Ale La (Go There)

In the middle of sorting through my fears, dreams, hopes, and future plans I have found an Eden. The wildness is calling me. Lately, on my days off I am outside. I’m running the trails behind Fullerton. I am in the mountains with my family. I am pinching the flowering heads off of my basil plants, and leaning into and the rich, deep smell of homegrown tomatoes in the sunshine. When I’m inside, I’m wearing woolen hiking socks and T-Shirt that says “Go climb a rock.” I am smelling the left-over bonfire smoke in my hair and reading John Muir letters. The wildernesses outside and inside collide. Life is huge. It is full of things we do not understand. There are great joys and great tragedies. And sometimes in the rush and crush of overwhelming feelings we miss the grandiosity, the extravagance and joy.  I think the unexplained wildness of creation may be the very thing that calls to our hearts, the trigger of creation and the intricate detail of our innermost c...

What is it like to arrive somewhere after walking kilometers through the dust, dirt and thin air? Maybe the altitude is sucking your breath away, maybe you have blisters or an ingrown toenail, maybe you are feeling good, or terrible, and maybe you are thinking What did I get myself into? as you realize that the only way out is more of the same mule trails stretching on in a seemingly perpetual pattern of ascents and descents. Here is a brief description of each of our arrivals: Llanca. We saw Llanca first from across the canyon. We were going down a slippery gravel road in the back of the cattle truck and looking up at the crisscross of the line that was to be the next 4 hours of a nice little hike/climb. It's always discouraging to go down before you have to go back up. After climbing up in the dust and wind for a few hours, we started to pass the fields and a few of the towns people came running down the path to do the afternoon chores and shouted encouragements to...

I have, at last met the Real Baddest Ass on the planet. Some of you may know that I am, admittedly, a little obsessed with being a bad-ass. Well, I have found him, or her, the boldest Baddest Ass on the planet lives in the Colca Canyon and looks like this . Do you see him? That tiny speck in front of the mountains. That is the mule that was standing in the middle of our path on the longest day of hiking in all of my life. Do you also see the amazing backdrop of the mountains behind the Bad-Ass? Yes, you see the mountains? Oh good. Does anyone else think that those mountains are epic enough to be featured in the upcoming hobbit movie? Peter Jackson, bring your dragons, trolls and elves to Peru, you won't regret it. I felt like I was walking through the mountains of New Zealand with all of my friends; Aragorn, Merry, Pippin, Frodo, and company, which meant that I was thinking a lot about Lord of the Rings while we were hiking through the Colca Canyon. Here ...

In this post, I'm testing the philosophy that less is more, simply because it is pretty hard to describe how amazing it is to hike around here, even when that means you have to wake up at some un-godly hour of the middle of the night and hike by the light of a headlamp. Picture it. It is 3 in the morning, you are clambering over volcanic rocks, breathless because the air is thin, farther up the mountain you can see the lights of a group that is further ahead. You are wearing three layers of pants (which makes high stepping up onto all these rocks a little more challenging), two pairs of socks, a shirt, a fleece, a jacket, gloves, a hat, etc, but you are still cold. You have to stop to breath, but you can't stop for too long because it is COLD (did I already mention that it is cold? Whooops!). You can see all kinds of constellations, shooting stars, and the weird refracted light off of the snow from the peak that looms closer and closer. If you succeed you will arrive at th...