This pilgrimage will be advertised: IV

Agapito ordered four Cusqueñas and offered up a toast to the evening, unsure why he was sharing it with Leo but sure that something was brewing that needed him to follow through with a few things. The air that settled on the night in Aguas Calientes was thick and panting, damp and invasive. The breeze that meanderled down from the Sacred Valley as the Andean air cooled was as pleasant respite from the otherwise stagnant and saturated cloud forest clime. On one such breeze Leo traded out his full-brimmed sun hat for some local woolens, a chu’llo with the ear flaps and llama figures skipping their way around his dome. He had bought it his first day in Cuzco.

Agapito tried to lighten the mood. “Do you always travel solo?”

“Ohh, never solo, you know, there are always people. Like you, what was your name again, I’m sorry, our conversation has me confused?”

“Agapito, ‘Pito for short, no problem. Thanks for asking, in fact. Most people won’t stop and ask a second time and are ashamed to have missed a name the first time, you know. I always need to ask at least a second time before I can remember a name, and I try to use it frequently in sentences. Well, not with yours, that’s a bit easier. But Agapito is a bit more difficult and foreign, so I understand. Anyway, Leo, you were saying?”

“Thank you. I was saying that we are never alone, people like you, or sometimes a girl, always a companion. So, never entirely solo.”

“I see, that makes sense, I experience that too, fellow pilgrims finding each other on the path . . .”

“No, not pilgrims, backpackers. People who travel, like me. I don’t understand this pilgrim word. In fact, I have made many friends that I see over and over again. Here in Peru, then in Morocco, then in India, Cambodia. I went with a girl one time to Jordan. Have you been? No? Well there are caves there, caves where you can still hear saints whispering from early Christianity, where, when you yourself sit still you can hear all these saints sitting around long stone tables debating how to tell the greatest story ever,” Leo saw the chance to stop some of Agapito’s awkward questioning and didn’t want to lose it. And plus, like many seasoned travelers, he would rather tell his own story than listen to someone else’s. “And so we did this one church cave in Rihab where . . .”

“What did you do? How do you do a church cave?”

“Well, it’s an expression, we went to the cave and looked at it, talked about it, learned about history, things like that. Does this make sense?”

“It does, I just don’t understand the language people use when traveling, talking about doing this or that thing, doing this or that country. I mean, how do you do Peru? It’s a country, not an amusement park ride. Like now, are we doing this restaurant? Or doing Machu Picchu? It sounds just so abusive and arrogant to talk about doing a place,” Agapito continued, as Leo now really wished he were at home with a cigarette and his headphones, listening to the latest Ulrich Schnauss release.

Agapito’s rant faded off and Leo took the chance to interrupt, “Well, sorry my grasp of your language is second hand and I may not be so exact with my words.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that as criticism, and actually your English is excellent, getting better as the night progresses and your imbibing increases. Just a worthy point of contention with the traveling world in general, sort of like the importance of the journey over the destination and such. Anyway, what was going on in the caves as you were doing them?”

“Well, in visiting zee caves in Rihad with this girl Ernestine, oh a lovely girl, we were in love from college in Leiden and after graduation we both wanted to see the Middle East. In the Netherlands we have many Muslims and we are generally so welcoming and open-minded but these days there is so much tension. So many Muslims come and we take them, they live with us but they show much less interest in our country and culture than their own, and can be violent and insolent, really. Like people anywhere, but we’re having trouble now in Holland with thiz.”

“Oh, there and everywhere else, Leo, how can we get people to understand each other? I mean, it’s true, Dutch people I’ve met are an excellent bunch, much more naturally open-minded than folks from the US. And actually I’ve had it pointed out to me by a beautiful Dutch woman named Ernestine, huh, do you think it was the same one? Well, she pointed out that folks from the US choose comparisons as a point to reference – but still, like I was saying, you are Dutch, open-minded as they say, but even there you have violent conflict that you have trouble resolving, not to mention what’s going on in the Middle East, or what happened here in Peru in the ‘80’s. I mean, isn’t it usually enough to just get people together to talk through things and we find that we are all human, all struggling, all pilgrims seeking truth and then find something to laugh at in our paradoxical state? I guess the more people we gather together the more difficult it is to find a gathering point, since every human is like infinity coalesced, and so six billion infinities is greater than three billion, no?”

“Actually, no, one infinity is just as great as six billion infinities . . .”

“You know what I mean, though, right?”

“No.”

“Yes?”

“No”

“Well, I guess it makes more sense that Dutch and Muslims don’t make sense of each other then.”

Leo had spent a year of his university study in Cuba, in the agricultural department of Piñar del Rio, in the far West of the island. This was in 1994, soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union and during some of the island’s most challenging times with their socialist experiment. He had studied sociology and was interested in exploring the result of the Soviet collapse on the domestic tobacco industry from Piñar del Rio. What he found was really what he had expected – the industry was performing better than ever – and his findings added little to the academic journals of the time. Ending his seven years of doctoral work he wrote, ‘I have unequivocally found out that I greatly prefer Cuban tobacco to any other.’ He also realized, during a horseback ride through some of the fields, drinking rum and coconut water that he would rather be unimpressed and unsurprised abroad than to be bored back home.



The sun began to rise again over the ceremony, which had already passed an entire night with dozens of deaths, screams, sighs and cheers. Pachacútec listened intently to what Agapito said of sacrifice, listened as though the empire depended on is actually. Meanwhile Agapito began to wonder what Koa was doing with her gaze, as it explored the steady drops of blood falling from the altar. The warrior continued to breath life as it fled away from him and she looked at his toes. Toes, for the first time since their birth, were relaxed on his feet, no longer required to bear the burden that life and gravity conspired against them.

“Why do you think people walk so much, Koa? And why don’t they let their feet rest?”

“’Pito, just as worthwhile a question is why don’t feet let their people rest? It may just as well be that whatever innate force led people to demand their feet to walk also led their feet to demand their people to walk. Why would you put the center of volition in the people and their will, why not in the feet?”

Agapito was watching Sand and Koa mingle fingers as the latter spoke and he wondered if the two of them planned their words so perfectly before these moments, because they were truly precise. The sun was rising fast as it does in the tropics and as the rays landed on her face she let her long brown hair fall over that side to block its intensity. This single motion along with the preceding pontification gave Agapito such an intense sadness that he collapsed to the ground. He had a scientific response to what she had asked but could not articulate it for the immensity of emotions he immediately felt. As if the obsidian knife had carved into his heart and also cut off his feet. He reflected on his travels as a shaman and on the struggles of the people in the Amazon, the struggles of the plants for life, even the struggles of each individual ant that carried a leaf in a line through the forest. He felt his own struggle and his own solitude. Simultaneously there was his pride, passion and will that would not let himself engage in the selfish emotion of sadness, but recognizing this only deepened his sadness.

Looking between the gaze that had settled between Sand and Koa, Agapito noticed a partly bald white man leaning against the Stone of the Seven Skies – this man had a backpack and was wiping his brow in the intense tropical sun. He looked at Agapito and waved his hand vigorously.

“Hola, Agapito, it eez Leo, how are you enjoying your most recent visit to Machu Picchu, pilgrim?”

Leo had lifted his hat an as he did a pulsing yellow and red orb hovered between his burned scalp and his hat. Agapito scratched his two-week old beard and looked over at Pachacútec.

“Go on, ‘Pito, answer the man, he is your pilgrim friend from Holland, remember?”

“How do you know, P-tec? Hehe, I’ve never called you that before, I like it though, like a stage name, P-tec. How do you know who this is?”

Leo mumbled something and was confused by Agapito’s nonsense talk. “Oh, have I interrupted you in something, I wanted to make it yesterday but was so damned hungover that I stayed in bed until last night and decided to come early this morning. I am so glad you are here still.” And then Leo asked, “Agapito, are you ok? You seem pretty out of it.”

When he heard that last question the previous day’s adventures came flooding back in to his awareness and the previous scene in front of him fluttered like confetti. The llamas and alpacas turned their snub noses upward and skipped off in four directions. Pachacútec stood up, pulled his hair back to a pony-tail and donned his silver crown studded with lapis-lazuli, crossed his arms and became a rock that blended into masonry on the condor’s wing at the temple. Sand dissolved back to the earth from which she came. The executioner looked Agapito in the eyes and with a glare that burned his being, he leapt upward into the sky, quickly being absorbed by the sun’s intense light. The Aymara warriors transformed to tourists and they donned their backpacks and sun hats and began to take pictures of Agapito leaning, collapsed now, against the stones at the temple of the condor. Koa turned herself into a collection of herbs and seeds and a solitary hand that reached out and presented itself to Agapito. He ate them and the hand disappeared. Leo remained and looked perplexed at Agapito crouched in the corner of the Temple of the Condor.


