Push Yourself Until You Can’t Turn Back

OUR FIRST HIKING DAY ON THE INCA TRAIL TREK IS SUPPOSED to be the easiest. But our guide, Juan, jokingly calls it “Inca flat,” meaning it is not flat at all.

For several miles we walk undulating roller-coaster hills that never seem to wane. We keep pace with the rest of our group, though, which consists of two other honeymooning couples, an older outdoorsman from Oregon, and a grandmotherly type.

Along the way we see hikers from other groups splinter off, turning around to head back to the station at the base of the mountain in Sacred Valley. Some are visibly sick, their heads lolling and sleepy-eyed, their bodies draped over donkeys as they are led to the start of the trail. Some have just realized for the first time how brutal the hike can be.

“That’s the problem,” Juan says. “You never know if you can handle the trail until you try.”

I realize then there’s no easy way out. There is no evacuation plan. If the trail breaks me, my choices are limited to going back where I came from or pushing forward to the end. Each mile all of a sudden feels incredibly real.

Groups of traditionally dressed Peruvian women sit by the side of the trail, selling cans of beer and bottles of energy drinks. In a moment of weakness my husband pays Disneyland prices for a small bottle of Gatorade. It is delicious.

My group makes it to the first night’s campsite intact, though my arms are salty and a layer of skin on my heel has already sloughed off in my hiking shoes.

The porters, who all jogged ahead of us, are waiting. While we were huffing our way to camp, they erected the tents and prepared a feast of brown bread, quinoa stew, fresh salad, and grilled alpaca steaks. It is a guilty relief.

We eat in a large dining tent, lit by small lanterns. After a day of sweat and effort, my body is sore and cold. I warm my hands around a metal cup of hot chocolate.

When we’ve finished dinner, Juan ushers us to our nearby campsite.

“You’ve been to a four-star hotel, eh?” he asks. “Well, welcome to your thousand-star hotel.”

Our campsite is just past the small town of Wayllabamba, tucked away on a grassy, terraced hillside deep in the Andes Mountains. With stone structures and layers of mountain, it looks like a mini Machu Picchu. We’ve hiked beyond many of the other groups on the trail and are camping in a secluded spot at a higher elevation, but I see the rounded mushroom tops of other tents below, shocking bursts of primary colors in between the green of the landscape.

As the night settles, the sky is heaped with stars dripping down in strands that nearly touch the tops of our tents. It is more magnificent than a Ritz, more dazzling than a fancy Hilton. The tent door is unzipped, and the inside looks inviting. The sleeping bags are fat and red, almost plushy. My muscles relax just at the sight of this.

When I pause outside my tent and take a deep breath, I am surprised to get a lung full of air, bracing and crisp as green apples. We are still miles from where we need to go. But for now, I can breathe.

AT 5 A.M., MY TENT IS UNZIPPED AND THE SMALL FACE OF the assistant guide, Pedro, peeks through the flap.

“Café or té?”

“Both. Either. Anything.”

When Pedro pushes a hot tin cup my way, I am groggy enough that I don’t pay any mind to what I’m drinking until I’m almost finished. That’s when I realize I’ve had my first coca tea, made using the raw leaves of the coca plant. Though the plant is the source of cocaine, the coca leaves themselves are only a mild stimulant and are often used to soothe altitude sickness. The taste is grassy and herbal but slightly sweeter than green tea.

“Jason, I feel like my cells are dancing,” I say.

My eyes widen and there’s a new zing in my movements. I dress in about three seconds and am ready for what promises to be the roughest day of hiking, the day we will tackle Dead Woman’s Pass.

The undulating hills are long gone. This morning’s hike is all about gaining altitude. The path is steep, set with wide, heavy slabs of stone, and there are no plateaus to offer relief. Every step takes excruciating effort, and I often have to squat to catch my breath.

At almost 14,000 feet and sucking in at least 30 percent less oxygen at this altitude, it feels like I’m inflating balloons while climbing a never-ending staircase. Before long, I am passed by every member of my group, then hikers from other groups. Even llamas go by.

“This is dumb,” I say to my husband. “There are buses that go up to Machu Picchu.”

“But there are things we can only see from the trail,” Jason says. “And we wanted to see Machu Picchu the same way the Incas did, remember?”

“I am not an Inca,” I mutter.

Jason is right, though. The trail has magnificent views, especially today’s section, as we climb from the valley floor through the moist forest and into the greenest mountains I have ever seen.

This is a highway, constructed more than 500 years ago. Like all old highways, it’s deeply cracked, with branching fissures that look like a circulatory system in the stone. Orchids, grasses, and plants erupt through the rifts. Their roots go deep; their blooms shoot high. Wisps of cloud float overhead, just passing by.

All day long I have my eye on Dead Woman’s Pass—so called because the mountain ridge resembles the silhouette of a supine woman—but the pass never seems to get any closer. Jason takes my backpack and murmurs words of encouragement.

“You’re a superstar. You’re the best hiker in the world,” he says, but I can barely hear him. My pulse throbs in my ears, and I pant like a hound dog.

