Braver Than You Think

by Maggie Downs

  After planning, dreaming, and saving, Jason and I are finally on our way. I am ascending a mountain with the man I love, and I can see the peak from where I stand. I’m crazy to even think about turning back.

  The final push to Dead Woman’s Pass is a 3,000-foot elevation gain over the course of three hours. It feels like an exercise machine set for the highest level, like one of those stair-climbers that never take you anywhere. My joints ache from the force of being yanked uphill and into motion while the altitude tries to smash me down. I look to my feet for several minutes, then I focus on the hairy calves of the man in front of me, then I stare at the sky, then back to the ground. My lungs feel like fire.

  After about an hour, I enter a Zen-like meditation, in which I count my steps and allow the numbers to fill my head. “One, two, three … ugh, four, five, six …” Every time I get to 250, I start over. I don’t know why I decided to focus on numbers, but it helps. It gives me a focus beyond the struggle to breathe and walk; it takes me beyond the trail. It’s kind of like having an out-of-body experience, though if I were out of my body then my thighs wouldn’t burn so much.

  Eventually, there is a moment when my feet are moving but I no longer have to force myself to climb. I am simply doing it.

  When I reach the top of the pass, I stop staring at my shoes, at the ground, at the unyielding sky. From this vantage point, the highest point of this hike, I see snow-capped peaks. Miles of mountains, embroidered with gray trails. And my hiking group, waiting for me. All I hear is applause.

  I’ve made it.

  By the end of the day, after a brief descent to our campsite, we are closer to the end of the trail than the beginning. We’ve gone too far to turn back.

  DAY THREE PROMISES TO BE LONG—NEARLY TEN MILES total—but we are given motivation for hiking faster and harder than ever. Showers wait for us at the campsite, the first opportunity to bathe on this trek.

  Juan also says the first group to the campsite will have a better position on the trail the following morning, the day we will finally see Machu Picchu.

  Along the way, we walk the same path the Inca paved, with many of the original stones still in place. We pause for breakfast at Runkuracay, small, circular ruins made of stone, which overlook the Pacamayo valley. We hike along steep rock embankments, skirting deep precipices.

  Another set of ruins is called Sayacmarca, “inaccessible town,” protected by sheer cliffs on three sides. The structures remain secretive—nobody knows exactly why they were built and how they were used—and I am overwhelmed. There are stories here, fossilized in the buildings, and nobody can ever unearth them. How can something be both tangible and so unknown?

  This is my mom’s narrative. She still exists, but her stories are lost forever. Her death is the kind that she is forced to live every day, paused somewhere between earth and what exists beyond. She is my inaccessible town.

  I scramble to hold fast to my memories of my mom, but time has faded them. I remember bits and snapshots: Our overgrown backyard in Huber Heights, Ohio, where my mom let me run through the garden sprinkler, though she somehow never got wet. Afternoon walks to the duck pond, tossing stale crusts to the birds. Picking wild mulberries in the woods, staining our hands the color of a bruise. Pushing me on a swing my brother hung from the maple tree in the front yard; I know one day the swing fell, but I can’t remember if she caught me.

  One time my plastic digital watch stopped working, and my mom slapped it across her palm with such force it turned her hand pink. “Just needs a good German touch,” she said as the digital numbers reappeared.

  I have wispy memories of her when she was slender and tall, swishing into the house after attending grown-up parties. I purposely stayed awake long after the babysitter put me to bed, just to receive my mom’s soft kiss on my forehead. I relished the vision of her draped in sparkly jewelry, dressed elegantly, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, the sweet smell of a strawberry daiquiri mixed with perfume. Why should that vibrant version of my mom exist only in the past?

  If I shut my eyes, I can resurrect her; when I open them again, she is lost.

  When I sniffle, Jason stops. “What’s wrong?” he says, and he pushes a lock of sweaty hair from my forehead.

  We’re so close to the finish line of this spectacular place, the end of the goal we set for our honeymoon hike. Soon he’ll return to California, and I’ll continue wandering, with no clear-cut path. It’s hard enough for me to keep going when there’s a trail pointing the way. How am I supposed to keep going when there is nobody to guide me? Will I be strong enough to carry myself?