In Aguas Calientes two nights before, where we had left Leo and Agapito bantering away and slowly beginning to appreciate each other’s company, the pile of Cuzqueñas made Agapito realize that maybe piling stones up to make the great pyramids of Guatemala and Egypt wasn’t such an astonishing feat after all. Their table had acquired an impressive amount in just a couple of short hours. And granted, piling beer bottles are not quite the same as many-ton stones, but he imagined the process may be similar – find a friend and put yourself to task with them. And that’s maybe the heart of human ingenuity and all great works manifest of that.

Leo was pretty drunk now and appreciating the humidity and tropical climes of Aguas Calientes, where his flip-flops, locally bought futbol jersey and cargo shorts were sufficient for the night’s clime. They had made their way through conversations of race, travel, love, sports and different approaches to education. There was a bit of a pause after the last one before Leo broke the silence. His English at this point was impeccable.

“Have you ever come across San Pedro in Peru?” Leo inquired. “In Mexico I have done mushrooms, in Morocco and India I have smoked a lot of hashish and at home in Holland I have done a whole variety of party sorts. I was wondering about San Pedro here.”

“What do you know about it?”

“Well, I know it is mescaline, like peyote or the synthesized version, and that it lasts a long time and is a really wild trip. More than that I don’t know, but many travelers I have met have told me it is a really fun time.”

“To be honest I have no idea what fun means when talking about hallucinogenic plants, fun seems like a description of recreational activities and I see it more as medicine than recreation. I have done San Pedro countless times, including a full month wandering around the Bolivian altiplano with San Pedrito as my guide. You can actually, incidentally, buy it at a number of stalls at the San Pedro market in Cuzco. Go with a guide, though Leo, definitely with a guide, and some good friends. And I’d just say it’s not about getting high or getting messed up but about having some specific intentions that you want from the experience. Coming back to our pilgrimage talk, it’s all about having a direction and intention and then from there the learning comes fluid. Most people take hallucinogenics to get out of their mind, but I can guarantee that with San Pedro, setting the right intention will allow you to get so amazingly in your mind. Actually, speaking of being in your mind and by that I mean present, consumed by the present, floating it in and freely swimming down deep or even splashing your way out over the break like an orca, you know the way they jump and splash and then go back down for more. Or up for more . . .” he was quite noticeably slurring his feigned philosophy at this point. And had his chin rested heavily in his left hand. They said goodnight and headed back to their hostels

The next day Agapito hiked with Tristeza and her mother Rosmari to arrive at Machu Picchu with the first bus and the growing line of pilgrims right around sunrise. Rosmari was from the Sacred Valley above the town of Urubamba and had moved to Aguas Calientes three years before to sell her woven crafts at the market in the train station. She felt that she could do better there but when she arrived she realized that so many other women from the Sacred Valley had the same idea. And she found it almost impossible to compete with the factory-produced products from the city – the flapped hats that say “Cuzco” or the mugs that say the same, or the t-shirts proudly claiming “I survived the Inca Trail”.

Who would pay for her two weeks of time she spent in making a baby alpaca sweater? She asked this to Agapito in a Spanish cut deep with Quechua, as they waited in line next to a Japanese couple that was staring at them. In fact, the whole line was looking at them – she was the only person in the entire park dressed as an Andean. Her embroidered hat was fastened around her chin and the intricate floral and swirling patterns matched both her outer coat and her outer skirt. Her chin-strap had dozens of beaded strings and they framed her weathered and sun-worn cheeks and enormous smile.

He had decided to spend most of the day showing them around and sharing what he had learned. Mostly he wanted to hear what they saw in the place, since really it was their site, the ones that lived so near. He translated what some of the guides were sharing with their clients and they wanted to know how people knew so much about the place. They hiked to the top of Huayna Picchu, the precipitous peak that stands above the main city. There they found their way through caves, up the vertical stone staircases to the summit where they could look back at their climb and at the main city 1000 feet below.

They sat and Agapito set out a small square textile to begin a hallpay or coca chewing-round with them. Rosmari began to shy away and became silent and a bit embarrassed. She first tried to politely refuse but as Agapito persisted she was obliged to disclose that she became evangelical when she moved to the city and no longer uses coca leaves.

“Si!?” Agapito clarified.

“Si”

Oh, well, what do you do in moments like those? As a foreigner he had really taken to the coca rituals found in the Andes and now, here with an Andean woman he was forcing a habit that she did not engage in. He apologized and Tristeza pointed out a brilliant orange orchid jutting between two stones. But, he thought, coca has been used for millennia and is such an important part of life in the Central Andes, how can she just give it up for a religion that is not hers? That is sad, he thought, a loss of cultural diversity in some form and, who knows, maybe actually detrimental to her health. But his assumption was that something “traditional” in the Andes is unchanging and should continue. What about in the US? 200 years ago we grew hemp and even 50 years ago we used it in just about every form of manufacturing. Now it is illegal and most don’t even know this or that it is any different from marijuana. Regardless of how unfortunate both of these scenarios is – Andean losing their culture and us losing ours – the point here that Agapito missed and that many travelers do as well is that there is a romantic assumption that traditional cultures should not change because we in the north do enough changing for them. But maybe Agapito was aware of these things even as he felt sorry, for no reason at all, for Rosmari.

He pictured her in an incomprehensibly large ocean, afraid and out of control, unable to see the horizon for the size of the waves and her boat just a bit too small, the sail a bit too worn. But again, where were his assumptions that she was thrashing in a sea of change and globalization coming from? Most likely from his own guilt and shame, or at least lack of pride in his culture. He found himself in a bit of a philosophical dilemma.

Can I show you something else? He asked Tristeza and Rosmari in Spanish. There is another temple down below us here, a bit of a walk but well worth it, often called Temple of the Moon. They nodded, looked at each other and giggled, nodding again. They headed off Huayna Picchu along the sharp ridge that heads to the east and climbed down through cloud forest, constructed wooden ladders, almost halfway to the Urubamba River below. His two companions moved so confidently and agile, through the forest or the precarious trails; they were unaffected by the heights and showed no fatigue in their hiking.



Alone with Leo and the photo-takers and the Temple of the Condor Agapito finally greeted Leo, “Did you come for the ceremony? It has been spectacular so far, epic in proportions and beautiful in its conduction, all night really, with so many beautiful folks from all over the kingdom. This one here with the obsidian blade is a dark one for sure, consumed by demons from somewhere, but I have seen past the blade and think that he, too, is trying his best to live an honest life. He just kills a lot of creatures. Odd, I have been here so many times but never met this one. He live right here under the condor’s left wing. Have a seat and observe for a spell.”

“Oh, right, San Pedro, dear god Agapito, have you been here all night?”

“And many more, right? I was journeying in the Amazon and was a famous healer and part of this massive city and an entirely different time and, wait, we shouldn’t talk too much, I am just waking up and need to hang on to these images and not yet be distracted by full consciousness. Hold on, I’m going to write in my journal, come back and talk in a half hour. Sorry, great to see you Leo.” He began to write in his journal – of pilgrimage, meeting Leo, Tristeza.

There came a part that he held only vaguely in his memory. He was on the top of Huayna Picchu with Tristeza and Rosmari talking about religion and their views on Evangelicalism, Catholicism and Andean traditions, and then they hiked down to the Temple of the Moon. There they connected with his good friend Daniel and, oh, that’s right Magdalena, Maria and the two Brahm brothers.

It came back in pieces to Agapito as he wrote in his journal. Daniel was explaining the smoothness of the stones and what that could mean for our understanding of advanced technology. There and then Daniel suggested that they take San Pedro to help understand the hidden language of the stones, just as the Peruvian ancestors had. Agapito had been fasting that day anyways and so felt adequately prepared for this second pilgrimage – a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage, per se.

And there we return to the initial proposition of pilgrimage. What makes a pilgrim? Is it about the place? Or the person? Or the mode of the journey? Or is it simply a matter of intention? At that very moment, and precisely because he had been meditating on these questions for days now, he decided to take San Pedro with Daniel, Magdalena, Maria and the two Brahm brothers.

