The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
– Marcel Proust
Desire and determination get me up the mountain, nothing less. During the rainy season, Acomayo Canyon and its surrounding peaks are not for the timid. Water bathes torturously steep, precarious slopes in mud and scree. At the base of dramatic cliffs are broken rock fragments that have been loosened in a shower of dust.
Yet, again and again, I am compelled to ride on horseback into these immense and astonishing landscapes.
“Seduction” has negative implications of premeditation and strategy, the word stemming from Latin meaning, literally, “leading astray.” Coercion is not what these highest elevations offer. They engage all of the senses with an elemental pulse throbbing from within. Travel to remote destinations minimally developed for tourism, with the extremes of sensation it delivers, in short order shocks the receptive into recognition that being alive means that our bodies are connected to and affected by our emotions. Flesh and bones, heart and intellect, formerly a collection of freewheeling parts, shape shift into alignment.
On this first morning, leaving later than usual from the agrarian community of Huayqui in order to allow the sun to drain the trails, my guide, Edward Rimachi Yanqui and I minimize our gear, forgoing the need for a pack horse. Leaving the weighty world of the village behind, immediately, a person is plunged into the rarefied impression of something set apart, as if headed into a dream. Soon, we spy vicuña, those uniquely untamed creatures of high, ethereal haze and electric wit, defying gale and glacier where little else can. Unpoliced and unpacified, they are rebellious desperados living by their own code in proximity with the otherworldly guardian spirits of the mountains, the sacred energies Andean people call Apus.
We camp by a waterfall, since childhood my opening adventure sleeping in a tent. My daughter, an expert river guide on the Grand Canyon, advises me on the best methods to stay warm, retaining body heat through the night.
Alpaca, herded into a pen skinned with sheets of their droppings, come twilight, smolder with the feral odor of naturally-oily wool combined with wet in a pungent cocktail. Land itself seems to inhale and exhale the savage, midnight must of creatures whose throats are routinely cut and corpses bled out to provide food for human consumption, their fleece becoming rough-hewn saddle coverings and throws.
In this precious time warp of my conscious creation, to experience something of what the Inca must have experienced, in spaces of overwhelming grandeur they could read and understand, offers a hint of physical joining, as if history contracted.
A vacant cabin as well, close to where Edward and I sleep, links present to past. In truth, the cabin is a tiny, walled shelter of stone and earth with a low-pitched roof of timbers, interlaced sticks and ichu grass thatch. These dwellings, ubiquitous across the countryside, are places where people practicing animal husbandry and farming cook and rest after pastoral days spent outside. Their design carries us back to the beginnings of human existence.
Did you ever drink mate in a Stone Age hut?
Settled into my tent, believing my guide has done the same, I smelled a wood-burning fire. Wedging my way outside from a half-closed flap whose zipper is broken, avoiding the usual sheep droppings, I climb up onto a rock. Smoke, fervid-blue in the light of a solar-powered lamp, is coming from the cabin. A local shepherd has taken up residence, I calculate excitedly. But no, even better, it is Yanqui, still in chaps and cowboy hat, an apparition materializing suddenly from the shadows and inviting me to late-evening tea.
Always I’d thought of mate as being consumed through a metal, straw-like implement from a small, dried gourd and typical of the Argentine gaucho culture. In this case, however, he pours boiling water over a leafy, green herb called muña believed to aid in curing altitude sickness. We drink from tin cups sterilized with the same boiling water.
Hunger for smoky stories told by star is primal in the Homo sapiens narrative. Coupled with fire, ancient, whispered tales are recast into breath made visible anew. Lacking formalized written language, oral recitations come to life as visions as much as they are heard. Inside this wind-swept habitat, inches from the flame, my seat is a bleak bench covered in an intact pelt and woven blankets. Sensing, yet knowing not who is there beside me, I too cannot help but lower my voice. Beyond the four-dimensional continuum, in the presence of magic, outside it begins to storm.
Breakfast is a carbohydrate-loaded stew of potatoes and tubular pasta. It’s enhanced with a packet of desiccated chick peas, rice and red lentils flavored with coconut and curry. Eating heartily despite our strange brew, we, nevertheless, serve ample leftovers to a pair of skinny dogs, two of the semidomesticated hounds seen everywhere throughout the cordilleras. They seeming belong both to everyone and also to no one all at once. Displaying gorgeous aerial supremacy, a kettle of hawks, brown with golden highlights, swoop low over the canines that are now frolicking contentedly beneath an unending, cerulean sky.
At 14,100 feet above sea level, Wakra Pukará is the centerpiece of a bowl silhouetted by even higher pinnacles that seem to protect it. With her twin granite horns, her incomparable beauty is arguably the most spectacular in the Andean world. As captivating in the 21st century as she must have been to the Qanchhi between 1,500 BC and 1,000 BC and then Inca during the reign of Wayne Qhapaq, she sits in a colossal ravine covered in forests crowning the abysses overlooking the canyon of the River Apurímac. The scenic impact of her surroundings enhance the marvel of the architectural wonder that is Wakra Pukará, clearly a sanctuary with political, spiritual and ceremonial power dominating the landscape without altering its magnificence. Wakra Pukará easily competes with the best cultural and adventure destinations globally, all without massive visitor presence. I am fortunate, indeed, to find in Yanqui a guide of experience, skill and passion to safely lead me to and return me from such high-mountain destinations.
Using traditional Puebloan materials and design, I am assisting him in an effort to build a cabaña where guests of his trekking expeditions, with a particular focus on Wakra Pukará, Tambo Pukará, Yacta Pukará and Aya Pukará can stay. The location is extremely remote; a stretch of land gifted to Edward by his grandfather.
Issues with crew not showing up at the site and meeting commitments plague us. Even so, we work hard to finish alongside reliable contractors as we find. A masonry floor has been laid and walls have been plastered. There is a wood-burning fireplace, and a kitchen faces the setting sun. A horse corral is just next door.
Living with Yanqui and his family in the rural community of Huayqui while construction of the cabaña continues is a precious experience. My bedroom and bed are his bedroom and bed on loan, a tack room for storage of saddles and bridles. My bathroom is an outdoor, communal bathroom with the exclusively ice-cold water typical of provincial Peru. Meal preparation is not so different from making mate in the shepherd’s hut I write about.
Poverty is relational. While conditions in Huayqui are normal for Yanqui and his family, they are new for me, necessitating considerable adjustment for an individual of relative privilege.
Splendor in the clouds is a priceless gateway opening into the playground of the wild self. Loving this sky, this land and these people unconditionally is a metaphor for infinite possibility. Reaching for a deeper, fuller, more intelligent life get me up the mountain, nothing less. It is worth almost any hardship the body can bear.
Janice Jada Griffin is a graduate of Sotheby’s Institute Of Art in London, a designer and an internationally-sold painter who owned her own art gallery in Portland, Oregon, for a decade. She lives and works in Santa Fe, and is currently writing a book based on her ongoing experiences in Peru. For more information visit avant-garde-art.com or email her at soul@avant-garde-art.com.
