Braver Than You Think Page 3

  “Mom, I think I’m going to do something really big,” I whispered, as I held a spoonful of pudding to her mouth.

  She didn’t acknowledge my words or my presence.

  “Mom, I’m going to travel around the world,” I said. When she still didn’t move, I put the spoon back into the pudding cup and scooted my chair closer to her wheelchair. I put my hand on her shoulder. Her body went rigid. “If you’re in there, you should know I’m doing this for you, okay? If you can’t remember anything else, please remember that.”

  When she finally looked at me, her blue eyes looked past my body, as though I were a potted plant or a utility pole. Her gaze was empty. Then her lips puckered, and she bit at the air, like a baby wanting more. I scooped pudding into her mouth. She glanced up at me, and there was a flash in her watery blue eyes, a moment of awareness that fizzled out as swiftly as it came.

  Sometimes I believe my mom is more responsive to me than she is to others, but I don’t know if that’s a wish, or a lie, or the truth.

  When I hang up the phone in Cusco, there’s a hollow space carved out of my gut. Unrequited love is always the saddest kind. Sadder still when it’s a daughter longing for a mother who no longer recognizes her.

  “You okay?” Jason asks.

  “I don’t know why my dad does that,” I say. “She doesn’t even know who I am. And she definitely doesn’t know I’m gone.”

  We are interrupted by animal cries punctuating the air outside El Tuco. A market is assembling on the long, slim concrete berm in between lanes of highway traffic, and Jason and I walk outside to investigate. There are cages of squirming puppies and wooden boxes of desiccated fruit, bags of grain, boxes stacked with eggs, blankets piled with wild greens. In the midst of it all, we hear tiny squeals from a mobile guinea pig slaughterhouse.

  Guinea pigs—rodents that are neither pig nor from Guinea—are a popular source of protein in Peru, since the animals can be raised quickly in confined spaces. Also, guinea pigs will eat just about anything, which makes them a cheaper form of livestock than cows, pigs, or sheep.

  I’m a vegetarian, so I give grilled guinea pig a pass. Instead I’ve been delighting in Peru’s substantial veggie-based options—bowls of buttery quinoa soup, skewers of grilled potato, creamy broad bean stew and slices of crusty brown bread, pale green pepino melons that fit in the palm of my hand.

  That night, the dusk that settles over the city is purple. Jason and I sit at a restaurant that looks over the historic buildings of the Plaza de Armas and tuck into lomo soytado, a tofu twist on the classic Peruvian lomo saltado, in which slivers of beef are stir-fried with peppers, tomatoes, and French fries, all served over rice.

  I pretend the rich food and crisp air are making me stronger. But I feel more brittle and unsteady than ever. Each day in Cusco means we are closer to our Inca Trail trek. It’s the sensation of standing in the door before my first skydive all over again—slightly sick to my stomach, terrified I won’t be able to complete this task, afraid I don’t have enough courage. And I’m doing this all for my mom, who doesn’t remember I exist.

  “Is everything all right?” Jason asks.

  Back home in Palm Springs, hiking is one of my favorite activities. I’ve spent many weekends scrambling over rocks and ambling down dusty desert trails. But that’s just something I do for an hour or two before brunch. My hiking doesn’t require any real commitment.

  In Peru, I realize I’ve never tackled anything of such a grand scope. They are the high school jocks of mountains—massively and beautifully built, but towering, intimidating, and mean—the stuff of hiking nightmares. Just one look, and you know they are going to hurt you. By comparison, the mountains that encircle my California desert are downright delicate.

  “I don’t know if I can do this,” I admit.

  It didn’t look so intimidating in the photos or in the piles of travel books on our coffee table. But there in Cusco, just looking at the peaks and spires of granite makes me want to cry. I can’t imagine four straight days of navigating their peaks with my own two feet. I feel like I’ve just shown up at the start line for a marathon after only watching the Olympics on TV. What was I thinking?

  Beyond that, I am ill. I feel like I should have acclimated already, but after three days in Cusco I am still beset with altitude sickness. Even walking short distances causes me to clutch my chest, fumbling for my inhaler on Cusco’s fierce, sloped streets. When I’m not wheezing, I am trying to locate the nearest toilet for my upset stomach.

