Sorry it has taken me a while to update about being back from Peru, but school has gotten really busy and I have been working on a paper about the trip for my English class! So! I have copied the paper in below and I really hope you all enjoy it. Its the last week of classes here at Farmington and Finals week is approaching but hopefully after that I will be able to post more! The Take Steps walk is fast approaching so help out with the donations! (http://online.ccfa.org/goto/legere)
Thanks for Reading!
Holly
Conquering the Crux
I was alone in the middle of the Peruvian wilderness. 100 yards in each direction, there was no one. There was a rough cobblestone path, tall green winding trees covered with different colored mosses and vibrantly colored flowers. Looking out through the trees past the mountain side, there were valleys and peaks as far as I could see. The Earth looked so different from anything I was used to in Maine where the mountains are now considered hills by my standards. The landscape looked painted, like something out of a book, and bigger than anything I’d ever seen.
The crux of a climb is the hardest part. At the crux there are only two things going through your mind. You are concerned about tackling the task at hand without falling or scraping your legs on the rock. Then there is the nagging thought in the back of your mind that you have almost accomplished the hardest part and soon it will be easy going to reach the top. Keeping these two thoughts in check gets you up the climb. When you stop focusing on the rock and pay too much attention to what is ahead, you’ll fall. Then again, knowing that you will be able to rest after the climb allows you to strain yourself more during the crux. Depending on which route you are climbing, you face a different crux.
At first, it was peaceful being alone. Trust me, the self reflection speeches you can give yourself in the middle of the Andes are as inspiring as the mountains themselves. After an hour of hiking, the stairs got steeper and I could no longer keep my body moving by distracting myself with my own thoughts. All alone, on the side of some random mountain in Peru, the only thing I could hear was the crunching of my thick, unsteady, hiking boots hitting the rough trail. I don’t know why it happened, but a panic started to set in. Maybe it was the reality that I was on my own, in the middle of a cloud forest, with jaguars and pumas lurking at the edge of the trees, ready to pounce. I was overcome with the powerful need to fall to the path, curl into a ball, and begin crying all the tears out of my body. If I just got over the crux, I would be able to finish the trail, make it to Machu Picchu, and earn bragging rights within my family for the rest of my life. I realized that I could do this. I had to do this. There was no way I was going to be carried down the mountain. The next resting stop had to be close by so I put all my focus into making it to the small area that was bound to have yet another breathtaking view.
Taking the ageless advice from Santa Claus, it was all I could do to “put one foot in front of the other.” For the last forty-five minutes of the hike, I focused entirely on my clunky feet. I rhythmically placed one boot down after the other, making sure my footing was just right. Adding my trekking poles, I wasn’t just hiking, I was dancing up the mountain. By putting a beat and a repetitive movements to my walk, everything became easier. My breathing developed a pattern too and along with it, I found a way to work my way over the crux.
The first time I landed myself in the hospital, I realized that I couldn’t complain about what I was battling. I didn’t see the other inpatients dutifully completing their required number of laps for the day to speed up discharge; I saw them inching higher to take down their own crux. There were ten year olds who were so light they could stand on the base of their IV poles to be pushed around and infants who didn’t have parents to rock them when they began to cry. This was particularly hard because being a patient myself, I wasn’t allowed to pick them up, but every instinct in me said that I should. Everyone had a different story, and everyone was pushing their bodies to its limits to feel better. Seeing these kids take charge of their lives made me realize that there was no point in complaining and feeling like I couldn’t do it. If they could do it, so could I.
One of my closest friends in the hospital was battling cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and had been diagnosed with cancer during my stay. Shea was used to the hospital; the smell of sterile plastic, the tasteless food, and getting exactly what she wanted from the nurses. She was 12 when I met her and I was 15, but that didn’t mean anything. Shea taught me the ropes of the hospital, the ins and outs: which computers were always unoccupied and available for use, where to get the good arts and crafts, and most importantly, how to boss around the nurses. She wasn’t mean about it, but she knew how to get her way so that she could be more comfortable. One of the most beneficial tricks was asking the nurses to strain the noodles from Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup which had much more flavor than the chicken broth sent up from the cafeteria. Shea knew the lay of the land. She had grown up in the hospital, and having her by my side, I knew I had to work my way over the crux.
