I visited Cuzco, Peru to hike the Inca Trail, just as fledgling dot-coms everywhere were coughing up blood. My company dropped free lunch, massage benefits, and staff (including me) at nearly the rate it exhausted venture capital. For the first time since “profession” became the accepted shorthand for WHO I WAS – “He studied history? But he’s in computers!” – I was unemployed. Identity-less, I groped around for my second act, fortunate the stigma of joblessness, even among young climbers in Washington, DC, had faded with each astonishing increase in the number of good-looking, well-bred people consumed by the bust.
Pink slips were the new Purple Hearts, to be celebrated, not pitied, a cosmic click of life’s reset button.
I gladly embraced unemployment and the freedom – and possibilities – it provided. I studied the classifieds with the excitement of a college student perusing the course catalog. “Yeah, I think I’ll go after that editor job,” I’d say, as though I needed a Tuesday-Thursday class to work around my Ultimate Frisbee schedule, mindless that I, a long time manager of technology projects, hadn’t the experience normally required of editorial types. Or copywriters. Or hack political operatives. To me, what mattered was that I had the skills – no, the aptitude – for these positions. The actual skills could come later.
After all, years of pop-culture consumption had inverted my once-grounded worldview. My parents were big on humility and hard work, but before long the promise of tee-ball, calculators, and, much later, the morning-after pill had turned me against their shrewd wisdom. Life, it seemed, could be easy. And then there were the films affirming this or that triumph of the human spirit, set, as if by law, in some exotic locale chosen for its epiphany-yielding traits.
In particular, I remember Superman.
As a confused teen, he left Kansas for the North Pole to clear his head and inaugurate what became, in Metropolis, a self-styled Reign of Terror. There was just something, I guess, in all that ice and snow that freed him from his Red State ennui. Yet Superman was not alone. Countless others, on screen and off, in a sort of real and imagined circle of discovery, found meaning in Tibet and Nepal, Patagonia and South Africa, and, more chillingly, Florida. And although I didn’t consider it seriously – would I find my purpose in Peru? – I nonetheless hoped for a major breakthrough on the paved track of the Inca Trail.
The Trail, which extends hundreds of kilometers, for most hikers amounts to the 25 mile stretch between Piscacucho, three hours south of Cuzco, and Machu Picchu, the renowned spiritual center of the Inca Empire. The route promised ample opportunity for my Superman moment, as it passed over diverse terrain winding past several archeological sites far removed from the dim fluorescent glow of everyday life. I was certain the scenery, compounded by the insights of our guide, Carlos, would yield not only my personal watershed, but also an enthusiastic testimonial for the local tourist authority.
“This place will change your life, man!’ Derek, USA”
Carlos, it seemed, suffered from no existential strife. As the English-speaking leader of a desperate gang of porters and back-country cooks, he had definitely made it, and his smile, curled startlingly upward in the corners, proclaimed the shock of his good fortune. His crew –five or six men pulled from a pack of Quechuan day-laborers – was not as lucky, temp workers skilled in the hauling tents and foodstuffs if not word processing or reception. For them, the four-day journey wasn’t proof of their chosen status, but rather an opportunity to make twenty or so dollars, with tips, and dream of something better.
My fellow hikers were all stalwarts of the world’s privileged civilizations, featuring the usual blend of checklist-toting American slackers, upright Canadians, and a perpetually stupefied Dutch couple, who spoke only in exclamatory sentences. Among them was my friend Jesse, with whom I endured the indignities of high school, college, and, now, “1722,” the crumbling home we occupied Stateside with four slovenly and sloth-like trolls. We set out from the ranger station at mid-day and quickly crossed the short footbridge leading onto the path of salvation. I was ready for some signs, and adjusted my cap so the meddling sun, already blinding at 9000 feet, wouldn’t keep me from seeing them.
The first section of trail, winding along the south side of the Urubamba River, doesn’t require much in terms of technique; it’s mostly flat, with a pounded dirt surface, and can be traversed easily. As we quickly passed by the sandy dunes and scrub brush lining the route, I looked down at my steel soled hiking boots, tied tightly around the ankles in expectation of a Bataan-style death march, with boundless pity. Zoo animals were more likely to utilize their peculiar adaptations than my waterproof trail stompers. I loosened my boots and stepped in deep puddles whenever conditions allowed.
