an update of sorts

• Abancay, Huancarama, Andahuaylas, Uripa, Chincheros, Ninatambo, Chumbes, Ocros, Tambillo, Ayacucho
• 32, 34, 37, 39, 33, 37, 40, 28, 44, 68
• Sun , stars, moon, cloud, wind, dust, mountain, river, desert, sky
• Daydream, meditate, focus, tire, desire, hope, wonder, try, doubt, need
• Challenging, grinding, easy, hard, soft, hazy, draining, fulfilling, exciting, sweaty.
• Up, down, up, down, around, through, over, up, up, up

5 different ways of summing up 10 out of my last 12 days. Towns, kilometers, things seen, things done, directions taken. This has been the most physcically challenging section of my trip so far, these central highlands of Perú. The Andes are big, the Andes are steep, the Andes are bad-ass. But they’re worth it, because they’re also pretty damned beautiful.

And the people tucked into the folds of this landscape are a testament to human perseverance. Just when I think I can’t see a poorer form of poverty, I enter some little village on a steep sloped ridge and walk among people for whom the struggles of life know no beginning nor end, life on an endless loop of focusing on the meager food for the bone-thin animals, the scarce and stringy meat for the table, the distant or nonexistent water, the biting wind, the biting bugs, the biting hunger…a mobius strip of routine actions, hard, toiling, wearing motions day after day taken just to stay alive.

It must be so weird for those people to see me strolling through their worlds, a lanky, balding gringo sweating his way along the road.  I hope I don’t seem an insult to them, what with my obvious freedom from work-or-starve responsibilities.  It’s disconcerting sometimes, that feeling like I’m a mobile, 3-d mockery of the hardships they slog through every day.

My body is changing right before my eyes these days.  I just can’t eat enough to recoup the calories I burn every day while walking, so my nearly-middleaged waistline is trimming down.  On some days, recently, I feel like I’m evolving into some kind of super-efficient walking machine.  My body is sluffing off any and all excess baggage.  Muscles that are needed for walking are tuned, honed, maintained, while those that don’t come into play are atrophied.  When I step, there is no waisted motion, my legs don’t lift unnecessarily high, swing too far back, or kick too far forward, my lungs and heart adjust themselves immediately to the terrain, right to the level of exertion necessary to keep me moving forward, my metabolism is in high gear, taking any and all fuel available, recently eaten or stored in my love handles and gets it burning to keep me going.  It’s a cool feeling, really…maybe a heavily sedated version of what a top-notch sprinter or cyclist might feel…except I don’t take any performance enhancing drugs, short of Oreos.

These last 10 nights I’ve spent camping, hidden from the road, from the world…usually just my sleeping bag thrown on the ground.  Night comes fast here, almost rips across the sky leaving a trail of stars.  The air is clear.  The Milky Way is a heavy presence. Each time I wake up during the night, to sounds, or to shift positions, I take a moment to let my eyes unblur and I stare up at all that so-far-distant light, and the Milky Way, is each time in a different place, spinning through the night like a slow blade, and the Southern Cross swings like a pendulum. 

In those few precious minutes every night, I feel the most delicious sensation of utter freedom, of total peace.  In those moments, I’m a true vagabond, a man with no home, no destination, no past, no future…just the warmth of my sleeping bag, my cloudy breath, and an entire galaxy hanging above me.  I feel infinite.