  “Of course you can do this,” Jason says, and he hands over my extra inhaler, which he has tucked away in his pocket. “You’ve jumped out of airplanes, right? You can handle a little walk.”

  The Inca Trail is hardly a little walk, but I don’t want to dwell on that. Jason has been looking forward to the trek more than any other part of our honeymoon. I can’t disappoint him, especially when I’m about to leave him for a year.

  “Of course I can handle a little walk,” I say.

  THE EVENING BEFORE THE HIKE, JASON AND I MAKE FINAL preparations. We separate our belongings into what is necessary and what we can leave behind.

  My backpack is a hefty, fifty-pound clown car of everything I anticipate needing for my entire trip—paperback novels, a laptop, sleeping bag, first aid kit, electrical outlet adapter, vitamins, a flashlight, whistle, water sterilizer, tofu jerky, shampoo, duct tape, T-shirts, tights, dresses, jeans, two fleece jackets, one iPhone, a slim towel, and four pairs of shoes. For four days on the Inca Trail, however, only a few things qualify as necessities. Everything else can be stored in a locker at El Tuco while we are away.

  Our necessities include a toothbrush, designer wool socks, several layers of fancy, sweat-wicking clothing, and ridiculous hiking poles that cost almost as much as a car payment. This was magical thinking on my part; I imagined the more expensive the equipment, the easier it would make the trek.

  We have already gone through most of our clean socks and underwear. El Tuco doesn’t have any laundry facilities, and we haven’t found a Laundromat nearby, so I use a hard-bristled brush and hand soap to scrub our dirty clothes in the bathroom sink. Jason stretches a portable clothesline from one corner of the room to the other. There aren’t any nails or hooks in the wall, so he cracks the window enough to tie the line around the iron bars. When he does this, I shiver. It’s July, the start of winter in South America. The mountain air has sharp teeth, especially at night.

  Jason and I pack and repack, adding and subtracting items, searching for the perfect equation—all the things we want to carry on our backs for twenty-six miles, still keeping it light enough that we won’t be tempted to toss anything off the side of a mountain. I am delirious with sleep deprivation and altitude sickness; I decide to bring eyeliner but leave behind toothpaste.

  I rub my eyes. It’s already midnight, and our bus is scheduled to pick us up at 5 a.m. I flop on the hard bed and cover myself with a thin blanket.

  “I’m done. I can’t pack any more. Whatever we have now, that’s what we’re bringing,” I say. “I need sleep.”

  “Yeah, I’m wiped out,” Jason agrees. “And we have mountains to climb.”

  He reaches for the socks and underwear, still hanging on the clothesline, the final addition to our packs before we can go to bed.

  “Uh oh,” he says.

  “What? Don’t uh oh.”

  I stand and touch the clothes on the sagging line. The socks are wet and cold, the underwear frozen stiff. There’s no way these things will dry in time for our hike.

  Frustration coils through my limbs, and I kick my bag, spilling all the things I had so carefully packed.

  “Maybe they’ll dry by the time the bus gets here … ?”

  The laundry has been hanging for hours. If it isn’t dry by now, it will never be dry. That’s it. Our hike is ruined before it even began. The failure feels inevitable.

  Jason runs downstairs to ask the front desk if there is a twenty-four-hour Laundromat a
nywhere in the vicinity. He returns several minutes later with one of his hands hidden behind his back. With a magician’s flourish, he holds his right hand out and presents to me a miniature travel hair dryer.

  “I borrowed it from an Irish couple down the hall,” he says. “They said we can just leave it outside their door when we’re done.”

  Two hours later, the underwear is dry, but I am still blowing a weak shaft of hot air into the woolen toes of thick socks. Each time the hair dryer overheats, we have to wait a few minutes for it to start again. I teeter on the edge of hysteria, and I lash out at my husband.

  “Why did I buy such nice socks? This never would have happened with my normal, shitty socks. Some of my old socks even have holes. I bet those would’ve dried real quick. But these things?” I say, getting louder and more forceful with every sentence. “Fuck these socks! Fuck it all. Fuck the Inca Trail …”

  “Shhh,” Jason eases an arm around me and pries the hair dryer away with the other. “Let me dry these for a while. You rest.”

