Flower Child

January 2002

Climbing

One step. Breathe in, "you're alive." Next step. Breathe out, "you're a flower." As I trudged up the Inca trail to the pass at 14,000 feet, my nephew Matt's recent advice echoed in my oxygen-impoverished brain. We followed the human ant trail to the highest pass on the 33 kilometer-long path to the Machu Picchu ruins. Two months before this trip my knees had been causing problems, and by July I was only partially ready for our climb. Conditioning shows, as did my lack of it, and four of us-Matt, Rachel, Ramene, and I-worked our way up carrying our gear in our backpacks. Matt had been reading the advice of a Buddhist monk and passed it on to me as we worked our way above 11,000 feet. The "alive" part made sense. The flower did not.

I could see tiny figures standing on the ridge and hoped that they were all midgets, and that the ridge was really closer than it appeared. My statistical alter ego, even if low on oxygen, wouldn't let that hope go unchallenged, and I had to reject at the P less than 1% level the hypothesis that 30 or so midgets had by chance made it to the ridge before us. Damn. That ridge was still a long way off.

Up to then I had been smug and macho. We had special permission from INRENA to travel the Inca trail alone and that meant carrying all our gear. In the great tradition of American culture, we were "independent" and didn't need to have our tents and equipment carried by porters. So all that stuff was on our backs, pulling down on our shoulders. At first I moaned about my stupidity in being so ill prepared. Moaning didn't help. Then I muttered to Matt, thanking him for making this trip such a wonderful experience. He responded with the monk's advice about the flower.

Sometimes we pulled off to the side to allow faster walkers to pass us, but mostly to rest. Our recoveries were quick. As soon as Ramene, my Brazilian niece, began cracking jokes, I knew that we were ready to walk again. Then I counted the steps, usually about 50, before hypoxia set in. With my dulled mind I tried to discover why breathing out would make me a flower. Never did figure it out, so I filed the flower away with the sound of one hand clapping. One less koan to worry about.

After an eon or so, we reached the top and a fantastic view, made even more fantastic knowing that the rest was downhill, at least for that day.

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