He was obliged to leave his two Quechua companions at that point, the two whose faith now precluded them from participating in this next journey, but whose gratitude for the visit to their own patrimony was infinitely appreciated with their head bows hugs and massive smiles. And with his new pilgrim companions he set off in a march toward the Temple of the Condor as the day was now growing late.

This pilgrimage will be advertised: III

Tristeza agreed to meet Agapito the next morning at 4 to climb the two-thousand feet to the entrance. And he invited her mother, whom Tristeza assured had never been to the Incan citadel either. He would have invited her father too, but he was in the jungle picking coca for the season.

After wandering the streets of Aguas Calientes for a half an hour Agapito finally settled on “The House of the Inca’s Nephew” to bed down for the evening. Apparently the name, “The House of the Inca” was already taken, as were other permutations of the name involving the homes of The Inca’s more immediate family – his son, daughter, wife, mother, father, etc. So Agapito was resolved to sleep at the Ancient King’s nephew’s house.

Later that evening Agapito found the Dutch man with the burned forehead eating a bowl of potatoes with peanut sauce alone near the main plaza. He sat and joined him.

“My name is Leo,” he commented, “like the puma, no?” He laughed and tucked his chin as he did so while Agapito cracked a smile.

“I’m Apapito, a pleasure to meet you Leo.”

“No no, the pleasure eez mine young man, tell me, where do you come from?”

“Well, I have been on the road for a while, to be honest, but these days I feel that I come most from the wherever I am at any moment and more generally from the Americas, yes, definitely from the Americas. You?”

“Holland. Can you believe? I come from below zee zea, now to so far above zee zea in zee Andes. But really, no joke, no big deal either. I’ve been to zee Himalayas. And I’ve climbed Mount Kilamanjaro too, so I know high. Hehe, all of Holland knows “high”, even zo we’re so low. I’ve actually been to zee other six wonders of the world already, and when I heard this Incan Citadel, as they call it, was a new wonder, I just needed come.”

“How were the Himalayas?”

“Big, but full of marijuana, poverty, bombs and Israelis.”

"How was Mount Kilamanjaro?”

“Melting and full of people quoting zat American, Hemingway.”

“It’s melting?”

“Yes, fastly, which is maybe why people quote Hemingway so much, you know The Snows of Kilamanjaro? Zat short book where zee lion or some other cat is stuck in zee snow? Well, there is no more ice or snow for any cat to be stuck in anymore there. I mean, maybe a small house cat could be stuck in one of zee ice blocks on zee summit, but definitely no larger African cats, you know. They’d need their own freezer-size blocks, and those are melting or gone, little lagoons of water in zee crater summit. But zat’s why I travel, because zee world changes so much.”

“So you’re a real traveler, eh?”

“Yes, it is really what I live for, why I work, why I live.”

“And why do you travel so much?” inquired Agapito.

“Well it’s always more fun zan home, and definitely zee views are better. I mean, when I’m home working I just works my ass off, you know? I make money, selling jewelry on zee circuit of parties in Europe - Ibiza, zee Love Parade, you know, those things. And so when I have enough money it’s just so free and so much cheaper to travel. Mostly, you know, I can live for a year what it would cost me to live a month in Holland, especially since zee Euro. Why do you travel?”



The first llama spat twice but only managed to land the cud on the Aymara captives. The priest with the obsidian knife paid no mind and – with a helper holding the legs – he began to offer the first prayer of the evening and set three coca leaves in the llama’s mouth before tilting its head back on the altar block and slicing quickly and deeply through its throat, nearly decapitating the beast in one stroke. The llama’s legs kicked, but were tied and held. Her eyes pierced and wailed but found no sympathy in this crowd, none of them a stranger to death. Her hindquarters quivered and flexed before settling limp on the cold stone.

The priest tilted the llama’s head and torso to the side and lifted the hind section with the help of his assistant to drain the blood into a massive stone bowl. With her blood drained, the llama’s eyes became glazed like the moon, reflecting not their own internal warmth and light, but that of the outside. The space beneath the eyes was cold and in the process of transforming. The priest turned her on her back and offered another prayer before cutting aggressively into her chest plate to remove the heart as symbol of moving energy to the four Suyus extending from Cuzco, the heart being the source of a being’s life-energy.

Each remaining llama was sacrificed in turn as the afternoon began to grow late and the Aymara warriors stoic.

Agapito turned to Sand and Pachacútec and asked, “If given the chance would you risk losing your mind to find truth? Snakes shed their skin and lose themselves in the forest each time they grow. Do you ever try to crawl out of your skin?”

“No, but I try to crawl into other’s skin,” teased Sand, while Pachacútec ran his thumb and forefinger along the spine of a coca leaf.

“You know, Agapito, that is for you to ponder and for the plants of the Amazon to teach you. I am a leader and not a mystic. I do what my people ask and what my father demands. Please, tangle your mind around the vines of the Amazon and teach me all you gain. What have you learned in losing your mind?”

“Well, that Inca must accumulate, with food and with wealth, but with no mind accumulation seems irrelevant, for no mind is no future and no future leaves planning to be excessive and only the present to be impressive. Do you know that the future is behind you, brother? Can you see it? No. All you can see is what is in front of you, and what is in front of you is what is true. This is the world. Why worry about the future that is behind you? And so why accumulate?”

“When you came to visit me here at my home in Machu Picchu, ‘Pito, was your path in front of you or behind you? And, if it is in front of you, where you walking into the past?”

“Of course I was, and if not, how did everything that was in that world of walking get there but in being from the past? The trail was built hundreds of years ago by your father’s grandfather, and every other thing that was touching my present moment was only embodying a past leading to that point. So, yes, I was walking into the past, even though time was moving me into the future, I was not walking into it.”



“Well,” Agapito took a few minutes to gather his thoughts and reply to Leo, during which time the energy at the table turned a bit awkward, because, the truth is, Agapito is not too articulate in casual conversation. He took a sip of his glass of Inca Kola, and another, and then he spread some picante on some bread and turned an ear to the music that was playing. Leo sipped his beer and grimaced, obviously feeling a bit uncomfortable with his companion. “I prefer trails to trials and horizons to borders. When my feet move, my mind moves, and when my mind moves, I optimistically believe that the world moves. Maybe a bit Narcissistic, but that’s how it feels, Leo. Agapito had been trying to get in the habit of saying new acquaintance’s names to help him remember. “And I know the world moves of its own accord, but you know, the more movement we each do as well, I feel that counts for something too. And like the Hindu pilgrim who claimed, ‘What is important is not the object worshiped but the depth and sincerity of the worship,’ as he stepped off the train at Benares. That makes sense to me as I move, even in visiting such popular sites of worship as Machu Picchu”.

“Are you ok?” asked Leo.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was just wondering why you travel and it seems to stress you. I mean, I just met you, but I wonder if you’re ok.”

“Yeah, I’m ok. I guess simply put, I travel because I’m looking for something and I know that something is not at any particular destination but permeating the air around us all the time. It’s just that when I move, the air around me seems to flutter and that makes me feel that something more acutely than without movement. Err, I mean, seems you’re not much for metaphysics tonight. Let’s just leave it as I travel because I’m looking for something and it’s not stressful. Say, have you ever read that Herman Hesse book Journey to the East? You remind me of the ‘Leo’ in that book. He was a good guy, Leo. You seem like a good guy too.”

“I know zat book I read it in German, his original language. Do you believe we read zee same book? I speak German too, as well as Spanish and French and a bit of Danish. With a few beers in me I can even speak Flemish, but it always makes me laugh. We Dutch are good for zat. Knowing language zat is, not laughing,” Leo grinned and chuckled to himself.

Leo and Agapito shared their thoughts on Journey to the East, and Agapito is taken by Leo’s ability to analyze precisely but matter-of-factly Hesse’s thoughts on pilgrimage. “And in zee book, ‘Leo’ just sort of flew beside the others, unaware of the intent of the journey but eager to make it and most committed to it for sure. Zee faithful lion. But such an ignorant bunch of travelers, those ones. I mean, if you don’t know where you’re going, why are you going? Get a map and ask some people and it’s easy to find the path in this day and age.”

“But that’s what I mean, Leo, that’s exactly how I feel! I feel like those journeyers to the East. And that’s why I travel.”

“So you have been to Machu Picchu before?”

“Yes”

“So, you know where you are going?”

