Pesto and Walruses

So I made 68 cups of pesto. If you are curious, 68 cups is equal to 4.25 gallons. I realize that this is a great feat, and I am proud. In Wisteria, the cabin where my friend Kendra and I reside, you can still catch the occasional fragrant whiff of basil.

It is worth mentioning that I met Kendra at a national park in Patagonia (for a reflection on that experience, you can glance at this post from the archives). We last parted ways in Bolivia, and then I sent her this e-mail saying, "So I'm going to this island in the fall... wanna come?" And, miraculously, it worked out. I picked her up in Seattle and now we're here, unfathomable latitudes from our meeting-place, laughing in the basil-patch. And we also happened to meet a bunch of Chileans on the ferry and practiced our Spanish in the open water at ridiculous odds.

Being back at camp Indralaya is beautiful. It's been exactly a decade since I was last here, and I can feel the presence of the past selves of my childhood here--the Caitlins that believed in magic. I've been meditating every morning with the resident managers and my co-volunteers, listening to vast silence punctuated by the occasional airplane or soulful loon. I've been thinking a lot lately about the crazy mental barriers we so often insist on building... you know, barriers against freedom, or magic, or love. I've been thinking about breaking them down.

Oh and NEWS FLASH: I've been informed of an unfathomably exciting volunteer opportunity. Apparently a marine wildlife rescue center outside of Anchorage, AK is currently seeking volunteers to spoon with baby walruses. I am not kidding. There are baby orphan walruses that need humans in walrus suits to cuddle with them. I'm currently scheming ways to incorporate walrus-cuddling into my Alaska winter. It just makes sense.

Forward ho!

So after a bit of a hiatus, I've decided to resuscitate this narrative. Because I'm a million percent convinced that I can find something beautiful in every moment that's worth writing about and reflecting on. And, of course, my life continues to be ridiculous. I'm trying on questions and lifestyles like so many hats; traveling still; trying at once to figure out my future and rejoice in the present moment. Reminding myself that bewilderment is sacred.

So here's the lowdown of what has happened in the four month gap since I last wrote: I flew from Peru to Minnesota, where I visited Carleton for about a week, and then I flew to Seattle and took the train down the Pacific coast to my hometown of Eugene, Oregon. There I used my dwindling funds to purchase a car (a 1995 Subaru, Delilah), and proceeded to drive down the interstate to my summer job in the mountains of Southern California. After spending 11 crazy/wonderful weeks working with kids and reveling in starlight, I drove back up to Eugene by way of San Francisco, said "Hey," and then promptly filled Delilah's trunk to the brim with anything I could possibly ever want and drove up to the San Juan Islands in Northern Washington. I'm currently living on Orcas Island, working at a beautiful camp where I used to come when I was young. I'm making pesto, drying plums, eating ripe figs off the tree... and in my spare time applying to graduate school. Days ago I accepted a job working with sled dogs in Alaska for the winter, and that's another adventure looming on the horizon. The Northern Lights.

The other night I was sitting at the beach at Indralaya, the camp where I'm working, with my co-interns. We watched the sun sink and the almost-full moon rise, marveling at the way celestial reflections slither on the ocean without ever moving. Then, one by one, bioluminescent particles came to life in the tides. The little lights were a violent shade of aqua, and they darted about almost playfully -- they kissed and swirled, and then, without warning, extinguished. I've had Joni Mitchell's "Circle Game" stuck in my head incessantly since my arrival on the island, and I can't get over the smell of things. I'm excited about everything unfolding (with a healthy amount of fear and confusion for spice).

So that's that. It's all boundless, and I'm writing again. Stay tuned for stories.

...and then we flew.

Cuzco and Maccu Picchu were a story of impossible, ancient mortar. That is to say, the Incas did not use mortar. They used magic. After a 12 hour bus ride (in which more than one pickle per hour was consumed) Nathaniel and I excited Bolivia for good (only one day over the visa limit!) and arrived in the ancient capital of the Incan empire. There was a peculiar misty light in Cuzco, which strangely seemed to sharpen the edges of things... and many stairs. Many, many stairs. 123 stairs to get to our hostel, in fact. Magic mortar mingled with modernity on the city streets, and we enjoyed museums and wandering and markets.

And then we journeyed to the iconic ruins of Maccu Picchu. We did the Extreme Budget Version (total cost: $100). This is what the Extreme Budget Version of Maccu Picchu entails: On the first day we awoke at 3:42 a.m. to take a series of harrowing taxi rides to a hydroelectric plant in the middle of the jungle where we had to walk on some railroad tracks for three hours to get to the town at the base of the iconic ruins. Exhausted, we fell asleep at 7:00 p.m., only to get up the next day at 3:42 a.m. to sprint up 600 vertical meters of stairs to be the first people in line at Maccu Picchu so we can climb another mountain (i.e. more stairs).  It was crazy, but it was beautiful. We communed with llamas. Nathaniel juggled. I really have no idea what the Incas were thinking building a city up there with the clouds and lots of vertical cliffs, but wowzers. Even after so much travel I am still overwhelmed by these "postcard moments."

