Across the Andes Part 2: The End is Near

Getting off of the plane in Buenos Aires just yesterday, I looked at Deia, looked around me and wondered if the last two years really happened. Seems more like a foggy dream than the reality that has been my life for so long. Could it be that I am trying to forget so much struggle, so much worry, so much pain? All of those good moments, too, after so long, have to fade into the back of our minds as well, don’t they? If I make myself look back, think about a day or a place, it’s easy to remember. I can still see the faces, still feel the wind, still smell the fields of cow crap. I know where we turned, I remember a specific bump in the ground, I remember the mountain across from me, what makes it distinct from all others on Earth, how its jagged buttresses fall from the impossibility that is the ridge. I remember the hope of finding a source of relatively potable water around the next corner. I remember the worry that inherently comes with the unknown. It is easy to go back to find the individual recollections, to wake up as I did three or six or 20 months ago, to pack my stuff and set out. The memories are sharp; they will be with me for a while to come. Still, I got off that plane last night. It has passed in a blur. Am I different? Did I learn anything? Did we really just do that? It was a new experience this time, moving to a new place. Granted, the method was different—we covered nearly 1,400 miles in the air in the same amount of time it would have taken us to cover eight by foot—but it was more than that. It was our first move off of the line that we have walked. It was the first step toward home. We are done.

~

Looking back now, nearly five months after finishing our 7,800-mile, two-year walk of the entire length of the Andes Mountains, it does not feel as if the experience was entirely real. A strange void in time has occurred. It feels like we set out on this journey two years ago and came back the very next day, rather than 22 months later. The feeling has made us question the actual existence of all those places we have briefly been a part of. That may sound strange, we know, but when passing in a completely linear voyage through space for so long, in our heads those sites exist only in the context of our narrative. It is hard to conceive of them as having their own stories, their own life, despite us. But as a matter of fact, these people and places are still there, happening, changing, going through seasons and celebrations and tragedies, very much dynamic and alive, very much without our presence. How much and what kind of an impact have we had by being in any of those places along the length of the Andes? Do we want that impact to be more or less than it actually was? What impact have they each had on us?