It´s about five hours since our team of sweaty, greasy, sun-struck and wonder-lusted Girls on Top made it back to the beeping, bleating, tooting, spitting town of Huaraz with its miracles including laundromats, taps, pillows, coffee and vegetables. The shock of ´reality´ has jolted me, as it always does, into a sort of sleepy overwhelm and shopping madness... the man-made world seems so insane after the infinite silence of the hills where everything necessary is so much quieter, and subtler, and gentler. In a mad scramble to make it all make sense the best thing to do seems to be to spend money - or walk fast -or look at magazines - it´s simply just Too Much to stay moving at mountain pace and watch the helter skelter of the built world in all its chokey, smokey, sexy, sad'eyed panic.
Avalanches are quieter than traffic.
Sheep love each other.
The girls are in their own little frenzies of adjustment, shaping mountains out of washing, fleece and separating out from the merino and feathers clothes which we can hardly imagine wearing in the hot and sweaty Amazon after our days sleeping in ice, making snowmen after soccer matches and catching trout in down jackets.
Their diaries and photos will appear here over the next few days as they tell the tale of our adventure in the Huayuash.
From where I stand, inspiring, serving, caring for and leading five of us, with our own unique approaches, attitudes, fears and resistances over the toughest trek in the Cordillera Huayhuash these last 12 day has been a privilage and a test. From beginnings of crippling nausea, tears, diahorrea and fears over everything from the food to our boots on the radically changing terrain, the team has emerged from the hills confident, calm and close. Five strangers crossing the Andes over 200kms (give or take about 10ks due to knee preservation considerations) in snow, storms, dust and all....with only a few blisters, one weird rash, several nasty bites, a weather-worn ear, one shaving cut and some sunbun to show for it all is not bad going.
I loved this year´s adventure, even with the little hiccups and the doubts and questions it raised ..as it always does. I think we walked out plenty of the phobias and melodramas we arrived with, as casualties of our own self doubt and our civilised neuroses. The mountains, I think we mostly found, are not a place to test out control, but to practice letting it go. The 45 degree sand dune descent of San Antonio pass, which we had to run down as it collapsed under our feet, was the best place to learn that lesson - and we did, bad knees, vertigo, trepidation and all.
Every girl on top made the expedition in her own sweet way, and some of us even managed to see how we could sweeten the bits that were in need of it -for everybody´s sake, especially our own.
The mountains are their own curriculum and some came to learn tougher lessons than others. I think we did a very good job of Being There, of opening our hearts to what was going on, and helping each other accept it so we could be present to the beauty of the Andes, the ancient workings of the world all about us, and the circus that was someimes going on inside.
Thanks to those of you who´ve sent me messages here to come back to ... nice to know you´re out there and nice to be able to share the tale too!
Realising more and more that love is more important than leadership - though our beautiful Peruvian crew remind me every year that truly, in a culture like this, with its heart in the land and its eyes turned gently toward the other, they can really be the same thing.... hope I can come back with this lesson more deeply learnt.
Does anybody know the best treatment for blistered lips¿
jadex