We splurged on train tickets to return to Cuzco, where we proceeded to treat ourselves to full body massages with hot rocks and pedicures for $15. That's right, my toenails are now something verging on hot pink. We finished Philip Pulman's His Dark Materials trilogy on a park bench in the pigeon-filled Cuzco plaza, I baked banana bread, and then we took an absolutely mind-numbing 22 hour bus ride to Lima. (I actually wanted to strangle myself with the complimentary blanket after we had to watch the ad about the award-winning prescription lens company for the 27th time... but we made it). 

And now we're in Lima, in a hostel overrun with delightful hippies that get by selling hand-made crafts. It smells unmistakably like the ocean here, and it's cuz the Pacific's only a few blocks away. We've run along the seafront in the mornings (so much oxygen!), seen an extremely excellent ancient library that monks used to use, and failed at visiting two museums (par for the course). And today is our last day in South America. Tomorrow we fly to Chicago... what? I really can't believe it. But rituals help. You know, Meaningful Things like blowing out candles or wearing robes. So, after some consideration, we decided to commemorate the past seven and a half months with flight.

...and then we flew. Or more technically, paraglided (paraglid?). I believe that my experience of those 12 minutes--those moments spent hanging silently over the Lima coastline with my trusty parachute pilot Marcelo--is the closest I will ever come to understanding what it is like to be a bird. Every flying dream I've ever had merged with reality as I watched my feet soar over city streets and regarded premium Lima pent-house apartments up close. Walking is so bumbling and lame in comparison.

And tomorrow I get to fly in a roaring mechanical behemoth; a machine that will bear me back to my mother country. It really is strange. I find myself wishing  for something concrete to lend it all meaning... When Nathaniel and I finished reading The Amber Spyglass out loud, there was a whole page imprinted simply with two words: "The End." There were ornate designs squiggling above and below those words. It was almost monumental. How can you find that in life? I sure don't know. Instead of two clear words with text ornaments, I know that life will give me an overwhelming whirlwind of airports and friends and family and places, and that I will be left grasping for threads to orient me in the flood. I'll unpack my backpack, start thinking about my summer job, say goodbye to Nathaniel. Be confused for a while. But it has been beautiful. I don't know if I'll ever make sense of it, but I have flown. And I will fly. Tomorrow, and again and again.

Coffee and Ancient Stones

So the coffee man never showed up to take us to the coffee farm. A harrowing taxi ride took us to the sultry jungle-town of Caranavi, but the second leg of the trip never quite connected... This is actually pretty par for the course for Bolivian logistics--with more time, of course, we could have figured out how to get there eventually, but with only eleven days until The Return to "Reality" (AH) we just didn´t have time. We did, however, get to spend an interesting 24 hours in the metropolis of Caranavi, which was nothing like any Bolivian city I have encountered. There were no gringos whatsoever in this green, hot, sporadically rainy crossroads, but there was infinite fried chicken. Like, really. Nathaniel and I were astounded. Next to the fried chicken, there were also ladies selling pure un-sugared hunks of home-processed chocolate on the street. I crumbled this delicious jungle-fruit into my espresso while Nathaniel and I read aloud from Philip Pulman´s His Dark Materials series. (A note: I think that the quality that makes both coffee and chocolate delicious is exactly that which tastes like dirt. Coffee and chocolate are delicious dirt.)

After Caranavi another harrowing taxi ride brought us to Coroico, another jungle town (during this particular harrowing taxi ride, Nathaniel and I shared the back seat with an entire family of four). Coroico is mind-bogglingly positioned on top of a sheer jungle cliff, and it was inside of a cloud for most of our time there. Occasionally, though, I glimpsed the world and realized that I have a deep, semi-rational desire to learn to hang-glide. Nathaniel and I had one of the best fondue experiences of our lives at a little German-run fondue restaurant, I glimpsed a firefly, and I picked a coffee berry and observed with wonder and it changed from deep scarlet to brown over the course of a day.

One (final?) harrowing taxi ride later, we are back in La Paz. Today we saw some spectacular pre-Incan ruins with an amateaur archeology enthusiast, and I was reminded how much ancient civilizations baffle me. The ruins were up on the plateau (at about 4000 meters). One of the men with whom I was exploring the ancient rocks, a British-turned-Bolivian writer, was convinced that you could see stars at mid-day at that altitude... I couldn´t see any stars, so I ran my hands over the impossibly smooth masonry and thought about the scope of time. Fifteen hundred years? That´s how old these stone blocks are? What about three months? That´s how long I´ve been in Bolivia. And I´m leaving tomorrow for Peru...