It was Shea and so many other patients I met in the Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital that I was thinking of when I felt like falling to the path created by the Inca’s six hundred years ago. They never let their challenges keep them down. If Shea fell, she did everything she could to grab hold and keep working her way up the climb. This is exactly what I did as I started methodically working my way up the trail. Each step took a full second; the fastest I was able to move due to the altitude. This in itself is mentally exhausting when your body is so used to moving at a faster pace. Most athletic challenges require someone to perform the fastest. This was all new, the slower you moved, the better you were doing. Every few meters meant you were rewarded with a break to gulp down two lung-fulls of oxygen.
The last day of the trek was at the lowest altitude we had been at in days and was, for the most part, downhill. Before the trip I would have assumed that this was going to be the easiest day. Waking up on our island in the clouds that last morning, I knew I was completely wrong. Before I even rolled over to sit up, I could feel the fire crawling up my calf muscles, into my thighs and through my back. By the time I got myself into a standing position, I was convinced there was no way my legs would be able to carry the weight of my body, let alone my pack, with the flames that were clearly burning through my flesh. I do a lot of hiking, and I love being outdoors. In the past, I had never had a problem where I felt like I just couldn’t complete the task at hand, like I was defeated. The only time I could think of was when I decided it was finally time to have surgery to remove my colon, but even that ended up being a step forward instead of a step back.
Past hiking experiences started flooding my head, but there had never been a time where I had experienced such challenges. The closest time probably came during the week long adventure course I participated in. I lived in the woods for a week (longer than the 3 nights I spent in the Peruvian Wilderness!) with a small group of kids my age, all getting ready for college. Not only did we learn survival skills like fire building (which you can’t even do on the Inca Trail), but we learned a lot about how to find ourselves as well. During the week we did some short solo hikes that we used for reflection, journal writing, and lots of “group therapy sessions.” We talked about how far we had come even though we were so young, and how far we wanted to go. Our hardest physical challenge was a two day trek through the Maine woods. Most of us had brand new hiking boots that hadn’t been broken in and we were all suffering from inflamed feet. Our highly developed teen minds “discovered” that if we kept moving and stomping our feet “the blood would flow and the pain would be gone!” This probably only worked because of the placebo effect.
Sometime between waking up and sitting down at our last breakfast, I decided that I was going to go back to that week in the woods. I just needed to stomp around a bit, get the blood flowing through my muscles again, and focus on the ultimate goal of the trek: reaching Machu Picchu! My ambition was strong and I started the day off leading the group down the never ending stairs; we all know what goes up, must go down. I held the lead or close to it for most of the day. Each step I took down the mountain sent a tremor up my leg. My muscles were working as hard as they could to hold my body in an upright position. Each time we stopped for a break, my legs would begin shaking uncontrollably, just another message from my muscles that this was the hardest they had ever worked. This was the last day. I had to push myself. I was about to reach one of the seven wonders of the world.
As we began to pass one of the many set of ruins along the trail, I spotted a large, fluffy animal standing on the edge of a terrace. Being in the lead, I laid eyes on the first wild alpaca we had seen. If this didn’t make the day a little easier, the views did. Walking on the very edge of the mountain, one misstep could send me tumbling down to the Urubamba River. This released a combination of adrenaline and surrealism that made me invincible. I needed to take everything in, remember it all, because, in reality, I wouldn’t ever make it back. The pain I had experienced while nestled in my cocoon that morning had disappeared as I put every bit of mental capacity into remembering what pictures would never be able to describe. That day in Peru, I lived in the sky, floated down the path, no longer paying attention to my footing and rhythmic gate.
Eventually, it had to end, but it went out with a bang. Our guide stopped us just outside the Sun Gate, pausing to reflect on how far we had come, and how we were far superior to all those other people who took the bus to Machu Picchu. Stepping through the Sun Gate took my breath away more than the lack of oxygen I had experienced over the past four days. Until this point, there had been ruins to explore, but nothing as large or intact as the site that lay before us. This moment meant more than the accomplishment of the trek. Three months before I had been recovering from surgery and never would have dreamed that I would have accomplished so much. It went even further than this. I have taken years to reach the point in my life where I could forget about Crohn’s and go out and live more than your “Average Joe.” Walking through the Sun Gate meant I had completed the Inca Trail, and with that, I had moved one step closer to taking down Crohn’s, just another crux on my cliff.
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