Leaving the beaten track, I try my best to go around the hillock crowned with a faded blue square of a municipal building, but the marshy ground alongside the river winding its way down the valley bring me right to the backdoor of the aforementioned building. Here come the cracking whips of campesinos conveying a sense of direction to bunched up cattle that tend to deviate towards grass whenever they can.
I have mentally rehearsed the meeting beforehand I know what will be asked: who am I, where I am from, what’s my plan. Have I got coca leaves… have I been vaccinated… As I approach, a bunch of pigs become aware of an intrusion from unforeseen angle and flee their favourite mud pit, granting with annoyed disapproval. An old fella in fettered leather hat catches my gaze and rivets me to a spot. The usual preamble follows of hola, Senior, como estas, todo bien, donde vas… yes, I’m going up the valley. I hold a brief pause... then deliver: ‘I’m looking for my cow.’
Yes, that’s correct. My cow is lost. My listener's eyebrows go up a notch and a curious spark lights up in campesino’s eye. All of a sudden, I have his undivided attention. The man’s name is Hieronimo, he repeats 'platon' diligently several times and asks my family name. To him 'malakhov' sounds like ‘barato’, and I confirm: that’s right, I am a cheapskate. Very much so. I may look like a gringo but I am Russian, in fact. We are not that different from you guys.
I feel right at home here. Coming to Peru is like opening a portal back in time. Same smells of goodness and of waste mixed together with a descent measure of understanding that things eventually go back into the ground, for all their worth. I feel at ease because everyone else is relaxed into themselves and nourished by the invisible umbilical love cord that miraculously remains intact amidst appalling destitution and poverty. Yes, there’s someone pissing on the side of the road, completely sober and nonchalant about it. Earth cycles. We connect at the base. You know what I mean?
So yeah, I lost my cow… can you believe it? Hieronimo is smiling wide. I figured everybody knows what a cow is. Especially in the alpine expanse of Peruvian Cordilleras. Eats grass, gives milk. Wigs the tail, moves up to another patch of grass. A walking buffet serving goodness on tap. My one, however, is somewhat different. For starters, it is blue, I explain. And it has one horn only, bang on in the middle of the forehead. You haven’t any unicorns wondering around, have you? That’s why I try to avoid running into people because nobody believes me at this point and I have to tell the story in a round-about way, which involved travelling to India and consulting Upanishads on the subject of no less than divine game of hide-and-seek. How it came about, you ask? Well, the source of it was this fellow called Brahma The Omnipotent One, who brought the entire universe into existence and populated the world with creatures and animals. One of them happened to be a cow. Without further do, Brahma fell in love with the cow he himself created, and a romantic affair blossomed. Logically, he manifested himself as a bull so he could go on chasing after his beloved, trying to score a date… hence, hide-and-seek game of duality we all are so partial to.
Likewise, if you know how easily cows get lost, I tell Heronimo, it’s much better to go looking straight away. So I jumped on the plane and off I went. You don’t want to wait till cows come home, you will be hundred years old and completely useless as far as climbing mountains go. Besides, a blue unicorn cow will not be satisfied with green pasture alone… no, she will go after rare alpine flowers underneath sunlit glaciers. If not to consume, then to admire. It is the purity of pristine wilderness that makes her milk taste of honey. Dig? To a campesino like yourself this rhetoric should suffice and even be appreciated – at least I hope so, regardless how absurd is the whole thing about running away from love which you’ve just found.
People think it is fun going for a stroll in the mountains. Admire the views, breathe fresh air while following the track to a sacred lake or something. For me it is scrambling up precipitous slopes where I can see the twisted boogie of the landscape which appears to be still but is, fact, dancing. A pathless path is the route I take and nine times out of ten I end up wiping blood off my knuckles or ankles, or both, not because I fancy bleeding but because there’s a price for everything and sharing juice of life is where it is at. So yeah, amigo… chasing after sacred cows is a dangerous pursuit. You begin to see the futility of it sooner or later and there comes a point when the search is internalized through all this huffing and puffing and exerting your body on the empty stomach to make it up through oxygen-deprived territory of crumbling stone in order to touch the glacier and behold its crystalline resonance under your fingertips while your heartbeat is amplified to a mighty thump in your ears and spreads in cascading ripples through your veins to the extremities of fingers and toes. Where does one end, where does one begin, it’s hard to tell while looking down at the land swaying back and forth with your breath. One of these days I will disappear and never return to stumbling through marshes and scattering pigs from their beloved mud pits. I will not come back to beating around prickles and cactus-ridden hedges, climbing locked gates in the middle of nowhere and falling over stone corrals for the rare privilege of chasing my beloved, god bless her tail.
