Las Vistas Bellezas

I would have liked to make a post on Monday while my thoughts were more fresh on the weekend, but I didn't. Friday morning we took off for a hike down an old Incan trail, being we had our first day off of the year that was called "spring break", a constant joke amongst the teachers. The hike started in the snow capped mountains of the Cordillera Real, a little bit to the southeast of Huayna Potosi. The morning sun glistened off the snow to create an atmosphere that instantaneously energized me, along with the fresh morning air that only mountains can offer. Part of me just wanted to sit and enjoy the beauty around me, watching the sparkling water run down the hillsides from the melting snow, the llamas make the slow but yet graceful journey up the mountains, and the valley below fill with a cold fog that would eventually journey upward. But I knew the distance I had ahead of me, and the time limit that the weekend imposed, so I regretfully but joyfully started down the trail. Down the trail means DOWN the trail. Basically the whole hike is downwards, as it starts at about 4,600 meters and descends to about 1500 meters. Most people take 3 days to hike the trail, and that is what is recommended, but to me it was more advantageous to do it in two days, so that I could get back to La Paz on Sunday and study for the upcoming week of school. The trail, or el camino, amazed me very quickly. Within 6 hours, we had descended into a complete surrounding of green called the Yungas, or pre-jungle. Slick rocks from surrounding waterfulls cut accross the trail to create patterns that my feet magically found. Slipping here and there I managed to keep my balance and descend past villages where people's families have lived for centuries. They were always friendly as they saw us, and never ceased to give us false information on how much farther to the next pueblito. At about 6:30 on Friday night when we were all sore from the rough downhill, we set up camp by the river, ate, and talked for a few hours. Night passed rather quickly, and by 8 am we were all off again, this time a bit slower as our muscles and successfully and painfully tightened over the night. Others were a bit slower going down the slick path, and I found myself walking with a Bolivian and his two horses that were carrying supplies back from La Paz. He told me we only had about a half hour until the next pueblo, and I walked with him for another hour until we crossed it......where I said good-bye and waited for the others. From there I realized how much longer we had. One of the girls had blisters the size of knuckles on her feet, and could not physically make it very long without stopping to ease the pain. The rest of the day was spent walking up and down this cut path in the mountainside, silently enjoying the beauty around us in the forms of birds, bugs, and the color green that marks the sign of life in the wild. We hiked in the darkness on Saturday night, slept a few hours, and finished off the journey early Sunday morning. For me it was relaxing to walk in God's presence and hear Him speak through his creation. It always is. The trail was longer than I had expected, and what got me was the length that the Incans walked at one period of time. Their knowledge of the terrain must have been incredible, and their perseverance remarkable. The rivers they crossed without bridges, the downhill/uphill that their joints endured, or just the pure length of the trail. I could feel them on the trail, and see the roughness that they had to hike through. Though I could always understand how they did it. God had given them energy from the surroudings, in the forms of smooth white rocks cut by years of water, the shades that fell across the mountains as the sun set, or the birds that flew overhead with neon green wings and blue tails. It cleared my own mind of the thousands of things that pass through it in a given school week. I really only thought of one thing when in the beauty of God, and that was of God himself. There weren't any pressing issues or other focuses. How can there when you're seeing God in everything around you, and that's exactly how he designed us. He is in the stresses of everyday life, the pains and the joys of the heart, and the people we are serving. I close with a quote I read on Ethan's Blog, by Dostoyevsky: "Sometimes he longed to get away, to vanish from here altogether. He would have been positively glad to be in some gloomy, deserted place, only that he might be alone with his thoughts and no one might know where he was. Or at least to be at home in the verandah...to throw himself on the sofa and bury his head in the pillow, and to lie like that for a day and a night and another day. At moments he dreamed of mountains, and especially one familiar spot which he always liked to think of, a spot to which he had been fond of going and from which he used to look down on the village, on the waterfall gleaming like a white thread below, on the white clouds and the old ruined castle. Oh, how he longed to be there now, and to think of one thing!"