I had finally found that perfect spot. So warm and comfortable. My heart was calm and beating ever-slower, with my lungs following right behind. The beat was hypnotizing, luring me into a deeper state of tranquility. Just before it seemed I was going to slip away into the stillness, a silent alarm went whaling throughout my entire essence. I snapped back to full consciousness, my eyes flashing open as I took an instinctively sharp breath of cold air. I felt my heart kick back into gear, every contraction a sickeningly painful reminder of my current situation: Face down in the mud at 11,000 feet on the side of a mountain, somewhere in Colombia.
Without moving my body, I peered up through the bright white fog, unable to focus my vision on the phantom figure just above me -- holding my bag in one hand, and a machete in the other. My unblinking eyes were the only means for me to voice my emotions, as my brain and tongue were too swollen to communicate otherwise. Only now can I ask the questions I wouldn't allow myself to ask then: Where are my friends? What am I doing here alone? Why are my fingers swelling up like red sausages? How did this happen?....
A week or so before this point, our group split ways and we began to make decisions on our own... dangerous. Right away, my journey took a turn for the bizarre. By following a few fingers that had been pointing in the same direction, I found myself three gut-wrenching bus rides into the coffee growing region of Quindío province, in the town of Salento. To the practical tourist, this area is a dream come true: Tour-friendly coffee plantations, horse riding trails, streets of hand-made crafts, all set within the lush Colombian mountain-valley landscape. For some, the most enticing quality has to be the gateway it offers to Parque Nacional Los Nevados (Snow Mountains National Park), upon which sits the mighty Nevado de Tolima. It was the lure of this eminent peak of volcanic rock that called my impending suffering.
My first days within Salento were incredibly enriching. It was one of those places in your journey that works as an eddie; where energy and movement become fragmented from the main body and swirl about until set free. It is in such a place that you meet the real characters in your story. The ones that others may stare at, or completely miss as they walk by... but you see their emerald irises thrashing out wildly from a black and white background, screaming within a monotone nightmare; and you respond to their call. If you walk about with mouth shut and mind wide open, you can see them... as I saw the Old Wolf: white gnarled fur, mischievous grin, all set atop a carrot orange, patch-worked kimono. I realize now that he was some forgotten celtic god who had long ago set out from his realm of influence in search of someone to listen to his stories. Whenever I think back to Central and South America, his presence is always there, strolling through my memories... perhaps to remind me that it is possible to travel too far, and for too long. That at some point, you forget which way is home.
Two days before the ascent I found myself sitting next to a scruffy local kid, helping peddle his hand-made jewelry to Colombian tourists. I asked him if I should get a weather report before I took off. His reply to me was classic: "Up there you don't need a weather report, you need a guerilla report." From behind his wide, shark-toothed smile came a disturbing chuckle. Its echo returned to me as I lay next to death on the side of the mountain...
With a distracted will to survive, I pushed up from the ground, my heart signaling with every beat that it intended to pop. My lungs had assumed not to help, pumping as though in a coma. My eyes uncrossed themselves as I found balance, refocusing attention up towards my only way out of there. He couldn't have been any older than seventeen, telling by his thin, wispy mustache, but he had my life in his hands... as well as my backpack.
I thought back to the night before when I saw Gillian at The Plantation House. She had this look in her eye like she wanted to say it was a bad idea. We both knew it was useless at this point. We were struggling as if in quicksand to find adventure and purpose. This could also explain the massive backpack I was preparing to tote up the mountain with me. Due to an unfortunate sequence of events on that last day in Salento, I had been sent off to climb the peak solo, geared up with what is typical to a caravan of climbers, with horses and professional guides. The pack was a little over 100 pounds --more than half my own weight-- loaded with sleeping bag, tent, camping stove, crampons, ice axe, two days worth of food and water, and any warm clothing I could possibly fit after that.
When in Salento, never go to "Trocha y Montaña" for your trekking/climbing needs. They will rip you off and try to kill you.
I started out how every other hiker must, in the Valle Cocora, a gully whose cloud swept crevices offer the most convenient passage up into the mountains. I traveled the first bit of the trail alone, eventually meeting up with one of the campesinos from the farm where I was to stay the first night. He met me as we had planned the day before, at an old weather station named Estrella de Agua, burnt down years before by the guerillas. He found me half asleep beneath its crusty skeletal structure, avoiding a bitter cold rain, and obviously beginning to feel the effects of altitude and physical exhaustion. He was just a boy, equipped with feathery teenage mustache and all. His high pitched voice and thick accent made him nearly impossible to understand. He was the real deal though. The product of a line of rough-neck farmers who had long ago settled in these mountains. He bounded off into the thick, wet jungle like a goat, his machete already working. I stomped along behind, barely keeping up, smashing clumsily through the narrow path he was carving up the slope.
