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That night I self-creeped myself out. Sure, there was probably the background maternal worry about my daughter’s ongoing cough – will it turn into bronchitis, and are we really a full 5000 miles away from our doctor back home? Or maybe it was that unavoidable vertigo of knowing that we were two miles above sea level, cocooned up in the legendary Andes. No matter how well your feet ground and stake their surface contact to the world’s most durable and dense materials: the concrete sidewalks of the city of Cusco, the ubiquitous granite outcrops… your logic knows you are not going anywhere, but your subconscious feels the precipice. You still have that human-scale, mental placeholder for sea level, feeling uncomfortably away from your locus, like a slingshot’s elastic band laboring at maximum stress of stretch, just waiting for that violent return to equilibrium. I was born at sea level in Lima – maybe plus the height of the 5 stories to the nursery floor of the Hospital del Empleado – but basically sea level, and at sea level is always where I feel most like I belong. Actually, happiest when I am in the sea, but that is another chapter….
The train journey from Cusco to Machu Picchu takes a bit over three hours, winding down from the highest elevations – the city of Cusco actually being at 11, 200 feet – to reveal meandering tracks through ever-increasing rainforest-like vegetation. Machu Picchu looks like a high of highest point in the Peruvian Andes by all the photographs that you may have seen, but it is actually nestled lower in the Andes toward the skirts of the Amazon. There are hummingbirds and wildflowers, and lush greenery, unlike the arid golds of the severe highlands of Cusco. But relative to our dear friend sea level, Machu Picchu is still at a majestically high perch, at 8000 feet in elevation, punctuated by deep ravines surrounding the citadel that have been etched by the richly flowing Urubamba river. This is an unbelievable place on this Earth of ours.
We had flown from Lima to Cusco two days before, with our sights set for the southeast mountains, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, and Ollantaytambo. I held gratitude for this pace which, having our sweet, sniffling 12-year-old to take care of, had now presented itself. Life can be slower if you need, if you want. There can be time to rest and have that second cup of tea. And as you all know, even semi-sick, a 12-year-old is still an Energizer Bunny. And now that it is 2015, I am also so grateful that there were no smartphones in our midst then. This was the first week of 2007. We were happily moving in the world, while fully looking up and around our human 360-degree panorama, without a 3"x5" digital screen dictating our docent tour of Life.
I hold a mixture of respect and awe and a little fear of the domain of the Inca. I know that I have Inca blood within me, but I still feel like an ethnic tourist. As if, since I have not lived the life, I don’t really get to take ownership in the place of my ancestors. I am working on it. I have spent much time coming to peace with my Chinese side, from my grandpa, my mother’s father. It is OK not to overthink it and to sweetly fold Chinese, and therefore Inca, into my bubblingly confusing ethnic cauldron.
But that night, the night before visiting the sanctuary of Machu Picchu, I found myself in a place of trepidation. There is city darkness and then there is Andean darkness, which feels so impenetrable that no Las Vegas hotel room mega-privacy shade could replicate. Then across our hotel room an inexplicable, bright blue dot of light peered. I lay in the bed fighting the urge to go look at what critter it may be. We had seen plenty of rare fauna and enough spindly, crawly things during the day to make an entomologist’s millennium. But there I lay, still bugged (ooh, pun.) by the little electric blue light on the ceiling, but too stubborn to get up and relinquish my make-belief lack of scaredy-ness. Yes, scaredyness is not a real word, but it lives somewhere in my odometer of emotions between ‘fright’ and ‘you are being a big baby.’ As silly moments in silly nights go, I never found out if it was a great insect species ready to devour me and mine, or just simply the ‘On’ display of the smoke detector.
There is always something deeper in our fumbling anxieties - not the big ones. Keep an eye out for the pesky little ones. What was I afraid of? I felt as if I was afraid of being found out as a fraud by the spirits of the ancients, as not belonging in the belly of my own country, among the most sacred vestiges of the culture that engendered me. I think for a long time I held the honor and responsibility of being the first member of my family to pilgrimage to Cusco and Machu Picchu in my heart. In the angsty, proverbial “Who the hell do I think I am?” do yourself a favor every time and realize: Who the hell do you think you aren’t? Allowing your ancestry to wash over you is a function of your welcoming of it, not of you being accepted by it. If you honor your ancestry, you already belong.
There are a hundred moments frozen in time of the day that we spent in the sanctuary of Machu Picchu. I will never forget the feel, at my palm and fingertips, of the true and ancient stones – rectilinear and molded into geometric play in most places and only in curvature at the Temple of the Sun. And I will never forget walking up to a flawlessly framed window opening and overlooking the Urubamba River hundreds of feet below, with its unapologetically gorgeous café con leche colored flow of Amazonian waters loaded with alluvial sediments.
Jimmy, Geena and I walked through the threshold to the sanctuary at 6 a.m. as the rising sunlight peeked through the sharp ridges and communed with the morning mist.