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I just don’t want this trail to come to an end.”

  We’re at a place where the path is broken and uneven, where many of the original stones are coming undone. The rocks are hard but unstable. Stairs crumble beneath our feet. The air is moist, and most steps are covered with slippery, wet leaves, so every movement requires extra vigilance. This feels like the most treacherous ground of all. I feel most unsteady.

  After a few more hours of hiking through the cloud forest, we finally reach our campsite for the night, Wiñay Wayna, named for the pink orchid that grows only here. In Quechua, the indigenous language, it means “forever young.”

  Our tents are erected near an extensive set of Incan ruins—agricultural terraces, house-like structures, walkways with long staircases and large baths.

  This is where I take my first shower in three days. I pay $1.50 for three minutes of hot water. I feel as though I’ve been baptized, reborn through this age-old ritual of walking, sweating, scrubbing the dirt from my feet, becoming clean again.

  PEDRO WAKES THE GROUP AT 4 A.M.

  “Let’s go, let’s go. Arriba!”

  We are given coffee and thin, rolled crepes for breakfast, which we eat in silence. This is going to be the easiest day of hiking, only about three hours until we reach the Sun Gate, but the sense of ending is palpable. Today we will see Machu Picchu, and then we will scatter on our own ways.

  It is dark outside, the kind of dark when dawn seems unreachable. With flashlights in hand, we take to the trail. The goal is to get to the ruins before sunrise, but Juan warns that we must be careful. At this point the path is a delicate contour that winds a thin line around the mountains, with sheer drop-offs to the right. Juan says some hikers have tumbled from the trail and were only discovered weeks later.

  We walk single file, with Juan following close behind.

  “Mountainside!” he hisses when any of us stray too far to the edge.

  When I look backward, I see scores of other hikers and their flashlights, like a string of Christmas lights draped along the Andes.

  Before long we hit an official checkpoint, where a guard must check our Inca Trail hiking permits (the trail is limited to 500 hikers and porters per day, and this is strictly regulated) and stamp our passports. However, the office doesn’t open until 5:30 a.m.—we still have more than an hour to wait. Juan didn’t tell us about this part.

  It is cold, and Jason and I huddle together for warmth.

  “Aw, it’s like being on the floor of the Lima airport all over again, honey,” I say.

  “Stop.”

  We try to pass the time with games, but even the woman who was once a cruise ship entertainer—a bubbly, chatty blonde—has lost her natural enthusiasm.

  “I spy something with my little eye,” she mutters. Her scarf is bundled around her face. She sits on a bench near the guard’s office and looks more like a heap of blankets than a person.

  “Is it black?” I say.

  “Yes.”

  “Is it darkness?”

  “Yes. You win. Game over.”

  The guard arrives and checks our documents. As soon as he gives us the proper stamps, we sprint. The last hour is all running. I take puffs from my emergency inhaler as we jog higher and higher.

  Finally, as dawn breaks, we reach the final ascent. Fifty steps, nearly vertical. The angle is so dr
amatic, I’m forced to approach it like a child and climb on my hands and feet in a bear crawl.

  When I reach the top, I look down and gasp. It’s there. Machu Picchu, all spread out below me. It’s like a massive Lego masterpiece—a dazzling display of carefully laid blocks, precise stone architecture, and staircases of terraces hewn from the rich green land.

  There are places that never live up to the hype. There are places that will never look as good as the postcards. Machu Picchu is not one of those places. It’s there, I see it, but it doesn’t look possible.

  This is where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon Basin in a tropical mountain forest. The velvety mountaintops look like rococo sculptures, draped with valances of mosses, dotted with ferns, decorated by canopies of trees. It is an embarrassment of green. Wispy fog forms gauzy rings around each peak.

  About 200 structures form the sanctuary of Machu Picchu, set on steep ridges of granite and laced with white rock terraces. The walls of each building are formed so perfectly that a knife cannot be wedged in between the stones. Llamas graze nearby. Jason and I sit and watch the sun move across the mountains, our eyes clouded with tears. A flock of neon green parakeets swoops overhead.

