Backpack
"Nope, that doesn't get thrown out. Let me see if it can be fixed." That's what Ikal would say, and that's why this axolotl backpack carries him: an axolotl facing forward in a red plaid shirt and denim jacket, from my Animal Kinhood series.
Ambystoma mexicanum
Working the chinampa means caring for the water where the last axolotl lives.
Endemic exclusively to the canals and chinampas of the Xochimilco lake system, in Mexico City, at 2,240 meters of altitude. It inhabits the muddy beds of cold fresh water (between 6 and 20 °C), among aquatic vegetation such as ahuejote and water lily, in low-current zones. Its historic habitat also included the now-extinct lakes of Chalco and Texcoco.
On the backpack rides Ikal's portrait: an axolotl with pale pink skin, red feathery gills open like a crown, and a wide mouth curved upward, as if something amused him. He wears the red plaid shirt and the worn blue denim jacket. I created him facing forward against a plain background: he reads at a glance when you cross a lobby or head down into the subway, with nothing around to steal his spotlight.
Ikal is about repairing before replacing: what comes apart gets sewn back up, what breaks gets a second look to see if it can be fixed, and it almost always can. A backpack you're going to carry every day — to class, on a trip, or to work — inherits that same way of treating things: use it, take care of it, make it last. If you're going to sling it over your shoulders every morning, it might as well carry an axolotl with his head on straight up front. Who Ikal is and where he comes from, you can read in his story.