An hour later, when the mercurial weather patterns had shrouded every surface in a thick, white fog, a young couple stood overlooking the edge of what would have been the view of the terraced hillside. I passed by them. They were speaking English. The girl was starting to cry in disappointment, “You can’t see anything. We can’t see any of it!” I couldn’t help myself and turned around. “Don’t worry," I said. "The weather changes fairly quickly. It will clear up. Please don’t worry.” She smiled a timid but relieved smile. And it did change. It poured from 11 to 12 and then the sun was blasting – Andean weather doing its thing and being as dramatic as possible.
The usual lines you will hear in your lifetime about the amazing feat of architecture and engineering that Machu Picchu is....It is all there. It is all true. You bow before megaliths that have been crafted and fitted and aligned so that there is not even a hairline gap “into which a pin can fit” between the fantastic, mortarless stone joints.
Even amid all this grandeur, I had a second dork/scaredyness moment during our excursion. Noon. Under the obscenely bright Equatorial sun. Up a long and high grouping of granite stairs that had been so fun to go up, all of a sudden, I realized I was frozen to go back down them. Cue the theme song from High Anxiety (who remembers a good Gene Wilder flick?). The sun was beating relentless and the altitude and the place surrounded me with otherworldliness. I had to climb down them on my butt, yes, sitting, one at a time, like a toddler, until I regained my composure. There is a huge dollop of metaphor here for rebirths and renewals and reset buttons. I was disabled by Machu Picchu, physically made to learn to crawl again. And I know I will never be the same.
And l remember Jimmy’s eyes as we watched the accumulation of rain make its way so elegantly through the carefully planned Incan irrigation channels, carved meticulously into the stone. Sometimes you witness things and sometimes you really witness things when you see them again through the expression in the face of someone you love. Like watching my only daughter giggling, finally making it to Perú at age 12 – the same exact age when I emigrated away from there – walking alongside beautiful, fluffballs-of-cuteness llamas.
Back down to the little town of Aguas Calientes in the early evening, we three sat at a diminutive restaurant and had a snack. What did we eat? Papa Rellena maybe. I know there was probably cancha on the table; there is always cancha. Jimmy had his usual: a cold Cusqueña beer. But this wasn’t about the food or the drink. We could not stop smiling. I have never felt like that. My heart felt full of light. We really could not stop smiling, and giggling.
Maybe conversations about energy are below or above each and every one of us: some think it too new-agey, some completely sign on. But even for me, in my humble and simple turn-the-key-in-the-keyhole-to-lock-the-door-when-you-leave-the-house, or brush-your-teeth-mornings-after-meals-and-nightimes, I know there is something there. Maybe Machu Picchu serves like a volcano to the Earth. Where a volcano expels the fumes and lava flow from its depths, Machu Picchu outpours a tangible light.
That feeling resides in our human wonderment and praise.
That is the Machu Picchu smile.
El cóndor pasa - Original Peruvian version - written by Daniel Alomía Robles in 1913
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1E0nEe8RxM
La flor de la canela - performed by Chabuca Granda, guitar: Alvaro Lagos
www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8T-MbBEpUI
Cancha is toasted Peruvian corn = delicious table-side snack
The train journey from Cusco to Machu Picchu takes a bit over three hours, winding down from the highest elevations – the city of Cusco actually being at 11, 200 feet – to reveal meandering tracks through ever-increasing rainforest-like vegetation. Machu Picchu looks like a high of highest point in the Peruvian Andes by all the photographs that you may have seen, but it is actually nestled lower in the Andes toward the skirts of the Amazon. There are hummingbirds and wildflowers, and lush greenery, unlike the arid golds of the severe highlands of Cusco. But relative to our dear friend sea level, Machu Picchu is still at a majestically high perch, at 8000 feet in elevation, punctuated by deep ravines surrounding the citadel that have been etched by the richly flowing Urubamba river. This is an unbelievable place on this Earth of ours.
We had flown from Lima to Cusco two days before, with our sights set for the southeast mountains, Machu Picchu, the Sacred Valley, and Ollantaytambo. I held gratitude for this pace which, having our sweet, sniffling 12-year-old to take care of, had now presented itself. Life can be slower if you need, if you want. There can be time to rest and have that second cup of tea. And as you all know, even semi-sick, a 12-year-old is still an Energizer Bunny. And now that it is 2015, I am also so grateful that there were no smartphones in our midst then. This was the first week of 2007. We were happily moving in the world, while fully looking up and around our human 360-degree panorama, without a 3"x5" digital screen dictating our docent tour of Life.
I hold a mixture of respect and awe and a little fear of the domain of the Inca. I know that I have Inca blood within me, but I still feel like an ethnic tourist. As if, since I have not lived the life, I don’t really get to take ownership in the place of my ancestors. I am working on it. I have spent much time coming to peace with my Chinese side, from my grandpa, my mother’s father. It is OK not to overthink it and to sweetly fold Chinese, and therefore Inca, into my bubblingly confusing ethnic cauldron.