“I don’t know if I’ll make it,” I say.

I remember the night we decided to make Peru our honeymoon destination. I brought home Where to Go When, a coffee table book filled with glossy, vibrant photos of far-flung places. The book is divided into months, listing the best places to visit and the best things to do during that period of time. Jason and I knew we wanted to honeymoon in summer, so we separately flipped through the June, July, and August sections and made a list of our top five places. When we traded our lists, both of us had the same thing written in the number-one slot: Machu Picchu.

I remembered my mom putting the ruins high on her bucket list too. She never quite said the name correctly. “Mushu Picchu. Mashu Pizza. You know what I mean,” she’d say with a cascading laugh.

After planning, dreaming, and saving, Jason and I are finally on our way. I am ascending a mountain with the man I love, and I can see the peak from where I stand. I’m crazy to even think about turning back.

The final push to Dead Woman’s Pass is a 3,000-foot elevation gain over the course of three hours. It feels like an exercise machine set for the highest level, like one of those stair-climbers that never take you anywhere. My joints ache from the force of being yanked uphill and into motion while the altitude tries to smash me down. I look to my feet for several minutes, then I focus on the hairy calves of the man in front of me, then I stare at the sky, then back to the ground. My lungs feel like fire.

After about an hour, I enter a Zen-like meditation, in which I count my steps and allow the numbers to fill my head. “One, two, three … ugh, four, five, six …” Every time I get to 250, I start over. I don’t know why I decided to focus on numbers, but it helps. It gives me a focus beyond the struggle to breathe and walk; it takes me beyond the trail. It’s kind of like having an out-of-body experience, though if I were out of my body then my thighs wouldn’t burn so much.

Eventually, there is a moment when my feet are moving but I no longer have to force myself to climb. I am simply doing it.

When I reach the top of the pass, I stop staring at my shoes, at the ground, at the unyielding sky. From this vantage point, the highest point of this hike, I see snow-capped peaks. Miles of mountains, embroidered with gray trails. And my hiking group, waiting for me. All I hear is applause.

I’ve made it.

By the end of the day, after a brief descent to our campsite, we are closer to the end of the trail than the beginning. We’ve gone too far to turn back.

DAY THREE PROMISES TO BE LONG—NEARLY TEN MILES total—but we are given motivation for hiking faster and harder than ever. Showers wait for us at the campsite, the first opportunity to bathe on this trek.

Juan also says the first group to the campsite will have a better position on the trail the following morning, the day we will finally see Machu Picchu.

Along the way, we walk the same path the Inca paved, with many of the original stones still in place. We pause for breakfast at Runkuracay, small, circular ruins made of stone, which overlook the Pacamayo valley. We hike along steep rock embankments, skirting deep precipices.

Another set of ruins is called Sayacmarca, “inaccessible town,” protected by sheer cliffs on three sides. The structures remain secretive—nobody knows exactly why they were built and how they were used—and I am overwhelmed. There are stories here, fossilized in the buildings, and nobody can ever unearth them. How can something be both tangible and so unknown?

This is my mom’s narrative. She still exists, but her stories are lost forever. Her death is the kind that she is forced to live every day, paused somewhere between earth and what exists beyond. She is my inaccessible town.

I scramble to hold fast to my memories of my mom, but time has faded them. I remember bits and snapshots: Our overgrown backyard in Huber Heights, Ohio, where my mom let me run through the garden sprinkler, though she somehow never got wet. Afternoon walks to the duck pond, tossing stale crusts to the birds. Picking wild mulberries in the woods, staining our hands the color of a bruise. Pushing me on a swing my brother hung from the maple tree in the front yard; I know one day the swing fell, but I can’t remember if she caught me.

One time my plastic digital watch stopped working, and my mom slapped it across her palm with such force it turned her hand pink. “Just needs a good German touch,” she said as the digital numbers reappeared.

I have wispy memories of her when she was slender and tall, swishing into the house after attending grown-up parties. I purposely stayed awake long after the babysitter put me to bed, just to receive my mom’s soft kiss on my forehead. I relished the vision of her draped in sparkly jewelry, dressed elegantly, illuminated by a shaft of moonlight, the sweet smell of a strawberry daiquiri mixed with perfume. Why should that vibrant version of my mom exist only in the past?

If I shut my eyes, I can resurrect her; when I open them again, she is lost.

When I sniffle, Jason stops. “What’s wrong?” he says, and he pushes a lock of sweaty hair from my forehead.

We’re so close to the finish line of this spectacular place, the end of the goal we set for our honeymoon hike. Soon he’ll return to California, and I’ll continue wandering, with no clear-cut path. It’s hard enough for me to keep going when there’s a trail pointing the way. How am I supposed to keep going when there is nobody to guide me? Will I be strong enough to carry myself?

“Nothing’s wrong,” I say. “I just don’t want this trail to come to an end.”

We’re at a place where the path is broken and uneven, where many of the original stones are coming undone. The rocks are hard but unstable. Stairs crumble beneath our feet. The air is moist, and most steps are covered with slippery, wet leaves, so every movement requires extra vigilance. This feels like the most treacherous ground of all. I feel most unsteady.