  I think of my mom now, as I take in this place I didn’t know I was strong enough to reach. She would be proud of the four days I spent breathing in sun, the nights spent sleeping among stars. She’d want to see me here, strong in the midst of ruins.

  I wonder if the wounds we carry inside us are like the wounds we show on the outside. I remember falling often as a clumsy little girl, all scabbed knees and elbows. My mother was slow to bandage me. Instead she told me to give my cuts sunshine and air, the necessary ingredients to heal.

  Maybe this is what brought me to Peru at this particular moment. She has been sick for ten years. I know my mom’s death is coming, and that wound is raw and vulnerable. But Machu Picchu is a reminder of timelessness. Even when abandoned, it wasn’t destroyed. Some things never disappear.

  The sun is round and bright as Jason and I scramble among the buildings, feeling the polished stones laid by fifteenth-century hands. A breeze spills over the mountains and rolls down the terraces. We clamber up a hill to a carved pillar called Intihuatana, which translates to “the hitching post of the sun.” It’s a sundial of sorts, where Incan astronomers once predicted the celestial periods. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes each year, the sun halts over the pillar at midday, casting no shadow.

  Those are the days when the sun has lassoed the rock, and for the briefest, most golden moment, the earth and sky meet. Once separated, the two spend the next six months traveling the universe to find each other again.

  I kneel by the pillar and put my hand atop the rock. It is still warm.

  You’re Not Lost. The Trail Is.

  JASON AND I ARRIVE ON A SMALL AIRCRAFT FOR THE SECOND part of our honeymoon and are whisked immediately onto a small metal boat. We are several miles from Iquitos, the world’s largest city that cannot be accessed by roads. Jesus, our guide to the rainforest, deftly ties the boat to an old stump near the edge of the Amazon River.

  Looking around the jungle that now surrounds us, Jason whispers, “What is this world?” He’s staring at a tree that appears to be filled with flowers until the blooms move and shake. Parakeets. They seem to take flight simultaneously, one enormous, fluttery cloud blotting out the sky above.

  “It’s magic,” I whisper back.

  We walk up a small slope into a thick ribbon of trees. I’m just about ten steps under the rainforest canopy when Jesus hisses, “Stop and back away slowly.”

  My right foot, which had been poised to step, now hangs midair. This is our first afternoon in the Amazon, but I already know enough to treat the word of Jesus like the word of, well, Jesus. I awkwardly shuffle to my left foot. My hiking boots make a soggy, suction-cup sound as I retreat in the mud.

  “You see that snake?” Jesus says.

  “No.”

  “Look carefully.” He points. “Very dangerous.”

  I scrutinize the area that surrounds my boot prints. Under the thick canopy of trees, the forest is almost completely dark. I see mud, and I see rotting brown leaves. What I don’t see is a snake.

  “You still don’t see? The snake that was going to bite you?” When I shake my head no, Jesus sighs.

  He waits for the snake to move, and that’s when I finally see the reptile’s firm, oval head. It startles me, even though I already know he’s there. He slithers away, disappearing beneath fleshy green plants.

  We continue into the forest. This time, though, I eye the trail nervously. There are things here that could kill me. Things that probably want to kill me. I feel vulnerable in a way I’ve never felt back in California, among the gated housing developments and landscaped golf courses. I’d seen wildlife at home, sure. Coyotes, lizards, and snakes. They were there first, and they made regular appearances as a reminder. But at least I felt empowered on familiar terrain.

  I don’t have high hopes for my survival in this topsy-turvy place, where trees blot out the sky and the roads are made of rivers. I don’t know how to find my way out of the forest, back to the boat, and down the river to the lodge where Jason and I are staying. If I’m being honest, I don’t even know how to pronounce the name of the lodge where we are staying.

  I love this new, unfamiliar territory, though.

