In Old San Juan, my head is head is pointed down more often than up. Shading my eyes from the Caribbean sun, I keep my head pointed south because the street demands it. The blue cobblestones that line the historic city’s streets are beautiful, but they are also dangerous. The adoquines are slippery even when they are not wet. Crevices yawn open between the stones that have spent centuries in this same place, eating high heels. Each brick sized stone is unique, neither uniform nor even. The sidewalks demand attention, too. They are small and they are pocked with all sorts of hazards—people in various stages of physical demise asking for money, dog shit, the vomit of overheated or drunk tourists and local tecatos, open alcantarillados and water meters that have somehow lost their lids, and, at 6 AM and 6 PM, the heaps of garbage bags of sanjuaneros that wait to be collected and buried in their own layers in patches of ground outside the capital city.

Keeping an eye on the ground beneath one’s feet isn’t only about safety, though. It’s where some of the greatest stories of this city are buried. When I first came to Puerto Rico, I met a man who was born, raised, and has lived his entire life here in a house that sits atop one of the underground tunnels that connects the city’s two forts. Perhaps it was against my better judgment, but I accompanied him to a part of the tunnel, where I touched my fingertips to handmade bricks that dated back hundreds of years. It’s not the only secret hidden beneath the old city, though. Two summers ago, private contractors working for the electrical company were digging on an Old San Juan street when they made an unexpected discovery: a Spanish-style staircase that was more than a century old was buried beneath the blacktop pavement. At the time, the staircase did not seem to attract much interest on the part of local politicians. The perpetually under-funded and over-extended Institute of Puerto Rican Culture made a weak call to save the staircase, a call which fell upon deaf ears. Their work completed, the contractors filled the hole they’d created and repaved the street, the staircase trapped beneath.

Finally, though, the staircase is being rescued. After securing a resolution from the Camara de Representantes, the city has begun excavating on Calle Tanca, but this time with the goal of restoring the staircase, known as La Barandilla, to its original beauty and function. I’ve been watching the excavation site for a week now, and have not noticed any actual work being done. The hole is open and the stairs are exposed and the mayor of San Juan has declared that it’s his mission to “return to San Juan one of its most emblematic public spaces that forms part of our collective memory.” Soon, though, La Barandilla will be Old San Juan’s first real and tangible accomplishment in an ambitious--and, some say, absurd--plan to create a totally pedestrian area on this car-crazed island.

I’m not saying it’s better to look down than to look up. But as the poet Stanley Kunitz suggests, we should try, sometimes, to live in the layers. Sometimes, we find the best stories in the ground beneath our feet.

[*] Read her article on the camino de Santiago in Issue 4 of Matador’s magazine, Traverse, if you haven’t already.