After a few more hours of hiking through the cloud forest, we finally reach our campsite for the night, Wiñay Wayna, named for the pink orchid that grows only here. In Quechua, the indigenous language, it means “forever young.”

Our tents are erected near an extensive set of Incan ruins—agricultural terraces, house-like structures, walkways with long staircases and large baths.

This is where I take my first shower in three days. I pay $1.50 for three minutes of hot water. I feel as though I’ve been baptized, reborn through this age-old ritual of walking, sweating, scrubbing the dirt from my feet, becoming clean again.

PEDRO WAKES THE GROUP AT 4 A.M.

“Let’s go, let’s go. Arriba!”

We are given coffee and thin, rolled crepes for breakfast, which we eat in silence. This is going to be the easiest day of hiking, only about three hours until we reach the Sun Gate, but the sense of ending is palpable. Today we will see Machu Picchu, and then we will scatter on our own ways.

It is dark outside, the kind of dark when dawn seems unreachable. With flashlights in hand, we take to the trail. The goal is to get to the ruins before sunrise, but Juan warns that we must be careful. At this point the path is a delicate contour that winds a thin line around the mountains, with sheer drop-offs to the right. Juan says some hikers have tumbled from the trail and were only discovered weeks later.

We walk single file, with Juan following close behind.

“Mountainside!” he hisses when any of us stray too far to the edge.

When I look backward, I see scores of other hikers and their flashlights, like a string of Christmas lights draped along the Andes.

Before long we hit an official checkpoint, where a guard must check our Inca Trail hiking permits (the trail is limited to 500 hikers and porters per day, and this is strictly regulated) and stamp our passports. However, the office doesn’t open until 5:30 a.m.—we still have more than an hour to wait. Juan didn’t tell us about this part.

It is cold, and Jason and I huddle together for warmth.

“Aw, it’s like being on the floor of the Lima airport all over again, honey,” I say.

“Stop.”

We try to pass the time with games, but even the woman who was once a cruise ship entertainer—a bubbly, chatty blonde—has lost her natural enthusiasm.

“I spy something with my little eye,” she mutters. Her scarf is bundled around her face. She sits on a bench near the guard’s office and looks more like a heap of blankets than a person.

“Is it black?” I say.

“Yes.”

“Is it darkness?”

“Yes. You win. Game over.”

The guard arrives and checks our documents. As soon as he gives us the proper stamps, we sprint. The last hour is all running. I take puffs from my emergency inhaler as we jog higher and higher.

Finally, as dawn breaks, we reach the final ascent. Fifty steps, nearly vertical. The angle is so dramatic, I’m forced to approach it like a child and climb on my hands and feet in a bear crawl.

When I reach the top, I look down and gasp. It’s there. Machu Picchu, all spread out below me. It’s like a massive Lego masterpiece—a dazzling display of carefully laid blocks, precise stone architecture, and staircases of terraces hewn from the rich green land.

There are places that never live up to the hype. There are places that will never look as good as the postcards. Machu Picchu is not one of those places. It’s there, I see it, but it doesn’t look possible.

This is where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon Basin in a tropical mountain forest. The velvety mountaintops look like rococo sculptures, draped with valances of mosses, dotted with ferns, decorated by canopies of trees. It is an embarrassment of green. Wispy fog forms gauzy rings around each peak.

About 200 structures form the sanctuary of Machu Picchu, set on steep ridges of granite and laced with white rock terraces. The walls of each building are formed so perfectly that a knife cannot be wedged in between the stones. Llamas graze nearby. Jason and I sit and watch the sun move across the mountains, our eyes clouded with tears. A flock of neon green parakeets swoops overhead.

I think of my mom now, as I take in this place I didn’t know I was strong enough to reach. She would be proud of the four days I spent breathing in sun, the nights spent sleeping among stars. She’d want to see me here, strong in the midst of ruins.

I wonder if the wounds we carry inside us are like the wounds we show on the outside. I remember falling often as a clumsy little girl, all scabbed knees and elbows. My mother was slow to bandage me. Instead she told me to give my cuts sunshine and air, the necessary ingredients to heal.

Maybe this is what brought me to Peru at this particular moment. She has been sick for ten years. I know my mom’s death is coming, and that wound is raw and vulnerable. But Machu Picchu is a reminder of timelessness. Even when abandoned, it wasn’t destroyed. Some things never disappear.

The sun is round and bright as Jason and I scramble among the buildings, feeling the polished stones laid by fifteenth-century hands. A breeze spills over the mountains and rolls down the terraces. We clamber up a hill to a carved pillar called Intihuatana, which translates to “the hitching post of the sun.” It’s a sundial of sorts, where Incan astronomers once predicted the celestial periods. On the vernal and autumnal equinoxes each year, the sun halts over the pillar at midday, casting no shadow.

Those are the days when the sun has lassoed the rock, and for the briefest, most golden moment, the earth and sky meet. Once separated, the two spend the next six months traveling the universe to find each other again.

I kneel by the pillar and put my hand atop the rock. It is still warm.