Sumac Allpa

Beautiful Ground

Out my back window

I mourn the loss of the fields where I grew up, running free through the goldenrod and queen ann's lace, climbing the dust-green shivering poplars, turtle hunting in the county ditches. But I wish I'd grown up here. What a place to roam. What unending splendor and fascination. An order of magnitude richer in detail. 

Urubamba River Runs Through It

I walked seven klicks along the river yesterday to a town I saw on satellite view, Sillqui (pron. Silky); three hours of country and was passed by two cars total. 

It took me down dusty gravel roads, along grassy tracks beside narrow irrigation canals (acequias), between fields cultivated by bronze-age technology, along shaded woodland paths flanked by running water and ancient stone terrace walls, desert-like stretches of cactus and tough dry-country brush under towering red-rock peaks, with the glacial pinnacle of Veronica passing in and out of view under great ships of cloud, and the whole country was almost all mine. 

Path down to the river road by the old Inca causeway

Once in a while I'd pass a mud-brick household with family in the yard, maybe hand-washing clothes in the running water (that lady was still at it when I walked back, four hours later). 

Corn Woman carries a load of maise husks so big she looks like a walking corn shock

Fancy houses (who lives there?), ruined estancias, a tourist campground of corregated metal sheds that looked like a prisoner of war hutment. I shared the path with one couple, a granma in her thick skirt, manta-shawl, and fedora, carrying a bucket of berries, walking with a young girl in her white satin and lace church-going dress. No one else. Coming and going, I passed four young guys loading pasto, feed-grass, onto a flatbed truck. When the green trail walked by the old woman and young girl came down onto the gravel road, the crop truck, finally full, picked them up for the ride into the market. 

These guys asked if I wanted to work with the chain saw; I said I had, when young, but never one that big. They liked that.

I mean, I could go on about that hike for another two thousand words; and the day before, the stroll through the ever-changing fields just past the Inca causeway - beautiful megalithic stonework - well, that may have been better yet. 

Inka Pintay

And all around this place, 360 degrees, these fields, hills, peaks, rivulets, ruins, old, interesting, architecture, resonant people.

Sundown from Intiwatana

And that's the other thing - although they are really just one continuous reality - everything here is interesting. The people, their faces...

Check this out; you have to see it to fully comprehend it; the faces here show you what they are simple and plain. Where you live, people (and I'm one of them) present their expression, on the street, at work, at home; as a kind of PR; in quotes. One level removed from simple and plain. They read, This Is My Face With A Little Smile On It. This Is Me Being A Little Angry. This Is Me Ready For Anything. This is Me Being Me.

Everybody up there - Europe too, Asia, even the blank, hidden visage - show their faces on a second level; "As If." Here, not. Here a man may keep his feelings and thoughts to himself, but that's all; he's not projecting, "This is me keeping my feelings and thoughts to myself." All the people, smiling, frowning, stoic, thoughtful, are who they are. 

Incas, pure blood, these are the guys doing the work; and who are going to live be to 110

That's interesting all day long, to see those faces. And relaxing. The favorite word of these people is "tranquilo;" tranquil. Peaceful. That's how they see their surround, and so do I. Peaceful but always interesting. 

Ozymandias

The territoriality, the potential violence, the cowboy psychology that runs through everyone up there, even the chubby balding accountant who has never been in a fight in his life, is missing here. Their toughness is downplayed, never announced. You don't hear them swear.

Yanantin - "A special, harmonious relationship between two unspecified entities"

I don't know, there's too much to try to tell. Way too much. The ground, the flora, the fauna - livestock everywhere, all sorts, and the dogs and cats run free - the sky, the winds, the people from back in the hills in their traditional dress, not worn for tourists; the crisp black suits worn to baptisms and weddings, the market ladies in layered skirts and sweaters, panama hats, carrying babies or great loads of pasto grass or chocla maize in colorful mantas across their backs; the school kids in soccer polos lost in their cell phones. The buildings going up everywhere in the strong economy, old adobe, cinder block, concrete and rebar. The mototaxis with their menacing iconography. Too much. But the center of it is the land we're on, and the beauty of it.

It's the wet season now, but the whole day yesterday was flawless late spring weather; hallucinatory perfection. This is a "valley of eternal spring," and that's what it gives you. Like spring in temperate climates you get chill mornings and evenings, stormy nights in this season; overcast days, once, hail. No snow on the ground or ice on the puddles. Hot noons. But all within a kind of Camelot spectrum.

Rainbows everyfuckingwhere. You just got to live with it

Every day is new. This is what I want to say. Every day begins again and is full, full of variety, of information, of surprise, of discovery.  It has been that way since I got here. There are plenty of things to bitch about, but damn, I'm glad I came here.

*****

Afterthoughts


You get fires on the hills a couple times a year. Pretty, aren't they? The men go up to keep them in line.

Brushfire on Bandolista mountain

Fields in every direction...maize, quinoa, potatoes, squash, beans, pasto, crops with no name in English or presence at Whole Foods.

Livestock all around - cows, bulls, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, alpacas and llamas up in the hills; sheep

Dusk in tourist country. The buildings are kept to two stories (barring the outlaws), and the lights kept gentle (same).


 

Watching the river flow...