his onlyroute from hell to heaven were barefoot up a ladder of ten thousand rungs, each one a knife blade, that would be some consolation for his soul. I felt I was doing his penance. Elcita and I took turns to call for breaks and swig greedily at our water bottles. John paused and stood talking to another guide whose group we had caught up. In the east, there was a band of light over the cloud sea a mile and a half below. Elcita’s legs trembled uncontrollably . I thought she was near to exhaustion. The two guides swept the slope ahead with their torches. ‘It’s gone.’
I found the breath to ask, ‘What has?’
‘There has been a big avalanche. The path we use is gone, the snow is fresh and soft and will slow us down.’ We walked on a little longer and the sky began to lighten, showing us the ridge above. In a few minutes, grey light turned to daylight. I punched my axe into the snow and sat down. Cotopaxi was one of three tiny islands in an archipelago. The snow field below us was full of crevasses I had never seen. Over pathless snow, the top was still two hours away; we only had forty minutes before the hard snow crust began melting. I felt gutted. I knew I could have walked for two more hours. Two hours we didn’t have: this was it. We walked on until the sun rose, then, at nearly 18,000 feet, stabbed our axes into the snow and sat down holding on to them. The slope was about forty degrees, which feels like sixty. I looked down on that view of seventy, eighty miles, impressing it on memory. It was beautiful, utterly beautiful. The white snow was cut by turquoise crevasses and the sky around us was swimming pool blue. The sun would not tiptoe down into the valleys below for another forty minutes. Until then, we alone owned the sun and stood on the icekingdom in the sky, a place ordinary men and women could only glimpse through the filament gaps in the morning cloud: gods on Olympus. Soon we had to turn and go down, and become mortal once more. Soon.
When the Earth Trembles
It was a two-day walk to the next town of Ambato; I began walking the morning after coming down from Cotopaxi. I was reassured that my insane theory that Spartan living would cure my back was paying off. It was feeling better already. Walking, even up mountains, was healthier than sitting staring at a computer screen or ploughing through three-inch thick histories.
Shortly after seven thirty, I found a gravelled country road which gave no sign of once being a highway of empire. It soon became a green lane, which wound down to a stream with no bridge. The bank on my side was higher and I took as much of a flying leap as one can with a fifty-pound pack and crash-landed on the far bank. There were colourful birds all around, the tangerine cock-of-the-rock and the yellow and black flashes of siskins.
At midday, I reached a fork in the road that wasn’t on my map. The more promising road led to a prosperous house, protected by a large pair of locked gates guarded by a young Alsatian. Its efforts to eat me through the wrought iron were watched with idle disdain by a fat hearthrug of a dog, camped in the shade of a tree. The Alsatian’s paroxysms of rage eventually brought a lady from the house. Perhaps concerned at seeing a lone man at the gate, she walked so slowly towards me that, like acharacter in one of Xeno’s paradoxes, it seemed she would never arrive. She held out her hand, ‘Señora Isabela Castillo. Yes, the Inca road runs through here. Please come through. We have been here two years but, being a little remote, we had to fence ourselves in; there are many thieves.’ She walked me through her neat garden, at the back of which was a deep ravine. She pointed far below, ‘The real bridge fell down, but there are some logs across.’ I picked my way down, filled my water bottles, and took a look: three slim tree trunks propped up at a thirty-degree angle. I crawled across: safety before dignity.
The path rose again and clung to the
I found the breath to ask, ‘What has?’
‘There has been a big avalanche. The path we use is gone, the snow is fresh and soft and will slow us down.’ We walked on a little longer and the sky began to lighten, showing us the ridge above. In a few minutes, grey light turned to daylight. I punched my axe into the snow and sat down. Cotopaxi was one of three tiny islands in an archipelago. The snow field below us was full of crevasses I had never seen. Over pathless snow, the top was still two hours away; we only had forty minutes before the hard snow crust began melting. I felt gutted. I knew I could have walked for two more hours. Two hours we didn’t have: this was it. We walked on until the sun rose, then, at nearly 18,000 feet, stabbed our axes into the snow and sat down holding on to them. The slope was about forty degrees, which feels like sixty. I looked down on that view of seventy, eighty miles, impressing it on memory. It was beautiful, utterly beautiful. The white snow was cut by turquoise crevasses and the sky around us was swimming pool blue. The sun would not tiptoe down into the valleys below for another forty minutes. Until then, we alone owned the sun and stood on the icekingdom in the sky, a place ordinary men and women could only glimpse through the filament gaps in the morning cloud: gods on Olympus. Soon we had to turn and go down, and become mortal once more. Soon.
When the Earth Trembles
It was a two-day walk to the next town of Ambato; I began walking the morning after coming down from Cotopaxi. I was reassured that my insane theory that Spartan living would cure my back was paying off. It was feeling better already. Walking, even up mountains, was healthier than sitting staring at a computer screen or ploughing through three-inch thick histories.
Shortly after seven thirty, I found a gravelled country road which gave no sign of once being a highway of empire. It soon became a green lane, which wound down to a stream with no bridge. The bank on my side was higher and I took as much of a flying leap as one can with a fifty-pound pack and crash-landed on the far bank. There were colourful birds all around, the tangerine cock-of-the-rock and the yellow and black flashes of siskins.
At midday, I reached a fork in the road that wasn’t on my map. The more promising road led to a prosperous house, protected by a large pair of locked gates guarded by a young Alsatian. Its efforts to eat me through the wrought iron were watched with idle disdain by a fat hearthrug of a dog, camped in the shade of a tree. The Alsatian’s paroxysms of rage eventually brought a lady from the house. Perhaps concerned at seeing a lone man at the gate, she walked so slowly towards me that, like acharacter in one of Xeno’s paradoxes, it seemed she would never arrive. She held out her hand, ‘Señora Isabela Castillo. Yes, the Inca road runs through here. Please come through. We have been here two years but, being a little remote, we had to fence ourselves in; there are many thieves.’ She walked me through her neat garden, at the back of which was a deep ravine. She pointed far below, ‘The real bridge fell down, but there are some logs across.’ I picked my way down, filled my water bottles, and took a look: three slim tree trunks propped up at a thirty-degree angle. I crawled across: safety before dignity.
The path rose again and clung to the
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