La Paz

So I have left the Sucre universe behind in exchange for the for the airy mountain city of La Paz. "The Peace." The city has been somewhat quiet due to the resurrection of Jesus, but I ate a chocolate bunny and got ridiculously lost while jogging uphill with limited oxygen. I have enjoyed good food,  helped Nathaniel pick out an increasingly large stash of fine knitted alpaca "gear" for re-sale in the States, and planned out the few remaining days of "This Trip." (You know, this absurd-kaleidescope journey that's gonna be reduced to a label just like that in 16 days.) I've also purchased a strange array of cheap earrings, some of which involve colored feathers... and discovered that I have a weakness for knit leg-warmers.

Before leaving Sucre I had the immense pleasure of hiking through the mountains (my mountains?) one last time. The moon was full and deep yellow--Henrry, a guide for Condortrekkers who has come to be a dear friend, told me that the moon flickers golden like that when it's sad. I dunno... The stars were out of control before they were eclipsed by the melancholy moon, I saw silly rainbow caterpillars, I bathed in a waterfall, and I talked with Henrry about the way in which people re-interpret and express the intangible beauty of the universe. The mountains simply Were, still secretive, monolithic, just out of reach, almost breathing. And I said goodbye.

On the way back from the hike we rode in the over-packed camión. I had space for one foot on the floor of the truck, the wind whipped my hair, and a lady made my Australian friend hold a box that turned out to contain a live chicken. Then I got back to my home in Sucre, where I've lived for almost three months. I bid farewell to a beautiful community in that white-washed city and packed my life into a bag again. Movement: a beautiful, exhilarating exercise in serial heartbreak. I am addicted.

Next Nathaniel and I are planning on visiting a small organic coffee farm in the Yungas, the high altitude jungles a few hours outside of La Paz. We met the owner of the farm today--he served me a steaming delectably foamy delicious cappuccino and talked rapid-fire about his passion for coffee. His eyes were exactly the color of coffee. As a coffee aficionado, I am brimming with anticipation

Freedom=Licking Flamingoes

So I´ve left Sucre behind to be a tourist for a little bit. In particular,  I am going to roam over great expanses of salt in central Bolivia. I´m currently in the bleak, flat, high altitude town of Uyuni--we got here last night at 2 a.m. and had to wander the frigid streets with prowling dogs to find a hostel. We found one eventually, and today I enlisted, along with Nathaniel and our Swedish friend Sara, to spend the next three days voyaging across alien, salty, geyser-filled landscapes in a Jeep. Ostensibly there are flamingoes, and a glaring question has arisen in my mind: are the flamingoes salty? Clearly I am going to need to lick the flamingoes. Also, I am looking forward to learning all of the lyirics to Aladdin´s "A Whole New World" in Swedish and taking cheesy pictures of undescribable geology.

Leaving Sucre was weird. I mean I have to go back there to get my computer and my passport if nothing else, but it hurts to gradually dislodge myself from a place that has an unquestionable flavor of "home." I´ve learned to play Settlers of Catan. I´ve decorated my room, I´ve given my soul to the mountains, and all of the ladies in the market recognize me and call me mamita linda or querida caserita. The fruit lady even gives me bites of crazy exotic fruit for free every time I buy from her. And the other night we cooked a fabulous three course meal for Lidia, the secretary for Condortrekkers. It felt so much like family that it was almost uncanny. So it´s weird not to be there, but that´s how it goes, I guess: things arise and things pass away, like the ocean lapping the shore, or like huge salt lakes that evaporate over millenia and turn into enormous piles of table-salt. I will console myself by chasing incongruous pink birds through the desert in an effort to determine their flavor.

Back in Sucre

Life in Sucre continues. I recently got back from a trek with 10 French clients... One of them had a birthday during the trek, and I managed to break one of the two celebratory bottles of wine all over my sleeping bag. Henrry (the Bolivian guide) and I had to consume countless gourd-fulls of chicha (fermented corn beverage) that were given to us by a subsistence farmer because the clients didn't like it and we didn't want to offend anyone. I marveled and this one particular rock that crumbles like snow, and I think I began to better understand donkeys. I got up before five every day to prepare breakfast. I noticed the moon.

There has always been a fascinating parade of characters in the apartment where I´ve been living, but now, for various reasons, everyone has dissappeared. This means that I have been prancing about the large empty space listening to loud music and lighting candles at random. Yesterday I washed trekking dishes for hours straight--I think I may have been enlightened there for a second when I was scrubbing the stove with hot sudsy water.

I have also been reading a ridiculous amount of poetry, and thinking with some apprehension about the... (gah) future. I even got so far as filling out most of a fellowship application, but then I accidentally deleted it. Today I made a rough list of experiences that might comprise a resumé of mine and I laughed at myself a bit. The sunlight is reflecting of the white-washed walls of Sucre, and my solitude is poignant and optimistic. All is well.