“Well, geographically, my good inquirer and philosopher, but not spiritually and mentally. I mean, I think pilgrimages can be made so many times with both different paths and different destination while still being to the same place, you know what I mean? Would you say you are on a pilgrimage, Leo?”

“No.”

“And you know where you are going?”

“Yes. To Machu Picchu.” Leo seemed to become a bit irritated and wishing he had just stayed in his room and finished the last of his smokes while listening to music on his headphones. “Are you sure you’re ok? What do you want from me?”

“YES, I’m ok, thanks for checking in again. I can go from ‘ok’ to ‘not ok’ amazingly fast. But, to answer the second question, what I want is for us all to at least wake up and realize there are things we are doing that we don’t realize you are doing and also places that we are going that we do not realize we are going and finally that there are things that are seeing that we don’t realize are seeing. That, I think is the least we can hope for from a life with even a modicum of consciousness – which is, so says much of science, the one thing that makes us different from the rest of the breathing and pulsing world around us, even though I disagree with that as well. And I want you to realize you’re on a pilgrimage. Damn, sorry Leo, I forgot you’re not into metaphysics or, I guess, ethics tonight. Are you into drinking?” Agapito always alternated between excess and recess and he had a feeling that this was a night for the former. Especially since his watch started to tilt toward a new day and Tristeza would be passing by with her mother in a few short hours. Better to be awake than to be asleep for such an unsatisfactory length of time.



When he was younger Agapito would leave the house in the early morning to soak his feet in early-morning moon-lit pool in the high plains of Bolivia and see if he could ever find the reflection of the reflected moon yet again reflected in the sky. He would pass entire nights in this way, always convinced that there was something hidden in the mirrored recesses of the night moon glow, convinced that there was infinitely more magic in a night without lit detail than a day without shadows.

As he reached his adolescence he began to live as a shadow, never letting himself be exposed but finding great insight and curiosity in the those nooks that others passed unnoticed. To say he was happy in this place would be romantic, but at least we could say he was engaged. And being engaged he became a bit estranged from his unengaged peers who would spend their days doing practical things such as flirting with girls and playing futbol or studying.



The first Aymara warrior was serendipitously sacrificed as the sun rolled its tired wheel one more turn behind the summit of Huayna Picchu. Pachacútec took the knife and aligned it to the evening star shimmering in the evening blue, the first star to puncture the fabric of the night sky. Many hunting cultures saw the sun as the quintessential hunter, shooting down the stars one by one as it rose, with its piercing rays. And now, as the hunter moved back out of the picture the wild stars filled the landscape once again, now unafraid of the sun’s arrows. The Warrior closed his eyes and saw himself traveling the great Yawar Mayu, the blood river, back through the ground, feeling fortunate to die as the sun set so their two spirits could travel this river under the ground together. As the knife carved into his chest and he felt the air leaving him, he dreamed of a condor coming and picking his decaying body off the icy summit of a high mountain and carrying it over a river as large as the milky way. There the condor dropped him just as the sun god dove from above and started to swim back up river.

The second warrior tried to run and for that had his feet crushed at the ankles before being lain on the altar. As his ankles crunched and cracked he fainted and had no awareness of what happened after that, turning himself to a snake, armless and legless, now with no pain where his ankle joints used to be. As a snake he pictured himself writhe and wiggle his way through the layers of earth to the Yawar Mayu. There he found a doorway opening on to a beach of snakes that guarded the entrance to the river. To pass the snakes he turned himself again into a vine to hide as he fell into the river off a tree and began to float up river to return to the earth.

The third Aymara warrior cried in anger and died with bitterness in his heart for being forced to fight in a war that was not his. For this he was granted no visions in his death, only a feeling of cold and stagnation. This feeling would last the next 280 years until his soul were granted a chance to reconsider. As the shaman held his heart to the morning star in the early glow of the night he saw that the star reflected on a heart as still and frigid as the glaciers of the sacred Ausungate.

Koa, one of the women participating in the event was the most beautiful in the entire estate and had, it was said, been born of the moon and the morning glory flower. One evening 19 years before, the moon had drank to much from the forest and was saturated with water and so had cried to let some drain to be able to continue moving through the sky. When this drop fell to the earth it skipped off one of the morning glory flowers at the top of Huayna Picchu and as the petal recoiled, Koa was conceived in the roots of the plant. She had never left the city of Machu Picchu and slept on a bed of morning glories. As the seventh warrior was closing his eyes to open his heart to the obsidian, Koa was chewing on morning glory seeds and pouring chicha on Agapito’s palm saying, “From birth to earth, from worth to dirt.”

“You see,” Agapito offered “It is time to end the sacrificing, my good friend.”

This pilgrimage will be advertised: II

As the soirée made its way to the Temple of the Condor, dusk began to descend and the evening glow reflected purple and yellow against the granite of Huayna (old) Picchu (peak), the sacred peak rising on the ridge above Machu (young) Picchu.

A condor propitiously circled Huayna with the grace and surrender of a piece of driftwood caught in a river eddy.

Agapito handed a k’intu or stack of coca to his friend Pachacútec, holding between his thumb and forefinger the two most complete leaves he could find against the backdrop of the cloud forests 2000 feet below, to represent the harmony inherent in the world’s dual elements of male and female. Pachacútec reciprocated the offering, also with two leaves, to one of the maidens named Sand, who abashedly lowered her eyes while flirtatiously shooting past his fingertips to his palm before stroking in retreat and graciously accepting. Agapito smiled at the implications of this exchange.

Putting this aside for a moment, Pachacútec began, “Agapito, with whom I have had thousands of journeys, you are my closest confident, please never forget that. I want to tell you something. As I sat my last evening on Lake Titicaca and watched my men run the Aymara into surrender it was as if all the mountains were within my grasp. I have wanted to give this gift to our people, that we can teach mountains to talk and thereby learn to think and they will rise in our favor. And this is the place to learn this, here at my home on this mountain. People will learn these things for many years, can’t you see?” Pachacútec proposed to Agapito and Sand.



“As the llama fat nourishes our relationship with Pachamama, so this land will nourish our relationship with future generations,” Agapito offered in reply.

They both sat quietly as the local priest prepared the table of offerings and the four llamas and twenty warriors fidgeted anxiously, while a maiden apiece began to massage and wash Agapito and Pachacútec’s feet, occasionally moving up their legs to tease toward the evening of celebration ahead. On the table was prepared a representation of the universe, with its three tiers placed in the infinite Pacha of space-time. And in our middle-realm of existence were placed objects representing the myriad manifestations of existence in this tier: clouds, llama and warrior figurines, coca and herbs. The priest held a glass of chicha and poured half to the ground on the four sides of the offering, to Pachamama, and drank the remainder. Agapito and Pachacútec did likewise, each also offering drinks to the captives and the women – the chicha circled around and around until the mood became infused with a touch of levity for an otherwise grave moment. And Sand took the chance to flirt again, offering to Pachacútec that, “Not only does alcohol loosen our tongue to speak to the earth but also to each other.”



The train bumped through its final tunnel and the loudspeaker commented in English only that Machu Picchu village was 2 minutes away so people should begin to ready their things. The Dutch man blinked awake, scratched his forehead, grimaced, and stuffed his fleece jacket into his rucksack, with the warmth of the lower climes removing any need for layering. His face was pink and his eyes renewed with a look of curiosity. Agapito asked him how long he was traveling for and if this were his first time here. As most Dutch do, this man spoke impeccable English and commented that his stay is yet to be determined, being on sabbatical and that of course this was his first time. He was as jovial as a dog about to go out for its daily walk, and Agapito appreciated both his innocence and his wonder.

Heading to Machu Picchu Village, or Aguas Calientes as it is often called, Agapito closed his eyes and raised his head toward the hot mid-afternoon sun burning between the steep jungle-clad slopes of these lower Andean valleys. The Sacred Valley is a fertile depression that rolls north from Cuzco toward the tropical lowlands and, along with Cuzco, is the most continuously inhabited and farmed stretch of land in the hemisphere. Corn, potatoes and quinoa have grown for thousands of years and cities are built upon cities upon endless history. Annie Dillard in For the Time Being describes dusting or sweeping a home as simply postponing our inevitable burial considering the impressive rate that sand and dust fill a place. And this is no exception – with farm-fields most likely plowed and tilled above entire pre-Incan homes and hamlets which were, in like, plowed and tilled above their ancestors. Through sedimentation, Andean winds and simple disregard time has piled earth upon people and places for dizzying amounts of years while all this rich history now nourishes the crops that feed the distant descendents of a people once proud.

