Last Notes From Ecuador
By Deia Schlosberg
September 8, 2006
Thru-hiking the Andes is absurd. Whose idea was this?
Bushwhacking through ravines of prickers and razor-sharp reeds,
hurdling barbed wire every 70 meters on 50 degree slopes, way-finding
with soggy topo map and compass on a ridge top in borderline hurricane
winds and complete white-out conditions, agave in all its pointy glory
in exactly the wrong places every time … but will we keep going? Of
course.
It´s been quite the stretch down here. We keep setting these time goals
for where we want to be by when, which would be completely attainable,
if we had a trail, or a known route at least. However, completely
lacking those things, and learning every day the reality of the
burliness of this, the longest mountain range in the world, we, over
and over again, have to modify our plan. Along with these modifications
and reevaluations, not to mention the struggle of struggling every day,
comes a very healthy dose of mental and emotional checking-in. We’ve
both been going through some bouts of “Why??” and (though it might seem
impossible) a frustration at times with almost “going through the
motions,” we both feel a pull toward some greater purpose that pushes
us to lace-up the boots day after day, and keep walking south. We’ve
done hours of speculating about what that purpose is, and for now, have
no solid conclusions, beyond a strong sense. Is that crazy?
So beyond those struggles, the trip continues to be amazing and
inspiring every day. We began the chapter with a thru-hike of Cajas
National Park, perhaps the most beautiful place on the planet in many
ways. The days were cloudy and rainy, but the radiance of the land
compensated. Over every ridge that we crested was a more beautiful view
of high mountain lakes and waterfalls and steep mossy slopes with
dramatic rock outcrops. Unfortunately, the park is on the small side
and we were through it in only two days. But we weren’t lacking
incredible landscape for long. After a few kilometers over high,
rolling plains we descended into a river valley that may just as well
have been Eden—for its own beauty, but also for the life changing
experience that happened in its vicinity.
After emerging from the other side of the river valley and making our
way up a higher, shallower valley, we set up camp near the top and went
about our normal nightly routine: filling the water bottles, making
dinner by the lingering light of sunset, journaling. Just after the
last daylight faded and the first couple of stars joined the waxing
crescent moon, I heard a high-pitched wind-like noise over the ridge to
my right, moving quickly in an arc across the sky. I stopped
immediately; this was not a sound I recognised. I looked at Gregg, he
had stopped and looked at me. A few seconds later, the noise returned,
this time an arc over the valley we were camped in, and hearing it
again, I could make out that it was clearly some type of high-pitched
engine. I saw nothing. In a few more seconds, an arc over the ridge
opposite us. Whatever this was was covering a whole quadrant of the sky
in about a second. At this point Gregg and I were both standing
silently with mouths open, perhaps a few words exchanged to confirm our
own experience. It continued, clockwise around us. Having the compass
on hand we checked the angles of the take-off and landing points of
whatever this was, and each time was 90 degrees from the last. The only
times the sound deviated from this pattern was when it stopped and
resumed its path mid-air a few times and when it crossed directly
overhead—180 degrees away from where it started—and it was at these few
points where it was closest to us, close enough that we ducked at the
same time. At points the sounds were so close to each other in time and
originating from opposite points in the sky that it seemed there must
be more than one object creating the sounds. For twenty-five minutes
this kept up, and throughout it, we saw nothing and felt nothing. Only
the clear sound, very close to us. Both of us had tears in our eyes.
Both of us were speechless. We eventually tried to talk through
different possibilities, wrote about it, tried in vain to sleep.
Throughout the night, nothing more came of it, until just before
sunrise. Lying awake in the dark I wasn’t sure if the sound I heard was
my brain repeating the noise from the previous night or if whatever
emitted it was coming back. But the sound got louder and began again in
the same arcing manner. This time, being slightly more within our wits,
we tried to record the noise as sound files on Gregg´s camera.
(Currently the files are somehow damaged; we´re trying to recover
them.) The early morning session was shorter and seemed slightly
farther away, with no direct paths overhead. They faded, and nothing
more came of it. We are at a loss. We were not in any way mentally
altered at the time, and the experience that each of us wrote down
prior to speaking with each other matches exactly. This was not
something natural. This was not a technology that exists publicly, if
it is something engineered by humans at all. This occurrence did not
comply by the rules of science that my college degree in natural
sciences could explain. Whatever this was opened new possibilities in
my mind for what can exist. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions or
thoughts, please share them. I am changed by this incident, but I don´t
yet know what to do with it.
I can only describe the next day as seeming unresolved. A sense of, “We
may very well have been visited by other-worldly beings last night. I
guess we´ll hike today.” It just seemed odd. But we continued over
mountain ridges, down valleys, into Nevada-type mountainous desert,
back into steep crop-land, adding to our miles, broadening further our
experience of Ecuador.
An evening arrival in the little town of Manú introduced us to Lorenzo.
Every single person we saw once we entered a five-mile radius of the
town asked us about Lorenzo. What is this Lorenzo? The next town? A
place in town? By the fourth person who asked us it was clear enough
that there was someone by the name of Lorenzo in Manú that it was
assumed we were visiting. We began answering yes. Of course we´re here
to see Lorenzo! We were pointed to his apartment. Putting two and two
together, the first two being that this was the first town we came to
with dual trash bins on the streets—one for organic waste and one for
inorganic—and the second two being that we are backpacking gringos, we
asked if Lorenzo was a member of the Peace Corps. Sure enough.
Unfortunately, he was in Loja at the time, so we were not blessed with
a meeting of the famed entity. If you´re out there Lorenzo, well done
for being the most active/popular Peace Corps Volunteer ever and drop a
line our way. We like PCVs.
The climb out of Manú was epically long, and unbelievably beautiful. It
also let us feel for a few brief hours the gloriousness of
trail-hiking. No battling of foliage every step, no constant checking
of the compass, no calculating elevation differences for different
possible routes on our topos, just going. Ahhhh; so fast, so easy.
Though of course, that ease of foot travel could not go unbalanced. The
high ridge that we planned to walk south on, for it was the only route
that wasn’t completely ridiculous with quickly, steeply alternating
valleys and mountains, happened to be high enough that it was in the
clouds. And being a ridge, it inherently came with high winds funnelled
over its top. For two and a half days, there were only a few instances
where we could see more than 20 feet from us, when the cloud briefly
parted to show the hugest peaks rising up and deepest valleys dropping
off and our small, white world became shockingly vast. Hiking through
winds that could support a full-body-with-pack lean, we pushed over the
rocky ground, checking the map (against our memory of the experience,
not the surrounding whiteness) and compass frequently. The moment on
the third day when we descended below the cloud and could see our exact
whereabouts, and could see that we were exactly where we wanted to be,
was lovely to say the least. As a reward, we were again graced with
trail, which we ate up, passing though countryside and small towns at a
refreshingly quick speed. Loja, our goal destination for waaayyy too
long was soon ours, awaiting us in the valley below under the full
moon. But certainly not awaiting quietly, for it happens to be El Dia
de la Virgen del Cisne, a huge celebration with lots of fireworks
explosions and vendors and folk dancing. When we do civilization, we
are destined, it seems, to do it big.
We are expecting to be at the Peruvian border within the week. The very
long-awaited Peruvian border. So, signing off from Ecuador … we send
our love to friends and family. We miss you all.