The girl who fell off the mountain

I left Potosi. I left with a heart full of silver mines, and a different world view of the slave trade and what happened in South America contrasted to what happened in North America. I left the beating of drums, dance, costumes, heritage in a three-day, 24 hour celebration, and a spectacle of the world mirrored in refracting sunlight off of salt, and flamingos at 17,000 feet. I left the Dali desert and seeing the inspiration of a real-life surrealistic painting. I left finding new travelers, and friendship on the road, and an emboldened spirit of "I can do anything."

I left with a stolena passport and falling into a llama baño at 17,000 feet in the air.

I left understanding planes decompress at 10,000 feet, and I had stood amongst geysers, and new mountains and a moon-stuck landscape, well over the altitude where planes fly.

I left with tales on the road of travelers I met who had paddled down the Amazonian rainforest, cycled down the death road, and they were adventuring far harder then I had.

It was then I decided to paraglide. I did not. Perhaps I should have. Perhaps I have my first regret.

I sat on a bus traveling from the high plains, to Sucre, the second capital of the country. I sat next to a German who discussed America’s recent election, the view of America from abroad, and the mis-views of America. So I thought. I was out of the country at the time of our most recent inauguration.

I traveled down vast landscape from Potosi to Sucre. The White City.

It is a white city. All of the buildings, all of them stand majestic in early Spanish influence. Imperialistic beauty. I traveled to a grave yard, where women wailed and men chanted prayers, and I was surprised to find burials still happening,

I ate Sopa de Mani (peanut suop)in a Marcado after having been warned a hundred times not to eat the street food.

I bought a shawl of hand-woven alpaca, far more money than I had spent on any adventure thus far.

I traveled to a Paleolithic period, where a vast mountain had sprung up at the clashing of tectonic plates, an accident, dragging high into the air, on a vertical surface, its dinosaur tracks with it. And I tried to understand that what I was looking at was the footsteps of dinosaurs, several, um, breeds? Discovered by accident and not preserved because of their archeological value, but preserved because the concrete factory mining the hills reached a point where the stone was no longer of any worth to them. It was almost lost.

I was going to parasail in a country with no insurance, care for safety, or regulation. I could do anything and everything I never had the gall to do in the States.

By chance, the group was full, so I decide on an "easy hike". A secret joke with me, that any tine I have gone on an easy hike the end result was catastrophic. I giggled at the Asian tourists who showed up in heels. They left, feeling it was too muddy of a day to proceed. But I was good.

I was not good.

I started at the top of a goat trail on a slate side of the mountain. I quickly fell far behind the group and instantly felt like the old lady of the young European travelers I had stumbled into.

And then I hit the landslide. It is not quite what Stevie Nicks described, and yet it is.

The rest of the group was ahead.

I was on my own.

When I lost my footing on the washout, I only had a millisecond to think before I dug me knees and hands into the shale to secure myself against a 900 foot drop off.

This is something I cannot explain to anyone, though I have tried. There was a moment, falling off that mountain, that I questioned my entire, everything. Why had children been given to me? Why had I left my job? What was doing in Bolivia, of all places? Why wasn’t I in Machu Pichu? Or Igassu Falls? What was I trying to prove?

I slid down that slope with no one watching. No one saw me face an entirely dangerous situation, which was just a day-hike to so many before me. A family picnic outing.

I fell apart.

Already unsteady on my feet, I fell apart. Shaking to the point that ever chance at energy I had, it was already past-spent on keeping one foot moving forward.

No one in the group noticed. It was a day hike, I transitioned from a tourist into an 89-year-od lady on her death march in an instant.

I don’t tell everyone this tale. Today, I break that silence.

What I remember was an unnamed man giving me his hand at the base of that descent and telling me, "You got this."

What I remember was a leprechaun-sized goat herder a hundred years older than me skipping ahead of me on the trail. What I remember was the light of the sun on a man who came home to his wife, greeting him at the edge of an unsecured, swinging bridge. What I remember is that is the only place I ever, ever said, “Send a van to pick me up... you go on...”

And everyone else said “No”.

I ate lunch at the bottom of that mountain. I wept tears when I looked at it and realized I was on a foolish journey that I had no right to share with anyone. I realized all the young boys at the hogar that said I should not travel on my own were right. Not because I was going to get mugged or victimized, but because I had no right to conquer their land that they had never had the chance to explore themselves. What I realized is I was with an amazing group of people who did not accept that I was a little old lady with bad balance. They helped me ford rivers. They shared their food. They gave me high-fives in the cafe when we returned.

This is still such a superficial post of that moment, because I can never really share that moment of how infinitesimally small you feel, when all your bravado is shaken empty in your face and you realize you are not what you thought.

I was not a cool, independent solo traveler. I was just a girl, trying to fit all the things she had never done in her life into one moment. I was falling in love with all the things I had wished I had the opportunity for when I was 20, and failing to realize all the things I had gained by not experiencing those things ... Forgetting all the things I had gained by living my life fully into my 40s.

There was so much, so much in that moment .,.

It is hard to share. But this, this was part of the adventure.

I stopped writing. I started internalizing, I experienced, oh I experienced. But I will never forget that moment: Bleeding. Hands and knees dug into the side of a mountain. I will never forget that feeling of walking away from the first mountain, figurative or literal, in my life ever. I will never forget feeling so small, and so sure of everything in the midst of so much uncertainty. I will never forget feeling the love of that and coming across that bride greeting her husband, the moment of that hand reaching out to me, and the unbelievable sacrifice of a group of strangers, who told me ...We came into this together, we leave together.

It has taken a year and six months to try and detail this. That is what I carry with me today.

I could have lost everything in one bad step off a landslide goat trail on the lower elevation side of the Andes. I remembered the dinosaurs, and the love waiting for me at home, and the encouragement I had been given from friends and strangers. I remembered dancing in a festival I had never heard of, and forging my way across an abandoned road to the feet of statue that had been a religious sojourn for so many, according to a faith I had no understanding of. I rembered 23 young boy who were scared to let me travel on my own. All things became so clear and so unknown at the same time.

And it all became ok. It was all right in that moment, as my group traversed over the edge a hand-built stone wall in the middle of dying rainforest in the middle of South America,.

And it is all too much to tell... but it is all written on my heart. It will always remain there.