My name is Margarita Torres. In the town of San Isidro, nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Occidental, in the state of Chihuahua, I was known as “the crazy widow,” the sixty-year-old woman who decided to build a two-meter-high stone wall around her ranch when everyone thought grief had driven her mad. But madness, like the heavy snow at high altitudes, is sometimes just a matter of perspective.
The day I started working on the wall, it had been exactly six months since we had buried Guillermo. It was a cold, clear October morning, the kind that takes your breath away in these highlands. My hands, which for forty years had been soft and cared for, now moved clumsily around the wheelbarrow loaded with quarry stones. Each stone I lifted weighed like a memory. Each blow of the sledgehammer was a heartbeat trying to convince my heart that it was still beating.
The neighbors watched me from afar. Doña Dorotea, my lifelong neighbor, was the first to break the silence. She approached the property line in her flowered dressing gown, wearing that expression of false compassion that I so detested.
“Margarita, woman, for God’s sake,” he said, putting his hands to his head. “What madness is this? You’re going to kill yourself carrying those stones. Don Guillermo, may he rest in peace, wouldn’t want to see you like that, turned into a construction worker.”
I stopped for a moment. Sweat trickled down my forehead and mingled with the dust of the stone. I felt my heart pounding in my ribs, not only from the physical exertion, but from the anger and sadness that had been lurking in my throat since the day of the funeral.
“Doña Dorotea,” I replied hoarsely, “I know very well what I’m doing. My husband left clear instructions about this.”
She snorted, incredulous.
—Instructions? Marga, darling, are you listening to yourself? Guillermo is gone. Those ideas… those obsessions with building walls aren’t going to bring him back. You have to accept reality.
I clenched my fists until my knuckles turned white. It wasn’t the first time my sanity had been questioned. Half of San Isidro was already betting that the pain had driven me mad. But nobody knew the cards.
I found the first one a week after the burial, inside his old toolbox in the shed. Next to it were detailed plans, down to the millimeter, for building the wall. The shaky handwriting of Guillermo, my dear retired meteorologist, read:
“My beloved Marga, if you are reading this, it means I am no longer here to protect our home. Build the wall according to the plans. It will seem like madness, I know, but trust me as you always have. Something big is coming.”
I kept working. The sun rose and warmed the stone, but I felt an inner cold that nothing could take away.
That same afternoon, Beatriz, Guillermo’s sister, appeared. She had always been a city woman: perfect ash blonde hair, designer handbag, the look of someone who considers the countryside a picturesque but uncomfortable place. At fifty-five, she never hid the fact that she thought I, a country girl, wasn’t good enough for her “intellectual” brother.
“Margarita, we need to talk. This has gotten out of hand. You’re the talk of the whole region,” he said without even saying hello.
We sat in the wicker chairs on the porch, facing the adobe and stone ranch that Guillermo had restored with his own hands forty years earlier. The property was in a high area, surrounded by pines and oaks, far from the town’s tourist center. It was our private paradise.
—Beatriz, you can’t continue with this obsession. Guillermo is dead. You have to accept it and move on. This whole wall thing is… grotesque.
“I accept that she died, Beatriz. I accept it every morning when I wake up and the bed is empty. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore her last wishes.”
—What will, for God’s sake? You’re talking about a man who was very ill in his last months. The medication, the pain… perhaps he wasn’t thinking clearly when he wrote those supposed letters.
I felt a hot pang of anger in my chest.
“Guillermo had a weak heart, it’s true. But his mind was brilliant until his last breath. He was a meteorologist, Beatriz, and one of the best. He was always obsessed with weather patterns.”
—Yes, yes, I know. But in his later years he spent hours looking at old data and doing calculations that nobody understood. That’s not science, Marga, that’s senility.
“Respect your brother’s memory!” I snapped, getting up from my chair.
She sighed condescendingly.
—Marga, there’s no need to be rude. I’m trying to help. I’ve spoken with Roberto. He’s coming this weekend. We’ve been talking… Maybe it would be best if you sold this ranch. It’s too big for you alone. You could move to an apartment in Mexico City, near him, or to an assisted living facility here in town.
“I’m not selling the ranch!” I shouted. “This is my home. This is my life.”
When Beatriz left, I went back to the wall. It was already almost a meter high. According to Guillermo’s plans, it was supposed to be over two meters tall and enclose the entire plot. Months of work remained. As I laid the stones, I thought about my son. Roberto was always pragmatic, like his father, but without his imagination.
Saturday arrived, and with it, Roberto’s car. He got out dressed in city clothes, wearing shoes that weren’t meant for walking on dirt, with the serious expression of someone who has to “solve problems.”
—Hi, Mom.
—Hello, son. What a surprise.
There was no hug. He just stared at the wall, which was already advancing imposingly along the front of the ranch.
—Mom, what is this madness?
“It’s not madness, Roberto. These are instructions from your father.”
—Mom, please… Dad was sick. Very sick.
“My heart was bad, Roberto. Not my head.”
“Look at this,” she pointed at the wall. “You’re building a colonial fortification! You’re thin, you’re dirty, your hands are covered in cuts!”
-I’m working.
—Why? To protect you from what?
—From next winter.
Roberto looked at me as if I had said I saw Martians.
