Three Miles High

It was dark when we arrived. All seven tents set; buckets of fresh warm water outside every open flap. It had taken us all day to reach our campsite, over 14,000 ft high in the Andes.  A grinding climb. Made worse by the decrease in oxygen we took in with each labored step.  Feet as worn as our tired dusty boots; legs heavy from every gravity-strained step we took. Since breakfast, we had plodded along - stopping, inhaling, exhaling - before continuing up the foot-high worn granite steps. Miles of paths made from heavy stones laid by the Incas through the dense jungle. Itinerant travelers, they moved whole families from the palaces, to religious sanctuaries, and to the fish rich Amazon below. None of it seemed possible. Our patience growing as thin as the air we breathed. But there was no turning back.  There was only forward, moving glacially up the interminable rock path.  Ignored were the "ughs" and "and I can't do this anymore" that my son groaned.

If the sun shone, we didn't notice. All around us the twisted limbs of trees, an erratic spot of color cutting through the dense wall of green.  A bright fuchsia orchid that had some how clung to blossoming life on a side of bark.  The sound of rushing water we never saw.  The thin air cold and damp. Dangling limbs streaked our clothes wet as we brushed by.

"Good morning," bellowed our guide Manuel. This was our third day and his ritualized greeting as unwelcome as a bucket of cold water. Puffy-eyed and stiff-limbed I shimmied like a taper of down to the front of our tent. The morning light already too bright for my swollen eyes. But there stood Manuel, dressed and shaved; tent folded, bag packed. The annoying epitome of a virile man happy with his place in the world.

But darkness had shrouded our campsite when we arrived. Now in the golden morning light, spread before us a semi-circle of pale blue floating above an undulating carpet of white.  A distant peak cutting through the white tufts.  Above the clouds, we were sky high.

The rest of our trek would be downhill. In 36 hours we would walk through the monolithic stone walls of the Sun Gate and enter Machu Picchu.