  The action is small but tender and represents everything I love about this man. Where I gripe and complain, Jason is thoughtful, nurturing, supportive. For years I thought marriage was incompatible with the life I wanted to lead as an independent woman, but here is my husband, comforting me in an eight-dollar-a-night hostel, proving otherwise. What the hell am I doing leaving him on purpose? Leaving my career and my home and my dying mother? And for what? Wet socks and granite mountains?

  I’m filled with a sudden longing for my mom. She was always protective. I remember how my elementary school gym teacher never let me visit the school nurse for a puff of my inhaler before gym class. Then came the day I collapsed on a dry, weed-strewn field. I awoke on a couch in the nurse’s office, my mom holding my hand and smoothing the hair from my forehead. She slid one hand behind my head and helped me tilt forward to take a puff from the emergency inhaler she kept tucked in her purse. Then my mom whispered stories until my pulse slowed and the weight on my lungs disappeared. When it was clear that I’d recovered, my mom tracked down the gym teacher and unleashed her rage on the man, hissing, “How dare you make little girls suffer? What kind of man are you?”

  I can’t recall exactly how the situation was resolved—whether I was pulled from that teacher’s class or if he was ever punished. The implication, though, has remained my entire life. My husband has done his share of time comforting me, but it is my mom who always soothed me when I gasped for air.

  As a child I was a sickly thing, hospitalized more than once for asthma attacks and vicious bouts of pneumonia and bronchitis. My mom stayed by my side, even when nurses tried to shoo her away. She was there to hold my hand, her strong fingers wrapped around my tiny ones, through the night and until things were right again. I wish she could do that now.

  Nobody warned me about this part. When I envisioned my trip, I imagined exciting adventures, exotic locales, a jet-set lifestyle. I never thought grief and doubt would climb into my backpack and come with me. I pictured standing at the top of the Sun Gate, looking down at Machu Picchu, without ever thinking about the steps it would take to get there. This is the curse of wanderlust, when the postcard image becomes a brutal reality.

  All the exhaustion, sickness, and worry that has been tipping me for days finally knocks me over. I collapse in quiet sobs on the bed, swallowing deep gulps of air. Jason holds me until I calm, then fall asleep.

  The wake-up alarm sounds after just two hours, and Jason and I rub our bleary eyes as we step onto a bus.

  Soon the sun will rise over the Andes, and we will be there to welcome it. Our socks are dry. A mountain invites us to climb it.

  Push Yourself Until You Can’t Turn Back

  OUR FIRST HIKING DAY ON THE INCA TRAIL TREK IS SUPPOSED to be the easiest. But our guide, Juan, jokingly calls it “Inca flat,” meaning it is not flat at all.

  For several miles we walk undulating roller-coaster hills that never seem to wane. We keep pace with the rest of our group, though, which consists of two other honeymooning couples, an older outdoorsman from Oregon, and a grandmotherly type.

  Along the way we see hikers from other groups splinter off, turning around to head back to the station at the base of the mountain in Sacred Valley. Some are visibly sick, their heads lolling and sleepy-eyed, their bodies draped over donkeys as they are led to the start of the trail. Some have just realized for the first time how brutal the hike can be.

  “That’s the problem,” Juan says. “You never know if you can handle the trail until you try.”

  I realize then there’s no easy way out. There is no evacuation plan. If the trail breaks me, my choices are limited to going back where I came from or pushing forward to the end. Each mile all of a sudden feels incredibly real.

  Groups of traditionally dressed Peruvian women sit by the side of the trail, selling cans of beer and bottles of energy drinks. In a moment of weakness my husband pays Disneyland prices for a small bottle of Gatorade. It is delicious.

  My group makes it to the first night’s campsite intact, though my arms are salty and a layer of skin on my heel has already sloughed off in my hiking shoes.

  The porters, who all jogged ahead of us, are waiting. While we were huffing our way to camp, they erected the tents and prepared a feast of brown bread, quinoa stew, fresh salad, and grilled alpaca steaks. It is a guilty relief.