The Sacred Valley curves with the sacred water of the Urubamba River past countless sacred ruins and sacred stones and caves, reminding a pilgrim that a pilgrimage is sacred, lest they forget. The river meanders and slopes and it picks up a sense of urgency as the valley becomes a canyon and the open Andean slopes give way to steep jungle-clad cliffs. And mountains that were content to yawn a few kilometers back now begin to shout and show their teeth and stab sharply toward the sky.

Is this what happens when a place becomes sacred, it is bold enough to point and cut into the heavens?

The Urubamba swells and pushes against canyon walls that, along with the jungle’s desire to conceal and cover, allowed for Machu Picchu to be hidden from Western archeologists for hundreds of years. It is no wonder, while traveling on a modern train to Aguas Calientes through the overgrown canyon, that the ruins played such an impressive game of hide and seek and how many more such sites remain? Endless similar valleys pour into the main Urubamba drainage with high ridges, waterfalls, three thousand-foot chasms and humbling mystical mettle.

As Agapito bore the heat on his cheeks, his senses opened and the Urubamba River bounced and ripped through the canyon above Aguas Calientes while the clank and clunk of construction machinery resounded heavily against the granite walls, giving the impression that the entire ground was being scoured from under him. Aguas Calientes was no town before the explosive tourist phenomenon of Machu Picchu in the last thirty years. Now hotels, restaurants and ubiquitously kitschy Incan craft shops wind and cut into the steep walls of the canyon 2,000 feet below the famous Incan citadel – a modern show of construction that pales against the construction of Machu Picchu itself.

The train schedule was such that pilgrims arrive to the town no earlier than breakfast time, when crowds inevitably begin to fill the walls of the ruins. Agapito preferred to wait for the crisp early morning to walk the steps to Machu Picchu and have the solitude and fresh night-ionized air to explore the grounds.

On his first trip Agapito was curious.
His second visit was to affirm the first.
His third was again of curiosity since the second was lost to affirmation.
Now on his fourth visit he came to seek.

His seeking was simple. He was seeking a pilgrimage, a circular intent of which he was well aware. For a pilgrim seeking or a seeker making pilgrimage inevitably will meet along the same path and recognize one another. If he began as a seeker intent on making a pilgrimage, thereby recognizing himself as a pilgrim (as noted above, we all are), of whom all are seekers, well, where do we begin? The truth his, Agapito knew not what he sought, only that he did. And being still young on his path he had embodied the mantra, “It matters little WHAT you seek, only THAT you seek.”

He stepped over a pile of cement and felt a tugging at his wool sweater. Looking up from two feet below, a young girl of no more than 6 years held a tray of bubble gum, cigarettes, Kleenex and llama figurines, asking or maybe requesting “Buy please, meester?!” And whether she asked or requested mattered not to Agapito, he was busy looking at the combination of items on the tray and wondering how these came to be the first things he was offered upon arrival. An odd array, but he chose not to share this concern with the girl, leaving her to the throes and thrills of informal market madness while smiling and replying, “No gracias.” He wondered of other pilgrims arriving and in what shape that they perhaps would need one or all of the offered commodities for the coming journey. What arrangement of poor planning and/or spontaneous necessity would create a demand for this sales-spread?

“Y tus padres? Donde estan?” Agapito softly asked as he squatted to eye level.

The girl looked down and to her left, shyly fidgeting her right hand in the pocket of her miniature apron. On her feet she wore a classic pair of rubber sandals with her sprouting toes plunging off the front edge and probing at the ground in front. Beneath the apron a skirt was layered over another and she had a dull grey sweater that contrasted her brilliant dark and smooth face. Her hair hung long and was caught in her lips. She tried to pull it off her face as she looked up at Agapito and replied, “Buy me some, meester?!”


Innocence was not a virtue prided by the people of Tawantinsuyu, least of all by the leader, the Inca. Raw and honest, bold and confident, the people from Cusco set out to level taboo and build an empire.

The high priest of Machu Picchu pulled his obsidian knife from a llama-leather sheath and began to chip and sharpen the atom-thin blade. The llamas would be slaughtered first, in respect for the solidarity of humankind – not out of disrespect for the natural world but out of respect for different elemental spirits in the manifest world. On the block now in the Temple of the Condor, the first two llamas were dragged to the altar. And there is no sound or sight more undignified than the squeal and spit of a llama off to slaughter. For those accustomed to the soft whimper of a llama in the field, it is hard to imagine that it is the same animal making the noise. With the high-pitched wail of a siren yet with a guttural growl of a grumpy gorilla and the panic of a hyena, the llama digs deep to prevent its fate from manifesting. And with the guttural growl comes the green cud, partially digested grass that the ill-fated llama will hurl at all in its proximity.

Donkeys are the beasts of burden that held the Old World with minimal complaint. Llamas are the beast of burden that held the New World with a whimper, a spit, a shout and a scurry. A llama is a curious and cunning creature, aware of both this relationship and its powerlessness to change it. And they fight it tooth and nail, vocal chord and green cud.

As the llama snorted and spat and shouted and squirmed its way to the alter block, the Aymara warriors stoically squinted their eyes and withdrew their jaws, knowing that any self respecting warrior would have a much more dignified gait to his fate.

But then, who ever asked a llama to fight? Who ever sat with them and said, “We have a very noble and important cause, and we need your expertise, we need your sophistication in this matter. You see, the future needs progress, and you are the perfect fit. You must only forgo freedom, free-will and comfort and the world will progress WITH you, beneath your fluffy little shoulders.” Without this respectful and honest conversation, who could actually expect a llama to be slaughtered with any level of grace or dignity?

The soldier, on the other hand, had a rational control over his impulses because he had been informed as to the nature of his fight. He was only captured after a stronger force had overtaken him and until that point he aimed to be the capturer. And so he has a conscious understanding of his relationship with his enemy and with humankind at large. He had fought a noble fight and lost. What llama has ever been given a choice in the matter? I’d squeal too.

But elements of sacrifice are as myriad and misunderstood as culture itself. And to sacrifice in the name of knowledge may indeed be a dignified aim. To hunt for food is as equally or even more justified. To kill an animal to restore the balance, or ayni with the natural world, is a rite long lost and rued – human or otherwise. But the truth is, the human race has shown no more respect for the inherent value of the natural world or their human brethren since the abandonment of ritual sacrifice.


Tristeza was the girl’s name. Her real name was Elena but for some reason she would not reveal to Agapito, she had taken the name Tristeza, the tragedy of which was only immediately apparent in her vending cart. Each morning, she explained, she would ride the train to Aguas Calientes with all the confidence her 9 years of being could offer and sold Kleenex, cigarettes, bubble-gum and ceramic llamas. She noticed nothing different in her exchange this day with Agapito so far, only that he lingered for a spell longer and that in his eye was a twinkle she only sees in the stars over her home just up the train tracks.

“Mama is all we have, and she is ill. Papa, I don’t know where. Mama won’t say. Meester, buy me some?”

“No Tristeza, but have you even been to Machu Picchu?” Agapito asked.

No response.

“Well, it’s just right up there, whatya say we go together tomorrow morning, my treat? It is really special and you would love it, everybody does. You must get to know it,” Agapito offered.

A tiny smile.

A growing smile.

Eyes peering up.

Eyes lifting up further from under her dangling bang that was still caught in her lips and they were wide and beautiful.

Tristeza nodded “SI!”.

This Pilgrimage Will be Advertised

Everyone’s suffering, and everyone’s a pilgrim.

If you don’t believe me, look at the bestseller list – look at the evening and morning news. We all believe there’s something we’re running from when we wake up and something we’re running towards as we go to sleep. Nothing’s changed in the Promised Land since the first. The sooner we realize that we’re pilgrims and that we must make our pilgrimage, the sooner we’ll end this farce of the good life we’re convinced we’re living in and begin the true one. For the pilgrim path is a long one, you may be rained on, you may be blistered and sore, lost, confused, full of doubt or even close to death, but at least you’re awake.