After about an hour the path started rising into the mountains, but at a manageable incline which buoyed the confidence of my companions, many of whom dreaded the looming threat of altitude sickness. The arid landscape of the first few kilometers gradually yielded to lush woodland terrain, and then our first glimpse of Inca ruins. We viewed the complex of small stone buildings and terraces from 500 feet above, on a plateau en route to Dead Woman’s Pass, the highest point on our journey. Not much was known about this particular site, as Carlos quickly made clear.
“In this place, maybe the Inca grow food, to feed the people of the Inca. Look at the ground; the Inca build little boxes – how you say… terraces? – for the farming in the mountains. Maybe the Inca make sacrifices to the god of Mother Earth, Pacha Mama, who lives on the mountain, giving thanks for the food… in this place.” Carlos was an unwitting master of symmetry, beginning and ending each of his soliloquies with “in this place.” His conclusion was always whispered, as if not to disturb Pacha Mama, and accompanied by a downcast expression. Arms extended outward, he emphasized the sanctity of the location by bobbing his hands up and down, in case we too didn’t know the English word for “here.”
We knew he was done when he flashed his toothy grin. It was as if to say “Maybe you want a refund? Please, no questions, it’s a long way to Machu Picchu.” With that we’d snap some photos and get moving again.
The Trail was loaded with rousing vistas, the type known well to office drones used to motivational posters and their empowering slogans. “Teamwork” or “Perseverance” they might say.
Pacha Mama was a snow-encrusted spire, almost invisible in the mid-day sun; she towered over the nearby mountains. What concept did she convey to the Inca as they trod by on the path to and from Cuzco? Did they stop as I did, desperate to remember? And what of the next batch of ruins, built on a precipice above the clouds? Did they watch the billowy tufts combine haphazardly with their neighbors, then separate again, like four-year-olds bumbling through a dance routine? I was certain of one thing; unlike those drones back home, they definitely weren’t thinking thoughts of “Determination.”
As our elevation increased, I focused on the metaphor leading us, over precisely laid stones, up to the high pass. It was getting harder to breathe as I neared the top, and the trail narrowed. I stopped several times to catch my breath, but not for too long. The air was getting thinner, and no amount of rest could prevent me from having to stop again after thirty or so paces. At one point, I imagined an ancient messenger, standing in my place, wondering if this was truly what Inti, the Inca sky god, had in mind for him at his birth. “Damn those lucky high priests and scribes!” he might have thought. Did he liken his route, to some temple in the distance, as the path of revival?
I knew that the analogy was imperfect; a winding trail leading gradually upward, toward some far off pinnacle, was not exactly how one experiences personal growth in America, not at the dawn of the 21st century anyway. In school they encourage you to pick a destination – what do you want to be when you grow up? – and then set you about getting there, eyes on the monolith in the distance. Trudging forward on the trail, I found this approach lacking. When I returned home, would I look for another technology job? Where does one find alternative monoliths?
Jesse and I made it to the pass together, and that afternoon settled into our camp on another mountain ridge, still above the clouds. Carlos was telling tales again, and the sun descended behind the peaks across from us, beyond the enshrouded valley. The temperature sank thirty degrees in about an hour, so Jesse and I – the others were huddled in their tents – started a fire and passed a bottle of bourbon between us, fighting the cold and waiting for the darkness.
“Maybe you see all the stars tonight,” Carlos said.
The wind picked up as twilight yielded to the night sky; the campfire and hooch were worthless against the wind, so I laid down flat on my back, and watched the stars come into focus. Back home, they reveal themselves one by one, slowly, struggling to be noticed through artificial lamplight and carcinogenic haze. But in the Andes, at 10,000 feet, the stars appeared in gangs, flashing furiously onto the scene, shoulder to shoulder, as if massing for armed struggle. No wonder the ancients saw warriors in the stars. Through it all a white ribbon appeared, lacing its way through the armies of light.
“Check it out – the Milky Way,” Jesse said.
Looking up I locked on to a tiny star, obscured by the larger, brighter bodies around it, and imagined hurtling its way in some future spacecraft. I wondered if this star could be seen from the streets of DC, or if it was perpetually hidden from my view by too little darkness. I thought onward at light speed. What if, in trying to get there, the gravity of a different star pulled me closer than expected? Would I embrace an orbit in that system, in lieu of my planned destination? Maybe there were no monoliths, and no plodding paths to them, only infinite points of light.