  I remember joining a save-the-rainforest initiative when I was in the sixth grade. I threw myself wholeheartedly into the effort. I stopped eating meat because I read cattle farms were a major cause of deforestation. I signed petitions. I wrote letters to President Reagan. I rattled off facts about conserving the rainforest, wrote reports about it for school. I wore “Save the Rainforest” T-shirts emblazoned with tree frogs. My mom was proud of my passion.

  Yet, while I knew about the dangers facing the rainforest, I didn’t know much about the rainforest itself. I hadn’t expected the funhouse mirror where I am standing now, a place where everything is distorted, lovely and strange. Pink river dolphins leap through the water. Snakes grow as thick as tree trunks, and lily pads are as large and round as Volkswagen Beetles. Lizards and frogs flicker with neon color. Tiny, shrunken monkeys slingshot through the treetops. The moist air feels like light rain.

  It is a magnificent but intimidating landscape. Each day my heart pounds as the three of us—Jesus, Jason, and I—venture deeper into the forest. It is warm, dark, and slippery, like descending into a massive throat.

  “Hey, Jesus, did I tell you about the rainforest club I was in when I was a little girl?” I say. “We wrote petitions and recycled cans and raised money to save the rainforest.”

  “Looks like it worked,” he says. “Good job.”

  This is his land, where Jesus was born and raised. His body is lean, brown, and agile. His eyes are rainforest trained. He knows every tree like it’s his neighbor. He can see poisonous snakes when I can’t. He even finds a path where there is seemingly none.

  I examine the ground beneath my feet. There isn’t a path below us.

  “Uh, Jesus, did you notice there’s no trail anymore?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  I tug on Jesus’s shirtsleeve, pulling him to a stop, and I look around.

  “Seriously. Are we lost?”

  Jesus turns and stares at me without blinking.

  “No, we’re not lost. We’re right here,” he says. “The trail is lost.”

  Then he continues walking, leaving his own tracks in the inch-deep mud. I follow him and have faith the trail will come to us.

  After an hour, we come to a clearing where a series of stout wooden poles, ropes, and ladders lead into the air. Jesus urges me to climb one of the ladders. Jason follows.

  The ladder leads to a rope bridge, strung high above the treetops. We emerge from the crinoline band of mist into limitless clear blue air. From this vantage, I look down on blooming orchids curling through tree branches, scarlet macaws in flight against towers of clouds. From
here I can see no path at all. Just the wide, open world, waiting for me to explore it. I think about that old quote, “Not all who wander are lost,” and it feels true.

  I’m not lost. I’m right here. The path might become obscured or disappear entirely, but I’m still where I belong.

  That night Jason and I sleep in a thatched hut. Fear wakes me in the deepest, most aggressive point of night. At first I’m unclear on what has gripped me, why I am no longer asleep, what is holding my throat closed. Then I realize the gauzy mosquito net above the bed has fallen across my head and into my mouth. I claw at my face, push the netting away.

  Too shaken to rest, I curl into a corner and turn on my headlamp. There is a cloud of bugs illuminated by the beam of light. I wave them away the best I can, then focus on reading a couple of chapters in a book, enough to make me tired again.

  After I crawl under the sheets, I tuck the edge of the mosquito net under the mattress and settle back against Jason. His body rises and falls with every breath, asleep. He didn’t even notice I was gone, and this comforts me. Maybe it’s possible to stray from his side and return home again, no damage done. I don’t know how true this is, though.

  Holding a family together is hard. The first time I understand this is also the first time I am distinctly aware that something is wrong with Mom. I am twenty-one or maybe twenty-two. I believe myself to be a grown-up, even though I’m at home for the weekend to have my dad change the oil in my car. My mom hasn’t been diagnosed yet, but that doesn’t mean everything is okay.

  She is crying. It is such a rare thing to see my mom cry that I don’t know what to do. It’s like watching a puppy cry. I want to make everything better, but I am powerless. My dad is frustrated, pleading with her to listen.

  She has papers. Lists. Scribbled notes about every person who called our landline over the past few months. Men and women. She believes the women are calling my dad for sex, the men are part of the hookup. It’s a sex ring, maybe. It’s an orgy, probably.

  My dad has never been unfaithful. I know this.