Closed and opened. - July 29th, 2008

And so, the end,

With ruddy feet and filthy hands I´ve come down from the mountains and back into the meliue of La Paz, packing my bags and looking for the last farewells in these crooked streets. I managed to find a bus that I thought might be heading in the direction I wanted, as I tried to discover a place I had seen only through windows. The first step, of course, involved resting my backpack in a middling river of urine at 5:30 in the morning in La Paz, and that is something I´m still trying to undo. With the celebratory mistakes out of the way, my hopeful chariot drew up and away from the city, and into that range I that had rusted into my dreams, The Cordillera Real.

After a few hours of climbing it was quite clear I had managed to retrace my steps, but the next part was somewhat more difficult. Without a car, or wall tent, I had very few options of where to stop. The bus was headed to Charazani, a beautiful pueblo among a valley, but I wanted out now, in this place:

We passed through the village of Bocabamba, and it was clear that in a place without trees, hostals would be hard to find. The next pueblo, Walicala, was considerably bigger, and throbbing with the weekly market day. I hung my gringo head out the bus and asked some gentlemen about my prospects of staying in the town, and the next thing I knew a very confused bus was dissapearing into the valley folds while dust settled around my boots at the side of the road. In what would become a tradition every time I stopped walking, a small crowd gathered to stare and question me, growing quickly to 15 or more people. The word awakward does not even begin to cover my responses to a nervous blur of questions, the sentences half-Spanish, half-Aymara. Over the next few days I would be happy to have a bed, but would begin to yearn for the up-scale comforts of a toilet, or water.

The plane around the Cordillera Real is unbelievable, the plunging valleys form a rippling edge on one side, as the hills and mountains climb on in the other direction until they plunge into Lago Titicaca. The mornings are clear, but by noon mists and clouds normally roll in, so I did all my wandering and climbing in the early hours, eventually reaching altitudes around 5000 meters.

I had come here for solitude, and it did not need my searching. The wind would press upon my ankles in the morning, coaxing my tired feet further and higher, and as the ridges would drop away, tustle my hair as an expectant father, proud to show such sheltered things to the wanting. And yet, as the stones of peaks would begin to grind beneath my boots, my ever-present companion would always transform into my juror, the gusts and breaths of force bending my knees, testing any resolve to remain at the summit. But the outline of silence would only emerge when the winds would suddenly vanish, leaving the invisible visible, and the unknowable introduced, like the deafening sound of absence.

The mountains are, with all respect, littered with Aymaran ruins. They lie silent in every valley, and powerful atop every summit: farms, villages, and cities of tumbled secrets, older than the Incas, and quieter in their sleep. Ancient pottery and carved rocks lie amongst the walls, untouched or discovered, almost waiting. I do not know if it is easy or difficult to imagine a place without people, emptied and potent, atop the roof of the world, with only the ghosted stones of ruins, and to wander their paths alone, with every second for yourself apart. The mists curl across the rocks, the sun fades from the horizon, and the empty spaces between the galaxies blast stars through the fermament.

Through it all, I managed to cool the storms within a bit, although with less of a whooshing release, and more the quieted calm.

Now I sit in La Paz, the hours counting until my departure, the time clutched too tight in my hands, too reluctant to release it all.