—Winter? Mom, it’s October. It’s sunny. And even if it snowed, why would you need a two-meter wall?
—Your father discovered that this year a cycle is completed.
—What cycle? Mom, Dad had been retired for five years.
—He never stopped studying.
Roberto softened when he saw my red eyes.
—Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight. But I’m worried. People say you talk to yourself while you work.
—I don’t talk to myself. I think out loud.
—Mom, I’m staying for the weekend. But you have to promise me you’ll take a break from work. And I want to see those blueprints of Dad’s.
I showed him the leather folder. Roberto opened it and began examining the documents. His expression changed from disbelief to technical curiosity.
—Mom… these structural calculations are perfect. Drainage specifications, material strength… It was calculated for winds of over 140 kilometers per hour.
I handed him the letter.
—Read this.
Roberto read silently.
—“Sixty-year cycles… pressure anomalies…” —he murmured—. Mom, are there more letters?
—Yes. There’s one for every situation. Even one in case they tried to kick me off the ranch.
Roberto looked up.
—Throw you out?
—Or convince me to sell.
That night he saw a car stopped on the country road, lights off, two men looking toward the ranch. When we turned on the porch light, they sped off.
“You were right,” Roberto said. “Something strange is going on here. And it’s not just the weather.”
From then on, we worked together. Roberto was strong and methodical. The wall grew quickly: stone, cement, perfect drainage. Meanwhile, he investigated “Inversiones Sierra SA de CV,” the company Beatriz mentioned so often.
One afternoon Beatriz returned, this time with a man carrying a briefcase.
—Margarita, this is Dr. Álvarez. Psychiatrist. He’s come to talk to you.
Roberto came out of the shed, his hands dirty with mortar.
—Hello, Aunt Beatriz. What’s a psychiatrist doing at my mother’s house without an invitation?
Beatriz paled.
—Roberto… I didn’t know you were here. I thought…
“My mother is perfectly fine,” Roberto said coldly. “In fact, we’re working together. And I have a question for you. Who is ‘Inversiones Sierra SA de CV’?”
Beatriz stepped back.
—I don’t know what you’re talking about.
—Yes, you know. It’s the company that wants to buy the ranch for next to nothing. And you’re acting as the intermediary.
“That’s a lie!” she shouted. “I’m doing it for her own good! She’s crazy! She’s going to spend her savings on that ridiculous wall!”
—Get out of my house—I ordered, advancing—. Out with you and your doctor.
The psychiatrist tried to mediate. Roberto cut him off.
—Get out.
When they left, Roberto looked at me.
—Mom, I’ve been looking into historical data. The winter of 1965 was brutal. Houses collapsed, livestock died. And it happened exactly sixty years after the great snowstorm of 1905.
“The cycle,” I whispered.
—Yes. Dad was right. There’s a pattern. And if the calculations are correct… we have two weeks left.
We worked like mad. The large steel gates arrived from Cuauhtémoc’s blacksmith shop. The wall was almost completely enclosed.
Daniel, the young meteorologist who took Guillermo’s place, came running one morning.
—Doña Marga… the barometers have gone crazy. The pressure has plummeted. A monstrous polar air mass is coming. In 48 hours…
I warned the village. Nobody believed me. Only Don Ramón and his family arrived when the wind was already tearing off roofs. Then the baker, Doña Dorotea… fifteen people took refuge behind my wall.
The storm of the century lasted three days. Winds howled like beasts, snow fell three meters deep. Inside, the ranch held; the wall deflected the force, creating relative calm. Outside, the valley was devastated.
When the blue skies cleared, Beatriz signed her own death warrant. Sierra Investments knew about the market cycle and wanted to buy the property cheaply for a luxury resort. She was taking a commission of hundreds of thousands of pesos. Roberto and the lawyer Ricardo forced her to confess before a notary. “I didn’t sell.”
The University of Chihuahua came. Guillermo wasn’t crazy; he was a visionary. They set up a station on my ranch. They named me honorary director. The students learned from their notebooks and from my calloused hands.
Four years later I met Carlos Henderson, a widowed American professor. We fell in love slowly and maturely. We married in front of the wall, with a photo of Guillermo in my bouquet. We lived eight happy years until he passed away peacefully, asleep in his armchair.
Five years later came the hundred-year drought. Cracked fields, dry wells. Lucía, my granddaughter a geologist, found a note in Guillermo’s notebooks: deep fossil aquifer under the ranch.
We opened it. Crystal clear, icy water, enough to save the valley.
“It’s not mine,” I told the people. “It belongs to the mountains. Use it with respect.”
We saved crops and livestock. San Isidro was reborn.
At eighty-two, I couldn’t get up anymore. Lucia took my hand.
“The wall isn’t meant to separate,” I told him. “It’s a stone embrace. Be stone to protect, water to love. And always open the door to those who are cold.”
I left with a smile, knowing that Guillermo and Carlos were waiting for me.
Today, the Torres Climate Research Center still stands. Lucía is in charge. When another storm arrives, they open the gates in the wall and say:
—We’re safe in here.
Because Margarita’s legacy wasn’t just the stone. It was faith in those we love, the will to build when everyone else doubts, and the certainty that the storm always passes… and the sun rises again.