal of momentum, and then release it at his target with great accuracy. (This weapon has been widely distributed in South America since pre-Columbian times. Its Argentine version, known as the bolas, was adopted by the gauchos or cowboys of the Pampas.)
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