You get a call from a friend to join a group of adventurous women on an Intrepid Travel trip to Peru. Hell yes, you say. You start daydreaming about the magnitude of Machu Picchu. You plan it all out. You hike on the weekends and train for the steep switchbacks. You get advice from those who’ve been, you read stories and travel tips and tourist guides. You dream about Peru at night, you think about Peru during meetings. You fall in love with a Peru you’ve created in a hopeful mind. You convince yourself you are capable of trekking this world wonder despite your bad knees and other health limitations. You don’t imagine for a second that when you land in Cusco you will lose your breath and it won’t come back for days. You never imagined you’d have severe altitude sickness that would eventually make your lips turn blue and require medical treatment for your dangerously low blood-oxygen concentration, high heart rate, and extreme dehydration. You never imagined that after spending 4 hours an oxygen tank, IV fluids, anti-nausea, and other medications, you’d throw caution to the wind and attempt to hike the Inca Trail.
Hubris, you find, pushes you to join up with the other women at dawn to take a train to the Inca trailhead. You smile and dismiss their worried questions about your health. You choose to selectively listen to those who encourage you. YOLO! you say and laugh along with your new friends. You sit at the base of Machu Picchu mountain and ritualistically hold three coca leaves and make an offering to Pachamama. You thank her through tear-filled eyes for allowing you to be in her presence. Breathlessly, you lay down the coca leaves in a corner of the sacred ruins, as so many have done before you, and you beg Allah to pump oxygen into your aching lungs and perseverance into your racing heart. You beg Allah to make this journey possible.
You muster up all the ambition in your bones, remember all your daydreams from back home, reflect on all rewards that lie ahead and start that historic trek. You start falling behind the group, but that’s ok, you think, I’ll catch up later. You’re struggling to breathe already but that’s ok, you think, this will get easier. You start seeing spots in your peripheral vision and become very lightheaded, but thanks ok, you think, I’ll just take more breaks. Less than half a mile in you’re too far behind the group to finish the trail before sunset. Your kind guide Cinthia runs back and measures your pulse and blood oxygen level; she looks at you with concerned eyes and says, its ok if you need to turn back because your health and wellbeing is most important. You listen to her every word as your heart starts breaking at the reality of what you must do now sinks in. She knows this trail and tells you its only getting more difficult from here and that there is no shame in stopping.
In all the daydreaming you did back home, you never imagined this would be you. You never considered your body would fail you. You never anticipated standing at the feet of a mountain god and having to walk away. Let’s call it, you say, I am done. You slump down and take a seat on a nearby rock. Rosa, the second trail guide, stands next to you reassuringly and says, don’t be sad, we have a different adventure ahead of us.
You double back the way you came up the mountain, arriving at the trailhead in a fraction of the time it took to hike out. You stop to catch your breath at the same spot where an hour ago you took hopeful starting-point group photos. You sigh deeply and stare up at the mountain that could have been. Cheer up, Rosa says, you’ll need a positive attitude for what we’re about to do. You thought you were going to catch a rescue train or van to transport you to the hotel, but you quickly learn that no one is coming to save you. Under the Peruvian midday sun, you hike one aching footstep after another over large rocks and jagged gravel for about five miles along train tracks that lead to the next town.
You smile at Rosa, she smiles back, you fix your hat and keep walking. You walk and walk and walk. Your feet are pulsating with pain, your ankles are weak after hours of trying to grip jagged terrain. But you’re no longer sad. You start to appreciate the pain because this is the humility you craved. The wisdom you gained from trekking around the mountain is different from what you would have discovered trekking up it, but you quickly become grateful for the meditative rhythm of this difficult journey.
You take only one break on this trek to eat lunch in the shade of a generous tree. You share half your peanut butter and jelly sandwich with Rosa while you both laugh at how many times you’ve rolled your ankle on loose rocks. You wave at porters zipping past you with enormous packs on their backs of tourists’ belongings that need to arrive at their hotels before they do from their Machu Picchu hikes. You notice the porters are not using trekking poles or hiking boots or water bladders. Buenos dias they say smiling as they jog away wearing generic sneakers and absolutely no pain on their faces. All I hear for a long time is the sound of their feet hitting loose, jagged rocks. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
They do this trek every week, Rosa says, and even up the mountain. This is their trade; it’s not a lot of money but they like it. My mouth hangs open watching the last of the porters disappear around the corner where the train tracks bend into an unseeable new angle of Machu Picchu Mountain. You feel your immense privilege suddenly weighing down on your shoulders. You take your pack off and smile thinking about how Pachamama has gifted you an extraordinary view that can only be seen by taking a path quite literally off the beaten path.
Not many get to see Machu Picchu Mountain from this perspective, she says as you stand with your hands on your hips squinting up at the grandeur. You’re once again flooded with emotions but none of them include sadness. You thank her out loud and thank Allah silently for making this moment possible. Your heart rate has slowed down to a less dangerous pace. You breathe the mountain air in deeply, enriching your lungs with humility and the rare oxygen you were meant to benefit from in this moment in time and space. You are exactly where you were meant to be. And so, you forget all about your daydreams.
Acceptance, you learn, is tremendously empowering. Wisdom, you learn, is gained through suffering. And grit, my dear, is the thread that tied them all together. This adventure is stitched into you now as a medal of pride and gratitude. You made a choice to keep going. It wasn’t what you expected. It was so much more.