Tallest palm trees in the world, Valle Cocora
crashed out on a rock, self-portrait, Estrella de Agua
We moved through the jungle a few hundred yards away from the main path, which had been blocked off by fallen debris during the storm (I believe that's what he said). Hurling myself from one tree to the next for support, I barely kept up. A few times the trees proved to be dead rot, resulting in treacherous downhill rolls that would rattle all sanity. Upon recovery, I would look up to see him staring down at me like I was already dead.
When we finally met the path, I expected easier sailing ahead. I should have known from experience that there was no such thing on this journey. It is at this point that my brain must have started to swell up, as this stretch of my memory loses all but a few sharp details.
The rain and cold became heavier every turn up those mud-slicked switch-backs... which seemed to get steeper and tighter around my neck with every exhale, choking both mind and movement like a fat little hamster. It wasn't long before I found myself nodding out along the path, asking the boy for "just a couple seconds" of rest. I would wake back up to him squeaking at me in his high-pitched voice. Nervousness bled forth from his every gesture, drowning out what was left of my confidence.
The boy eventually asked if he could carry my pack for a while. I half-heartedly hesitated before shrugging the weight of the universe from my shoulders. Without skipping a beat he was back in billy-goat stride, heading straight up. I waddled along behind him like a child, my legs as useless as a penguin's. With my hands wrapped up in that torn red poncho, I couldn't have appeared more like Baby Huey unless I had been wearing a diaper and holding an empty jar of gerber carrot sauce.
We passed the pack back and forth a few more times before the end. He looked at me once and said "very heavy" It was the single consolation to my defeated machismo. The landscape morphed from jungle to bog within the dreamlike mist. No one could have found their way in that mess without having travelled through it before. [I was later told that a young man, who had decided to go it alone, had almost died after becoming lost within that exact same stretch only a couple weeks before. They had found him lying in a half-frozen stream, wearing nothing but his poncho.] The last stretch was an undulation of hoof beaten, mud-slick trails. Entire slabs of the earth would slide free under foot, sending me flailing like The Scarecrow in whichever direction it chose. If not for the boy, I would have surely followed Death down from those slopes. I had no dignity or pride left to hold me up on my feet. No ego to keep my chin raised. I was walking down my path as humble as an Ascetic. It didn't matter who saw my face sagging dopily from its skull, or my pack hanging from a boy's back. I was free, however beaten and bruised. A dog's bark echoed out from the sky. Not too soon, a large dark form materialized out of the mist. And from its middle, a lone orange glow beckoned me like a smiling eye. I had finally reached harbor: Finca Primavera ("Spring Farm").
That night I returned alone to a room about as ornate as a horse stall. A single light-bulb hung from the middle of the ceiling like a loose tooth, casting shadows upon a mountain dipped in ink. I climbed into bed beneath seventeen layers of hand-woven wool, my meekness soothed by their weight. I heard the faintest sound of a radio playing close-by. On the other side of the room, breath as heavy and thick as smoke came billowing out from one of the lower bunks. The boy's voice leapt out from the pitch black shadow. It was a question, but I had no clue about what. I heard a second question asked, but this time from a deeper, squirrelier voice. I stared with my head cocked like a confused dog. A choir of laughter followed by an eruption of steaming breath answered my look. The boy and both of his older brothers were cuddled together in their bed, listening to some Vallenato on their little AM/FM radio. I made a sorry joke about him saving my life and thanked him again, rolling over to my side, wishing I could somehow be a part of their comfort and contentedness.
After waking throughout the night to what I can only explain as a charlie horse in my heart, I decided that there was no way I would survive the rest of the climb to the summit. Not without further traumatizing my system. When I awoke the next morning, Mt. Tolima was there in the window, peering down at me from its snow covered throne. I snapped a couple pictures before the clouds swept in to settle for the day... it was the last I saw of the first mountain to ever conquer me. My teacher. I made a feeble promise to return, and then set off back down into the valley.
-John Michael 12/19/08
The man, Finca Primavera
The Chicken, Finca Primavera
The Family, drinking hot sugarcane drink.. so tasty, Finca Primavera
The Matriarch - Boiling up some milk and making Arepas
I feel like she would have given the best hugs, Finca Primavera
Nevado del Tolima, outside my window, Finca Primavera
For a different perspective on this trek, check out: christyandlewis