  We eat in a large dining tent, lit by small lanterns. After a day of sweat and effort, my body is sore and cold. I warm my hands around a metal cup of hot chocolate.

  When we’ve finished dinner, Juan ushers us to our nearby campsite.

  “You’ve been to a four-star hotel, eh?” he asks. “Well, welcome to your thousand-star hotel.”

  Our campsite is just past the small town of Wayllabamba, tucked away on a grassy, terraced hillside deep in the Andes Mountains. With stone structures and layers of mountain, it looks like a mini Machu Picchu. We’ve hiked beyond many of the other groups on the trail and are camping in a secluded spot at a higher elevation, but I see the rounded mushroom tops of other tents below, shocking bursts of primary colors in between the green of the landscape.

  As the night settles, the sky is heaped with stars dripping down in strands that nearly touch the tops of our tents. It is more magnificent than a Ritz, more dazzling than a fancy Hilton. The tent door is unzipped, and the inside looks inviting. The sleeping bags are fat and red, almost plushy. My muscles relax just at the sight of this.

  When I pause outside my tent and take a deep breath, I am surprised to get a lung full of air, bracing and crisp as green apples. We are still miles from where we need to go. But for now, I can breathe.

  AT 5 A.M., MY TENT IS UNZIPPED AND THE SMALL FACE OF the assistant guide, Pedro, peeks through the flap.

  “Café or té?”

  “Both. Either. Anything.”

  When Pedro pushes a hot tin cup my way, I am groggy enough that I don’t pay any mind to what I’m drinking until I’m almost finished. That’s when I realize I’ve had my first coca tea, made using the raw leaves of the coca plant. Though the plant is the source of cocaine, the coca leaves themselves are only a mild stimulant and are often used to soothe altitude sickness. The taste is grassy and herbal but slightly sweeter than green tea.

  “Jason, I feel like my cells are dancing,” I say.

  My eyes widen and there’s a new zing in my movements. I dress in about three seconds and am ready for what promises to be the roughest day of hiking, the day we will tackle Dead Woman’s Pass.

  The undulating hills are long gone. This morning’s hike is all about gaining altitude. The path is steep, set with wide, heavy slabs of stone, and there are no plateaus to offer relief. Every step takes excruciating effort, and I often have to squat to catch my breath.

  At almost 14,000 feet and sucking in at least 30 percent less oxygen at this altitude, it feels like I’m inflating balloons while climbing a never-ending staircase. Before long, I am passed by every member of my
group, then hikers from other groups. Even llamas go by.

  “This is dumb,” I say to my husband. “There are buses that go up to Machu Picchu.”

  “But there are things we can only see from the trail,” Jason says. “And we wanted to see Machu Picchu the same way the Incas did, remember?”

  “I am not an Inca,” I mutter.

  Jason is right, though. The trail has magnificent views, especially today’s section, as we climb from the valley floor through the moist forest and into the greenest mountains I have ever seen.

  This is a highway, constructed more than 500 years ago. Like all old highways, it’s deeply cracked, with branching fissures that look like a circulatory system in the stone. Orchids, grasses, and plants erupt through the rifts. Their roots go deep; their blooms shoot high. Wisps of cloud float overhead, just passing by.

  All day long I have my eye on Dead Woman’s Pass—so called because the mountain ridge resembles the silhouette of a supine woman—but the pass never seems to get any closer. Jason takes my backpack and murmurs words of encouragement.

  “You’re a superstar. You’re the best hiker in the world,” he says, but I can barely hear him. My pulse throbs in my ears, and I pant like a hound dog.

  “I don’t know if I’ll make it,” I say.

  I remember the night we decided to make Peru our honeymoon destination. I brought home Where to Go When, a coffee table book filled with glossy, vibrant photos of far-flung places. The book is divided into months, listing the best places to visit and the best things to do during that period of time. Jason and I knew we wanted to honeymoon in summer, so we separately flipped through the June, July, and August sections and made a list of our top five places. When we traded our lists, both of us had the same thing written in the number-one slot: Machu Picchu.

  I remembered my mom putting the ruins high on her bucket list too. She never quite said the name correctly. “Mushu Picchu. Mashu Pizza. You know what I mean,” she’d say with a cascading laugh.