There’s a wound we’re trying to heal and a wellspring we’re looking to sip from. So we must go out, we must go in, we must take a long journey and also stay put. It’s not only that we need to be healed but also that we need to be more, ultimately that we need to realize there IS more and humbly accept that we are less. None of us is satisfied with the routine of occupying the space between birth and death with only the regular maintenance of eating, sleeping, shitting and, with good fortune, making love. We crave something greater, something more meaningful; we need to be more. More full, more inspired, more aware of truth, more in touch with God, more intimate with nature, more . . . human. And in a very real sense this feeling of MORE can only be arrived at by emptying all that we assume we are – a practice in humility that such physical and spiritual travel affords. Travel not necessarily across an ocean, but into our shadows, into those recesses we know we are entering as we sleep. And then occasionally across an ocean.

The pilgrim is an artist, which makes us all artists – in potential. An artist’s role is to identify what is true and shed a unique yet universal light on it. And such is our pilgrim path.

So whether the pilgrim travels to his local grocery store, into a trashy plot-less novel or off to a distant mountain peak, it is true that she is looking for something that sustains, something that lessens his suffering and something kindles her spirit. What the pilgrim does with her time in these places is as myriad as creation, for each infinite moment we create and add to the history of this remarkable place.

Don’t get this wrong – it does matter where the path is directed. A pilgrim who travels through TV channels will end up less full in most cases than a pilgrim who walks 108 times around Mount Kailas – The Great Spirit is a deep and murky swamp and while some pilgrimages leap on superficial lilies, others delve to the dark and dirty bottom. The bottom is profound. And just because we are all pilgrims does not mean we have all made pilgrimages, because a pilgrimage requires intent and awareness. The unnoticed pilgrimage is like a holiday dinner forgotten in the oven that neither the cook nor the guest is able to enjoy. It is like a seed thrown down to a drought.

Agapito thought of these things as his head bounced again the window of the train moving toward Machu Picchu. He looked around at the other pilgrims on the train and wondered what their intent was, where there awareness was. He was at a point in his life where he still felt a need to affirm his (more) righteous path in these places by comparing himself to others. A French man called forward to his wife who was dozing against her respective window that the llamas across the river had little bows in their head that looked like the bows their neighbors tied on their sheep back home. She mumbled something unamused and went back to sleep while he put a new memory card in his camera and sneaked a picture of a barefoot boy selling finger puppets through the window. The boy hid his head behind his hands, causing him to trip on a railroad tie.

Agapito, in his cynical self-affirming comparisons thought of the holiday dinner in the oven that was most likely forgotten by the bulk of these passengers. As if their grandparents had set a turkey, squash and maybe an apple or blackberry pie in the oven and left it for them to enjoy. The magical ancestry of the place had set everything in ornate detail while neglecting to tell them directly the importance of this meal but left signs and notes for them to follow. They left faith for them to pursue, nothing more tangible than that. And dubious, these grandchildren sit by as the feast is charred black. By the time they were on their flight back home the feast would be charred – un-enjoyable – forgetting even who was cooking and who was eating this sacred meal. “Can’t you smell that?!” Agapito shouted in his head. “It is still such a delicious feast, go fetch it from the oven and waste no time, it’s ready, it’s warm, it’s ready for you, unique and beautiful seekers!”

The Andean sun beat from above unmoved. They say that the sun lacks an ozone barrier in the southern hemisphere and the middle-aged Dutch man sitting in front of Agapito began to burn on his forehead that rested against the window as he slept. He was alone and looked as if he had needed sleep for the past 20 years.

And they were passengers too, he realized; they may not even see themselves as active in this process. And their tour operators made this even more apparent, making sure that without lifting a finger they would move to and from this pilgrimage with no real participation in it other than entering their credit card number from a distant computer on a nice-looking webpage. These days even the pilgrims en route to Mecca have their trips pre-arranged. A quick flight, short cab-ride and a brochure of things pilgrims should and should not do allow these sacred places to be visited in an extended weekend by those with the financial clout. “But they are pilgrims!” Agapito shouted in his head. And he began to wonder what motivated him to seek and why he felt that he was different than the man making cute remarks about the New-world camellids. He actually hoped that maybe he wasn’t so different.

Agapito was on his fourth pilgrimage to this famed Incan city. He was in love with the land and the way this citadel made minimal intrusions into it – “ecological design” as modern architecture would have it. To quell his churning cynicism on this train ride he tried to remember his previous three trips here, remembering the first time, noting the changes over the next two and always carrying the romantic notion that on this next trip he would show up and things would be exactly as they were in 1491. He imagined that he would arrive just as the Inca himself arrived from Cuzco.


Pachacútec, the Inca who held Machu Picchu as his private estate, had recently returned from a military incursion in the south against the Aymara of Collasuyo, the southern quarter of the rapidly expanding Incan Empire. Agapito greeted him at the stone archway and congratulated him on his successes, commenting that his father would be proud before also commenting that the new quarters of Machu Pichu seemed to be coming along at an impressive rate and that the rains had been nourishing that year on his terraces, auspicious. Agapito fancied that they were old friends that grew up together in Cuzco, he being the son of a noble shaman in the Cuzco court. They had been apart for years during Pachacútec’s military escapades, but now it seemed they were both finally at a place to enjoy the solitude of Machu Picchu as old friends should.

Agapito was eager to share his travel stories with the Inca, having recently returned from shamanic rites in the Amazon lowlands, involving a month of hiking toward the east, a month of retreat with the Ashaninka tribesmen who had still maintained hidden during the Incan expansion. Agapito learned about hallucinogenic vines and through these incorporated the healing spirit of the jaguar and knowledge of the tree of life. He gained a new skill in dreamtime travel that allowed him access to the clairvoyance of the condor and knowledge of the seven skies. And his hair now began to grow long and grey. In these rites Agapito had returned, in local shamanic circles, a true healer, with knowledge now of the plants of the high Andes and the low Amazon, a claim no other Cuzco healer could make and only possible through the Inca’s recent road building and expansion into the Ashaninka lands. The two friends arrived to Machu Picchu this time as heroes and together they passed through the entrance to Pachacútec’s private estate, both eager to share a jug of chicha in celebration and feast of alpaca meat and quinoa with laurel and locoto peppers.

As they moved to the inner rooms of Pachacútec’s estate, he sent for the four ceremonial llamas to be slaughtered in respect for the four directions of Tawantinsuyo, the Incan Empire, along with the twenty captured Aymara soldiers that earned the privilege to also be sacrificed as an offering for harmony within these four regions. Their entourage now expanded to include the 8 most beautiful women at the estate, four llamas, twenty Aymara warriors, a local priest and the local chicha brewer. Other servants and helpers began to file in as they made their way to the Temple of the Condor.


As the train rattled past a series of terraces the female guide introduced herself to this car as Cecilia – “Like the famous folkloric music of Simon and Garfunkel”, she added – and was obviously thrilled to be fortunate enough to share her 117th trip to Machu Picchu with a group of Evangelical Christians from Missouri. Along with the French couple, their guide and the middle-aged Dutch man, Agapito shared the car with this group of 37 blonde-haired, chubby-cheeked and bellied, corn-bred folks, ages 14-63 from the great American heartland – a group of folks who were utterly unaware that the Incans and their “New World” brethren domesticated the corn that now, with various genetic modifications and sterilizations, fed their corn-bred countenances – the Angus fat that filled their cheeks, flapped in their arteries and shut their aunt’s and uncle's blood-flow now and again.

CORN. Don’t forget it, the people of this New World found it first. They found it before the soda industry, before Iowa, before movie-theaters and circuses, before Doritos and Con Agra, before food processing, before high fructose anything. They found it purple, they found it blue, they found it white and even red and their palates were capable of savoring any color or size – they ate it, drank it, slurped it, tossed it, stomped it, boiled it, toasted it, TOASTED it, chewed it up and spat it out, told stories about it, made songs about it, built myths around it and built their lives around it.


Cecilia explained the complex system of agricultural distribution in the Incan Empire that allowed for a well-fed and nourished population in very simple terms. She expanded on this in the way that Machu Picchu sat in a middle ground between the Andes and Amazon, between high alpine to tropical lowland ecosystems, where varied crops grown along these ecological steps allowed for a balanced diet, especially with the inclusion of high-protein grains such as quinoa and amaranth and the amazing variety of potatoes that would grow up to 15,000 feet above sea level. And she mentioned that most likely these terraces would have grown corn, which was best suited for that ecological tier. “Even when the Espanish, arrived, they was amazed of the nutrition the Incan persons exhibited. It were much more greater than the persons of Espain of the same time. And which remind me friends, if you hungry or thirsty, please know breakfast is served on this one-hours ride to the Machu Picchu City. We don’t wants to be hungry like the Espanish, no?