But that night, the night before visiting the sanctuary of Machu Picchu, I found myself in a place of trepidation. There is city darkness and then there is Andean darkness, which feels so impenetrable that no Las Vegas hotel room mega-privacy shade could replicate. Then across our hotel room an inexplicable, bright blue dot of light peered. I lay in the bed fighting the urge to go look at what critter it may be. We had seen plenty of rare fauna and enough spindly, crawly things during the day to make an entomologist’s millennium. But there I lay, still bugged (ooh, pun.) by the little electric blue light on the ceiling, but too stubborn to get up and relinquish my make-belief lack of scaredy-ness. Yes, scaredyness is not a real word, but it lives somewhere in my odometer of emotions between ‘fright’ and ‘you are being a big baby.’ As silly moments in silly nights go, I never found out if it was a great insect species ready to devour me and mine, or just simply the ‘On’ display of the smoke detector.
There is always something deeper in our fumbling anxieties - not the big ones. Keep an eye out for the pesky little ones. What was I afraid of? I felt as if I was afraid of being found out as a fraud by the spirits of the ancients, as not belonging in the belly of my own country, among the most sacred vestiges of the culture that engendered me. I think for a long time I held the honor and responsibility of being the first member of my family to pilgrimage to Cusco and Machu Picchu in my heart. In the angsty, proverbial “Who the hell do I think I am?” do yourself a favor every time and realize: Who the hell do you think you aren’t? Allowing your ancestry to wash over you is a function of your welcoming of it, not of you being accepted by it. If you honor your ancestry, you already belong.
There are a hundred moments frozen in time of the day that we spent in the sanctuary of Machu Picchu. I will never forget the feel, at my palm and fingertips, of the true and ancient stones – rectilinear and molded into geometric play in most places and only in curvature at the Temple of the Sun. And I will never forget walking up to a flawlessly framed window opening and overlooking the Urubamba River hundreds of feet below, with its unapologetically gorgeous café con leche colored flow of Amazonian waters loaded with alluvial sediments.
Jimmy, Geena and I walked through the threshold to the sanctuary at 6 a.m. as the rising sunlight peeked through the sharp ridges and communed with the morning mist.
An hour later, when the mercurial weather patterns had shrouded every surface in a thick, white fog, a young couple stood overlooking the edge of what would have been the view of the terraced hillside. I passed by them. They were speaking English. The girl was starting to cry in disappointment, “You can’t see anything. We can’t see any of it!” I couldn’t help myself and turned around. “Don’t worry," I said. "The weather changes fairly quickly. It will clear up. Please don’t worry.” She smiled a timid but relieved smile. And it did change. It poured from 11 to 12 and then the sun was blasting – Andean weather doing its thing and being as dramatic as possible.
The usual lines you will hear in your lifetime about the amazing feat of architecture and engineering that Machu Picchu is....It is all there. It is all true. You bow before megaliths that have been crafted and fitted and aligned so that there is not even a hairline gap “into which a pin can fit” between the fantastic, mortarless stone joints.
Even amid all this grandeur, I had a second dork/scaredyness moment during our excursion. Noon. Under the obscenely bright Equatorial sun. Up a long and high grouping of granite stairs that had been so fun to go up, all of a sudden, I realized I was frozen to go back down them. Cue the theme song from High Anxiety (who remembers a good Gene Wilder flick?). The sun was beating relentless and the altitude and the place surrounded me with otherworldliness. I had to climb down them on my butt, yes, sitting, one at a time, like a toddler, until I regained my composure. There is a huge dollop of metaphor here for rebirths and renewals and reset buttons. I was disabled by Machu Picchu, physically made to learn to crawl again. And I know I will never be the same.
And l remember Jimmy’s eyes as we watched the accumulation of rain make its way so elegantly through the carefully planned Incan irrigation channels, carved meticulously into the stone. Sometimes you witness things and sometimes you really witness things when you see them again through the expression in the face of someone you love. Like watching my only daughter giggling, finally making it to Perú at age 12 – the same exact age when I emigrated away from there – walking alongside beautiful, fluffballs-of-cuteness llamas.
Back down to the little town of Aguas Calientes in the early evening, we three sat at a diminutive restaurant and had a snack. What did we eat? Papa Rellena maybe. I know there was probably cancha on the table; there is always cancha. Jimmy had his usual: a cold Cusqueña beer. But this wasn’t about the food or the drink. We could not stop smiling. I have never felt like that. My heart felt full of light. We really could not stop smiling, and giggling.
Maybe conversations about energy are below or above each and every one of us: some think it too new-agey, some completely sign on. But even for me, in my humble and simple turn-the-key-in-the-keyhole-to-lock-the-door-when-you-leave-the-house, or brush-your-teeth-mornings-after-meals-and-nightimes, I know there is something there. Maybe Machu Picchu serves like a volcano to the Earth. Where a volcano expels the fumes and lava flow from its depths, Machu Picchu outpours a tangible light.
That feeling resides in our human wonderment and praise.
That is the Machu Picchu smile.
El cóndor pasa - Original Peruvian version - written by Daniel Alomía Robles in 1913
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1E0nEe8RxM
La flor de la canela - performed by Chabuca Granda, guitar: Alvaro Lagos
www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8T-MbBEpUI
Cancha is toasted Peruvian corn = delicious table-side snack