This is not a vacation, Hieronimo, my friend. If you were in my shoes for once, you’d appreciate how weirdest truths are scribbled at night by the light of a candle bought in passing from an old grandma that opened her humble dust-filled shop at dawn to receive you and your fifty cents worth of purchase because people here tend to take your troubles to heart and oblige you with their time and their affection. Makes you feel being taken care of, genuinely so. It supports your journey, both inner and outer, and I will continue to sing praise to this amazing land and its people that astound me with their kindness.
P.S. My film-making passion generated a meeting with Hue Jackman, of all the people, in my dream. We just chatted about this and that, how life is so abundant and full of surprises that it’s impossible to keep up just scribbling stuff down as it happens. Stopping to control the flow and letting it take you places instead is a magic key to experience. Let the moment decide what is valid and precious. No struggle. No ambition. Graceful ease and gratitude to be alive and fully so.
P.P.S Just came down the glacier, pants full of quiet joy. Stinging nettle did the trick. It literally makes you high when you give your ankles and thighs a good going over. It’s super potent up here, too. I got a Royal Inca Hotel all to myself, complete with straw piled up on the earth for sleeping, brick stove (a freaking miracle to see one, complete with fire rings for different size pots!) plus all the cutlery one needs to cook up a feast which is currently boiling on slow heat generated by blessed cow pats I’m burning. Who dares wins, as they say. All the valley is mine and mine only. All I had to do was climb a couple of locked gates and give Hieronimo a concise version of the speech expanded here that speaks of divine pilgrimages and eternal search of the beloved.
Huascaran National park turns out to be twice inaugurated as a World Heritage Site and a Unique Biodiversity Reserve, as I discovered few minutes ago on the back of a tourist map swindled from defunct El Tambo hostel where I landed in the embrace of Reina who has not accommodated a single gringo in over a month. For bucks for the entire palace, hot shower included, makes you feel like a visiting royalty. I tend visit same mountain valleys in Huaraz, appreciating them anew because both the glaciers that crown the peaks and I myself have changed. I could never bring myself around to paying entrance fee for the privilege of scrambling up rocky slopes and losing my breath to witness still-as-a-mirror lakes reflecting sky-high edifices of stone above, beckoning with suicidal ascents… perhaps because I come here as a free man to receive the blessing, rather than consuming the vistas on offer. Thus I forgone all other rules of entry every time I went, such as sleeping wherever I wanted, climbing whatever spirit has called me to climb and a few others I am not going to mention but which go without saying in the harsh alpine climate that inspires survival by all means available. Oh, ignorance is bliss. I have to break rules consciously from this point onwards… damn. But as far as local folk is concerned, a man in pursuit of healing, happiness and enlightenment is always welcome, as long as he shares his coca and his whimsical stories. On the way to Rurec valley, I habitually lost the track and went scrambling over the stone hedges separating fields until I came upon an old man and his woman doubled-over their potato crop. They waved me through in the right direction and thanked me for letting their puppies lick my hands with a generous offering of potatoes piled up on a spread poncho to take up with me into the mountain. Just to make sure I got food, you know? How sweet is that! I couldn’t possibly take the whole lot with me but traded some papas for fruit I’ve been carrying. They thanked me… it made me think of my closest Maori neighbour back home, Priscilla Queen of the High Tide, who habitually throws stones at me for strolling down the high tide water mark past her paddock to make sure I feel the welcome… people of the land know better who belongs to whom. It’s only a Western delusion that puts man in charge of Nature. I truly rest coming here. Tis strange, to be both running away and running towards. Here I am, utterly alone, a temporary king of the Rurec Valley, reaching out in my thoughts to beloved friends and strangers alike who may one day read this account and feel the spirit soar to fly with the eagles spiralling up with graceful ease and nobility that is our both our birthright and a final destination.
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