“And so here’s, in the Valley Sacrado and the Machu Picchu City, in the center of whats was known as Tawantinsuyu. “The Incans”, as we calls them today was not called like that before the Espanish. “Inca” was whats was called the ruler and “Tawantinsuyu” was whats was called the kingdom. And this, friends, was where we see the Four Directions converge, with the Cuzco middle and how this is said in Quechua, the mother tongue of the Inca is “Tawantinsuyu” . . .

“Damn, who’d uh thunk they wuz farmin, you know hun. I dunno, I guess I jus always thought they wuz more, you know, savage or sumthin. An they had an Empire, she sayin, greater than anything in Europe then. Good thin our Spanish brothers had God with them,” a large and wheezing woman said to her sleeping and nearly snoring husband. While the husband leaned on the seat in front of him Agapito noticed his white t-shirt bearing the line, “Red Springs Evangelical Church of Christ: An old God for a New World,” in English, Spanish and Quechua.

She continued to listen intently to Cecilia as the Andean version of El Condor Pasa took to the airwaves and then her husband woke and commented, “Hey I know this diddy, ‘cept I think this jus some bad cover of Simon and Garfunkel. See, they always tryin to be like us, they want our people, they need our god, you know?”

“Yeah, I think yur right,” she replied. “I’m, jus glad we could come here an lurn this first hand, you know? It makes it jus so easy to keep wantin to save their souls, knowin from tha horse’s mouth jus how down an out these folks be without Christ, or even with that sad Catholic Christ they been thrown. Say, hun, let’s come back with the kids next year, maybe set up a booth at that Machu Picchu herself. Ain’t never seen it yet, but I ain’t never hurd of no booth or house of God there yet. I think they’d need one. Like they’s sayin’ in that song ‘Yes I would, if I could.’ Well, we could, you know? An’ God knows since we could that we should.”

Agapito tried to drown this chatter and settle into his meditation for his journey ahead and to remind himself that humans around the world were just doing their best to live well in a seemingly paradoxical world.

Prophets and Profits

In a day when profits are so quantified and prophets less than qualified, knowing which of these wisdoms to put in your pocket can be challenging and undignified. As if the two words just happened to strike a conversation to realize their distant filial roots and next jump at the opportunity to reunite in the 21st century.

An extraordinary Profit spoke to an unlearned Prophet and told him of all the best gains to be made in all the worst ways and the two of them struck an unconventional partnership. So where is your Profit? Who is your Prophet? The high point on the graph, the bottom line of moral misconception fundamentals? The problem with fundamentalist Prophets is their number one concern is the moral bottom line, and the problem with fundamentalist Profit seekers is that their number one concern is the financial bottom line. And as if you ever thought that the two were distinguishable anymore, consider which informs the majority of the modern world’s decisions. Prophetical profiteering pioneering a new period of growth for the human wallet and soul.

So following too close to a prophet or a profit must lead to despair and completely undermine the bold beauty of human authenticity and individuality. But if you want that, if you truly WANT that, then don’t expect others to follow the economic or ecumenic evangelism with any enthusiasm.

Frutilla, more fog and a present moment

I have been walking through a cloud for 6 days and the cloud continues thick like an avalanche. The Andes are all around but the mountains can’t be seen for the fog. And this is not unusual.

When I left my home in Chojalpaya last week I intended to return by nightfall, but when night fell I found myself unable to see up from down and even was maybe lifted up, buoyed just slightly by the thick and damp air. As if the water were so thick in the air that the medium had changed, were the lakes now air bubble? Had gravity switched positions from down to up? My breath is full and lungs lubricated by moist Amazon air that filled each cubic inch with super-saturated jungle water drops.

And now Chojalpaya has become a memory, one I pay no mind to in my present foggy awareness. I could be in a valley or on a mountain top and it would make no difference, for I am here in a cloud and directions have been lost with my home.

I contemplate my name, Agapito, and the way that each lingual movement can be felt, from the aspirated beginning the throaty middle, bouncing again to the lips with a pursed “p”, then to the palate with my tongue and again with an aspirated “o” to finish the song-let. Aspirated ends with a rhythmic belly, a dynamic name as important as its meaning. “A little bit of God’s love, A little bit of God’s love . . .” I chant my name now as I move through the valley-top, or wherever I am, sharing the present moment with God’s presence.

I am 15 years old, from the Bolivian Andes, raised below the Condor’s nest, growing up in the puma’s print, covered with the llama’s wool. In my medicine bag I hold the hair of my first haircutting when I had 2 years. It reminds me of my past. So does the landscape, for here is where my ancestors lived and continue to hold watch: “Pacha” is both the place around me and the time that is woven into it.

I have not eaten since I left Chojolpaya and know that if I can drop toward the rising sun I will have coca and wild potatoes, but for that I would need to know up and down, rising and setting sun, I would need to have a sense of the five directions, which the clouds are keeping from me. I sit and walk and sit and laugh, and lay to sleep.

Just as I lay down for a siesta, I hear heavy panting from somewhere near me, to my back. It is the breath of a puma for sure, and I jump to my feet. The condor guides the heavens, the serpent under the earth and the puma this middles realm that humand inhabit. Her presence may be auspicious but it is also frightening. Running ahead I hear the breath behind me, growing stronger, growing closer. My breath becomes heavy, and I can tell that my path is ascending. I am running along a ridge now for sure. I am winning, I am ahead of the puma, how is that possible?

I see a massive dark object ahead of me and as I approach I realize it is a cliff, I will be cornered by the puma for sure and die quickly, at least this death will keep me in this middle realm. But this cliff is not too steep, maybe I can live for a while longer, maybe long enough for the fog to lift, either way it’s worth trying to climb this right now. So I move up, and the cat takes a jump at my ankles just as I scamper above it. It misses and I feel its breath on my heels as I climb far above. Free from the menace now I continue to climb with ease, but the rock is loose and I become completely present with my ascent toward the condor realm, taking care to use only the most solid holds. It is precarious.

As I climb up the top begins to become clear, a grassy step where the cliff ends. I am pulling onto the top with lucid vision, so lucid that I feel the fog may be lifting. And as I gather myself, standing upright another wave of fear enters through my ears and settles in my lower stomach as I hear the heavy breath of a second puma right in front of me. I can make out its swift gait, approaching as a blurry spot as I rapidly climb back down the cliff. The puma swipes once at my hand and stand perched over the cliff above me as I move back down, hoping that the puma below has lost interest and headed back into the fog. As I descend I hear it’s heavy breath below and realize it is still waiting. Calmly perched on a ledge I quiet my breath to see if either of the pumas have left.

Still in front.

Still behind.

In my Aymara language the past can be found in front of us and the future behind us. I name the puma ahead of me “Times-Past” and the puma behind me “Times-Ahead” and sit down on my perch to see what comes. The rock has been crumbling since I touched it climbing up and now the ledge where I am sitting begins to fracture. I stand up and find some new holds that are all loose and now with a heavy rain they begin to loosen even more. I have not eaten in a week and with Times-Past above me and Times-Ahead behind me, I become present with the hunger in my belly. I notice the most colorful strawberry on a vine right in front of my face. Moving my hand to grasp the vine I pluck the strawberry. It is cold and I run my finger over the seeds, plucking one off its skin to taste the seed. I have never done that before. What does the seed taste like without the fruit?

Looking at myself from a condors view I pull back and see my precarious place between these two frightful beasts. I can see myself and the strawberry seeds and fruit and Times-Ahead and Times-Past in a miniscule scene on the side of a mountain while the rest of the world exists outside the fog. I swoop and see the forest below, following a river from a glacier to the Amazon and I empathize with the puma’s need for food and survival as essential as the water’s path down the mountain – I am content with time and with endings and change. Standing with myself and this present moment on this crumbling ledge I throw the whole fruit into my mouth, the only one on the vine. As I cut through it’s flesh the fruit explodes into my mouth and I am more satisfied than I have ever been.

Valle Cochamo and the Soggy Fog Goddess (Wilderness part II)

LA LLEGADA AL SUR
Agapito and Juan were both intelligent, philosophically inclined and advanced beings and Juan knew better than to be cynical of the lack of preserved wilderness in a foreign land. The exoticism that he carried as well as the romanticism that Agapito carried was naïve and they could only blame themselves for being let down but they both still wanted that experience of the Wilderness – Juan a bit more so. So they continued south – zigging and zagging now and again into the forest wall and swamps of the Amazon, across the vast altiplano of Bolivia to which Agapito would later return, past the nitrate and guano fields of northern Chile, over and around the dotted volcanoes that speckled this landscape, through the vineyard of central Chile and Argentina to the lakes, fjords, glaciers and jungles of Patagonia, the end of the world.

In Patagonia they found the four elements to be as present as their four limbs, as the four stars of the Southern Cross – they were impossible to ignore. The fire of the volcanoes The water of the ocean, rain, rivers and glaciers The earth of the jagged peaks and ancient trees that cut into the sky The air that never stops moving.

They found giant Alerce trees that maybe existed at the same time that Egyptians were beginning to write. The stories in the trees’ rings record over 4,000 years of history. Juan likened them to the redwoods of California. And like the redwoods, they found logging cutting into this history with mighty saws, hauling them out of the once-vast Valdivian rainforests. Juan became disheartened and began to wonder if their search for the Wilderness had been made in vain. If not here then where? Continue to the South Pole? They both agreed that true Wilderness is not wilderness out of lack of options. Not wilderness in the way that icy mountaintops or polar icecaps are wilderness, not void of life. These wild places are wild out of necessity, out of impossibility. The Wilderness they sought was full of life but devoid of the rapid alterations of humans – the kind of place that gives us a glimpse of what lies beneath our dim-blanket of human awareness, hairless human skin and creative impulse, humans hands before we invented the hammer.


EL VALLE
Together they found the Valle Cochamo tucked in the mountains lining one-such rainforest in the northern fjords of Chilean Patagonia. In this region around 6 meters of rain falls each year. A Fog Goddess (yes, she’s obviously a she-goddess) perpetually plops on her soggy haunches for 350 days of the year, and the valley was shrouded in mist as they approached 20 kilometers from the coast. And even for the first week they camped at La Junta, the confluence of the valley’s two largest rivers, they saw no more than the trees around them, clouds and rain keeping any other sights mystifyingly veiled. And oh, this moved them into something more primordial, with visual stimulation around them being fuzzy and mystifyingly blurred, the landscape within them became increasingly intriguing – it was as if they moved in a time where substance existed but form had not yet been found, perhaps like the primordial soup as the first molecules were beginning to come together. With all the moisture it definitely felt like a soup, organic of course.

In their closed world they moved back to a sort of nascent beginning where all possibilities were still being considered, no rules put in place about what this world could look like. True, they were oblivios, hidden in a cloud and unable to see the massive 3,000-foot granite cliffs that bordered the valley on all sides, or the rancher’s house right across the river. It was a dream, really, stumbling with a frame of reference that extended no further than the billions of water molecules right in front of their eyes and for all they knew, this was the entire universe. Their search for Wilderness became a search of inches rather than one of thousands of miles. What this allowed was for the landscape to take on a formless existence, one where they could make up their own story, like children still putting the pieces together for this strange life. The bamboo they cut through and pulled in attempts to explore steep valleys and peaks became snakes, each one with wisdom about how to grow old with a youthful snap. They heard the water molecules so thick in the air bumping into one another and making music like the symphony of the spheres, and when they listened even closer it seemed that they could hear the symphony of the fundamental superstrings. As they crossed a river once, they truly felt that they were in the pulsing veins of Pachamama with the fog around them obviously adding to the feeling of being INSIDE her.


Even Juan was in rapture and at one point found Agapito in the fog after losing him for four days and said, “I art thou and I am inside thou! Hallelujah, hermano, THIS is what we were looking for!”

And it was during these intense meditations in the fog that they realized Wilderness to be ubiquitous, and the apparent loss of it in the physical world simply being manifest of the loss of it in the spiritual world. Humans would lash out into the wilderness of the natural world for fear of embracing the wilderness within themselves: the one that Jesus explored for 40 days or that aborigines explore in a rite of passage Walkabout – the vast irremovable Wilderness with strings that tie this physical place to the raw expanse of universal spirit. And it is true that these natural places open these doors, moving the outside in and the inside out.

EL RETORNO
Around day 18 of exploring the soggy underside of the Fog Goddess, she decided to stand up and wring out her damp underpants in a sunny spot for a while to allow Juan and Agapito a larger view of the wilderness they had been stumbling through. They rubbed their eyes – eternally thankful for the Fog Goddess and all the introspection she had allowed with her suffocating squat – and allowed them to scan this massive landscape unveiling. They could finally see the warped crown of the 4,000-year old Alerce trees and, sitting in the grassy meadow of La Junta, their view turned skyward and toward the horizon. A dozen granite domes emerged from under the Fog Goddess as she stood up and Juan spoke of his first time walking into Yosemite Valley. They could see distant glaciers at the head of the valley and both felt they were in one of the most beautiful places in the world. They also both agreed that this was not the Wilderness they thought they were looking for 5 months prior. Juan pointed to the wooden ranch house with Alerce shingles and said, “Nope, not it, see, the house there? Definitely not what we were looking for.”

They both laughed as they embraced both the macro and micro views of the world around them, giving thanks to each and feeling a bit naïve in expecting that their search for Wilderness need take them thousands of miles from home.

Agapito kneeled down and peered beneath a bush, giggling “Oye Don Juan el Viejo, have a look under here, I think I found it. I don’t see a single trace of the human fingerprint in here.” His nose was in the dirt and was talking about a square inch of earth.

As Agapito stood up, Juan put his hand against his chest and said, “You know ‘Pito, I feel the strong presence of Wilderness right here. And I’m ok with that cabin over there, just as I’m ok with leaving this place and the pursuit of wilderness. I’ve been around, mi hijo, and I learned something new when I’d thought I was done learning. And I’m ready to head back out of here. While we go, though, let’s do a k’intu with some of those leaves you have left from Peru. I’ve never been much into blessing and prayer but that soggy lady changed something in me. How do you do a k’intu?”

“Here, I’ll do it.”

“No, show me and I’ll do it. It’s time I learn something about blessing and prayer rather than just thought and action.” And Agapito fetched his bag of coca leaves, explaining how to pick the finest leaves for the offering and stack three of them in a fan. He explained the symbolic convergence of the four directions at Tawantinsuyu, with east as rebirth and insight, the west as death and wisdom, the north as clarity and cleansing and the south as the source of wisdom from plants as well as reproduction and regeneration. He showed him how to also recognize the convergence of these directions in here and now, in the place they stood as time and place were intricately woven together. And then finally the sacred breath that is blown on the offering and following these steps, Juan performed his first k’intu.

They allowed the breath to carry. They actually felt Juan’s breath turn to a breeze. As the breeze turned to wind it began to howl and a song took form in the trees and the high passes of the surrounding peaks. The three coca leaves were lifted from his hands and began to dance. One leaf spun to the ground and was covered by the earth. Another hovered around eye level and rose to the crown of a nearby Alerce before moving back to eye-level and quivering there. The final leaf fluttered up then swirled back down before a gust put it into flight far above and out of sight.

With three tiers of the universe auspiciously marked with the wind and leaves by this k’intu they decided it was time to move out of the valley. As they walked down the trail a wall of bamboo sprouted in their wake and the Fog Goddess squatted back down and began her cold-dank perspiration. Cochamo vanished behind them and they carried Wilderness with them.


The Cochamo Valley is one of the most spectacular and wild pieces of Patagonian wilderness that remains. The preserved Alerces, Valdivian Rainforest, wildlife and watersheds are among the last of their kind in Patagonia, a place where similar landscapes were abundant in the recent past. Add to this the ribboned waterfalls and gigantic granite mountains and you have one of the most beautiful valleys in the world, deserving of the comparisons drawn between it and Yosemite. The place is receiving increased visits from backpackers but plans are underway that could open a road through the valley to Argentina. This would be a disaster for the preservation of this one-of-a-kind gem of natural splendor and would open it up for logging, mining and development. Who will benefit? This story is obviously not unique, just worth sharing. And conversations about this being a developed vs. developing or first vs. third world issue must be kept for another page.

Rio La Junta Cascadas (natural waterslides)

5.11a crux of 22pitch, 3,000 foot Bienvenidos a mi Insomnia

The Soggy Fog Goddess

La Gorila framed on the 16km approach

Slacking at Refugio La Junta